Don't Blame Me, I Voted for Voldemort!

J.K Rowling has again cast her Novelus Blockbusterus spell on most of the English speaking, or at least the English reading world with the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. There probably follows a two to three day plummet in the demand for electricity, as televisions and game systems are temporarily abandoned for the unpracticed pleasures of reading. Woe be it, also, to the author whose publisher thought so little of him as to release his book for sale this week, as both display and shelf space in bookstores will have been slavishly devoted to Pottermania to the exclusion of virtually everything else.

I'm not wild about Harry, having read and enjoyed the first book because of its clever inventiveness and charmingly offbeat characters but grown, well, disenchanted with each newer, longer, darker and more convoluted offering. I gave up somewhere around the fourth or fifth book, I honestly can't remember which, and my interest in Harry's fate or that of his friends isn't particularly keen. My guess, though, is that Rowling isn't nearly big enough of a goose to kill the wizard that laid the golden royalty check and that Harry will survive his "final confrontation" with He-who-must-find -a-good-plastic-surgeon just in case she decides, say, ten years from now that she misses the attention or is down to her last billion pounds.

In any case, Megan McArdle has written an interesting column in the (U.K.) Guardian, complaining about Rowling's muddled sense of economics in the Potter novels. I'm not sure McArdle, herself, is a economics wizard (her use of the term "opportunity cost" is a bit wierd), but she's definitely on to something amiss about the magical world Rowling has wrought. Why, for example, are the Weasleys poor? Why would any even semi-accomplished wizard want for material goods when they learn how to change inanimate boxes into mice and such in elementary school? Can changing lead to gold be that much harder? For that matter, why on earth would gold, itself, be valuable to such people, unless of course they were using it to buy goods from ordinary people, which apparently they do not. It seems they have their own self-contained demimonde society with shopkeepers and such. It is one thing, after all, if only a few people possess magical skills or such magic is clearly limited in its power. But in Rowling's world everyone has enough magical power to live in the style to which Rowling, herself, has since become accustomed.

McArdle's larger point is that there is no satisfactory explanation of the distribution of magical powers or their limitations in the books. There is no internal consistency, either. Rowling is forever inventing new gizmos and spells to resolve otherwise impossible situations. To paraphrase McArdle, Rowling can't get by with the occasional deus ex machina; she needs an Olympian pantheon of such plot rescuers time and again. On any sort of close scrutiny, the world she has created simply isn't believable, not because of the existence of magic but because of the sort of world the widespread prevalence of magic has supposedly created. It has, at best, a sort of ad hoc dream logic about it, so little wonder the dream turns so easily into a nightmare.

In a sense, therefore, one can understand Voldemort's perspective. What good is magic, after all, if the end product is no more than some sort of quaintly absurd pseudo-Victorian society where the economy makes no more sense than the officious but otherwise useless bureaucracy? What better way to put magic to use in such a world than to acquire power over such a dimwitted lot who, by the way, seem not at all troubled by their own effective enslavement of a different sentient species? Voldemort's ambitions may be ignoble, but at least they make sense.

Constant Viewer: Credentials? We ain't got no credentials. We don't need no credentials. I don't have to show you any stinking credentials!

Let me put this bluntly, in language even a busy blogger can understand: Criticism — and its humble cousin, reviewing — is not a democratic activity. It is, or should be, an elite enterprise, ideally undertaken by individuals who bring something to the party beyond their hasty, instinctive opinions of a book (or any other cultural object). It is work that requires disciplined taste, historical and theoretical knowledge and a fairly deep sense of the author's (or filmmaker's or painter's) entire body of work, among other qualities.

Thus sprach Time film critic and book reviewer Richard Schickel, who makes the other salient observations that Edmund Wilson and George Orwell were better critics than most (all?) bloggers trying their hand at it and that, presumably among many others, Philip K. Dick and Cornell Woolrich are currently enjoying inflated reputations or would enjoy them if they were still alive. These things are true. Constant Viewer readily admits them.

Schickel goes on to say:

[W]e have to find in the work of reviewers something more than idle opinion-mongering. We need to see something other than flash, egotism and self-importance. We need to see their credentials. And they need to prove, not merely assert, their right to an opinion.

Here, alas, he loses CV on several grounds. First, he conflates reviewing with criticism; that is, were he writing about criticism his position would be far more defensible. Second, by his own standards, much of professional (read: paid) reviewing fails utterly as well. Schickel might not mind that so much, but CV hazards the guess that were he to dredge up some of Schickel's work from the mid 1960s it wouldn't fare all that well by those standards, either. CV, um, asserts this opinion having never read much of Schickel's work under the principle that anyone who doesn't get better at what he has done for over forty years should have packed it in long ago.

Criticism aside, a film or book reviewer's work is little more than an aid to the prospective viewer or reader. Here are the credentials required to be a useful film reviewer: be consistent in your tastes and write what you believe. Readers will fairly quickly discover after several reviews whether and where you can be trusted to share their tastes or not. Knowledge of film making and of the principle cast and crew is useful but not essential. People do not read reviews to educate themselves generally or to improve their taste. Their question is "Will I like this movie?" Just about everything else in the review is posturing; entertaining posturing, maybe, but posturing nonetheless and specifically film reviewing posturing as film criticism. CV knows of one reviewer who apparently doesn't know his aperture from a hole in the ground as far as film making or film history credentials go, but if this guy likes a movie, chances are very good that CV will like it, too. Maybe not for the same stated reasons, but that makes no difference in his value as a litmus test.

Sure, an informed and talented reviewer can occasionally accomplish the loftier goals to which Schickel would have him constantly aspire. But Schickel fails to understand how his elitist perspective and attitude (the latter of which CV largely shares) nonetheless fails to support his implicit conclusion that this internet free-for-all is a bad thing. Yes, most blog reviews suck. But so do most paid reviews, a fact Schickel all too quickly acknowledges.

Maybe Ernie the car parts guy has something worth saying and maybe he doesn't. Chances are he doesn't, but so what? Maybe Ernie will turn into a decent reviewer if he keeps at it long enough. The notion that all real writers find publishers or that, at the very least, they keep writing despite rejection after rejection is, one notes, a notion held almost exclusively by published writers. Let Ernie have his fun, even if it is little more than "cocktail-party chat."

Chances are good that more people decide which film to see or book to read next from cocktail party chatter than from Mr. Schickel and his ilk's reviews or criticism. Chances are even better there's a good reason why.

Mini-Review: More Sex Is Safer Sex by Steven E. Landsburg

Steven E. Landsburg is my favorite economics writer. Admittedly, it's a small field of competition, but I'd have to say I don't think I really began to understand what economics is all about until I read his The Armchair Economist back in 1993. Economics is not about money, let alone money and banking, gross domestic product, or even supply and demand. Sure, that's the stuff that gets covered in an economics survey course, but the underlying theme, apparently lost on the vast majority of those who take the course, is about choices and the consequences and trade-offs of those choices. Money is only a convenient method of measuring. No contemporary economist I know (including, e.g., David D. Friedman, Steven D. Levett, Todd G. Buchholz and Tim Harford) does a better job of making the underlying "Big Picture" of economics more clear or more entertaining than Landsburg.

His latest book, More Sex Is Safer Sex: The Unconventional Wisdom of Economics (Free Press, 288 pp.) is a delight and highly recommended, even though I find that I don't always agree with Landsburg (for noneconomic reasons) in some of his views. Well, that actually adds to the fun.

I will almost certainly write more about several of the themes and topics in Landsburg's new book when time becomes available. In the meanwhile, I encourage you to check out his "Why I Am Not an Environmentalist" and, for the libertarian crowd, I offer a bit of red meat from More Sex Is Safer Sex, as follows:

... Cabinet departments like Agriculture, Commerce and Labor have powerful constituencies that make it impossible to eliminate them one at a time. But what about eliminating them as a package?

The Agriculture Department helps farmers steal from workers and businesses; the Commerce Department helps businesses steal from farmers and workers; the Labor Department helps workers steal from farmers and businesses. With a plan to abolish all three, you could promise every American that he was losing one friend and two enemies.

Several readers took issue with my criticism of Ron Paul's performance during the Republican candidates' 'debate.' Let's not kid ourselves, folks, Ron Paul is not going to be our next president. Still, instead of confusing people with talk about the "inflation tax" and fumbling over why the Founding Fathers wouldn't want Arnold Schwarzenegger to be eligible for the presidency, the above quote is precisely the sort of thing he should be saying in his all too brief media exposure. So here's my current Paul campaign contribution: Dr. Paul, read Steven Landsburg's books and steal from them flagrantly every chance you get!

Nothing, In Particular

While dallying earlier today over at Urkobold® (your one-stop shop for all things internet trollish), I did a bit of research (read: "typed in a Google search") and came upon an unauthorized posting of an article by the late philosopher Peter L. Heath. My high respect for intellectual property notwithstanding to the contrary, having some personal knowledge of Professor Heath's sense of humor, I cannot help but think that nothing would please him more. Herewith, then, a link to what may very well be the all-time definitive short article on the subject of "nothing."

Put a bit differently, you will find a better article on nothing in particular nowhere, but what are the chances of ever finding yourself there? Oh, sure, many philosophers have written extensively about nothing in particular or at least nothing that was especially interesting and the number of philosophical treatises about nothing worth reading are legion. Still, although nobody has written more cogently about nothing than Professor Heath, nobody's work wasn't as readily available. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, as no one I can remember at the moment once said.

Sadly, Professor Heath's other great work of philosophical whimsy, The Philosopher's Alice, a (serious) philosophical look at Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures In Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, appears to be out of print. Should you run across a used copy or find it in your local library, I strongly recommend it to you.

Constant Viewer: Next

It’s hardly up to his Oscar-winning performance, but once again Nicholas Cage squeezes a worthy showing out of a role that has him, well, leaving Las Vegas. What’s more, Julianne Moore reprises her FBI Special Agent Clarice Starling persona, albeit as Special Agent (they’re all special in the FBI) Callie Ferris this time around in Next.

Cage plays Cris Johnson, a stage magician with the unexplained power of seeing his own life two minutes ahead of time. Better still, knowing how his life unfolds if he zigs one way permits Johnson to zag instead and thus change his short-term future. This permits him to perform his low budget lounge act in Las Vegas and supplement his earnings with a bit of low stakes gambling on the side. Meanwhile, nondescript but decidedly European looking nuclear terrorists are on the loose. Somehow, also unexplained, both the FBI and the terrorists get wind of Johnson’s uncanny ability and set out to get to him either to prevent or keep him from preventing the bomb from causing eight million deaths. Johnson wants nothing to do with any of it and so flees Las Vegas, finding love interest Liz (Jessica Biel) en route to the rest of this preposterous and yet still entertaining movie directed by Lee Tamahori (Mulholland Falls, Along Came A Spider). Peter Falk has a nice though small role in the film, as well.

Philip K. Dick is currently the hardest working dead author in Hollywood, his stories having provided the basis for Impostor, Minority Report, Paycheck, A Scanner Darkly and now Next, all in just the last five years. Not bad for a guy who died twenty-five years ago and thus can’t take lunches with Hollywood players. Next is based on his 1954 short story “The Golden Man,” which Constant Viewer admits to not having read and thus will leave to others to say where Dick ends and the screenwriters begin here.

The thing about Next is that the viewer must completely suspend disbelief, and then just sit back and enjoy the ride. In return, there are three or four really fun scenes in Next that develop the potential of Johnson’s short range clairvoyance splendidly and Cage, himself, who takes the absurd premise and offers a convincing performance of a man whose gift (as Tony Shalub’s Monk would say) is also a curse. Movie goers who have already weathered Spider-Man 3 and are looking for something else to see until Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End opens on May 25th, will likely enjoy seeing what's Next.

Misery Loves Company?

I had a rotten childhood. Want to hear about it? Apparently you do, especially if you’re English, though we Yanks are in on the trend, too. So, anyway, the BBC reports on the latest bestseller genre: misery memoirs, or “mis lit” for short.

Borders now devotes shelf space specifically for “Real Life” stories, while Waterstone's has a "Painful Lives" shelf where three of the top ten bestselling paperbacks in Britain can be found. It helps, of course, if you’ve been sexually molested as a child; but just having really mean parents will suffice if it all ends with a sufficiently cathartic journey of personal growth, so there’s hope for Alec Baldwin’s daughter and for me, too. Hey, I got yelled at a lot as a kid, you know!

Memo to Booksellers: Sexual abuse aside, bestselling stories about miserable childhoods aren’t exactly a recent phenomenon. Unless you count Dickens as a recent author, that is. Here in America, there’s nary a book reader alive who didn’t at some point identify with Holden Caulfield’s painful journey of discovery taken mostly via cabs around Manhattan after the ordeal of being kicked out of yet another exclusive prep school. The horror, the horror!

Then, too, we have long enjoyed that "mis lit" sub-genre, the celebrity child tell-all, beginning with Mommy Dearest and no doubt soon to be continued with Ireland Baldwin’s forthcoming A.B., Don’t Phone Home. Today, however, you don’t need to be the child of a famous megalomaniac to pen your own bestseller because, thanks to the Baby Boomer generation, just about everybody’s parents these days are megalomaniacs.

And by “the Baby Boomer generation” I mean, of course, MY generation. It is, after all, all about ME, you know. Besides, James W Pennebaker, a professor of psychology at the University of Texas, says, "There's compelling evidence that writing about serious emotional upheavals can improve mental and physical health." By which he means, of course, MY mental and physical health. But, what the heck, if it can help you by reading about ME and MY miserable childhood, well, it’s a win-win, isn’t it? And by “win-win” I mean, of course, that I win because I get the cathartic experience of writing and then I win again by selling MY story to you. See? Win-win!

The other good news here is that this trend liberates us Baby Boomers (read: ME) to be lousy parents, ourselves. It frees us to spend more time thinking about ourselves and less time worrying about our own annoying brats wonderful kids. And if there’s one thing we Baby Boomers desperately need it’s more time to think about ourselves. We all had lousy childhoods and, truth be told, the whole point of having children is to make little mini-ME’s anyway, so why shouldn’t they have lousy childhoods, too? Especially if there’s a bestseller in it for them. Hey, that means we can quit saving for their college and go out and buy that Porsche now, too! Another win-win!

Okay, mandatory disclaimer time. There’s nothing funny or frivolous about child sexual abuse or other serious physical or psychological abuse. If the thankfully very small percentage of people who have been victims of such abuse find writing about their experiences useful, and I can see how they would, then by all means they should do so. So, too, I can even see how other victims might feel less isolated by reading about similar experiences.

What I find difficult, nay, impossible to believe is that there are so many such victims that they constitute a sufficient readership for an entire genre, which means that the rest of the writers in this field are basically bitching about the childhood 'trauma' of being yelled at or spanked. Oh, boo-hoo! We weren't all victims and our parents weren't all monsters. Our parents were just human beings, warts and all, and much about childhood sucks under the best of circumstances. Grow up, fergawdsakes.

For years now, I’ve been touting the fiction of Andrew Vachss, an author and lawyer specializing in child abuse who writes brilliant novels about real victims and real monsters, and in recent years I have been encouraging friends to check out PROTECT, an organization seeking needed family law reforms so that childhood victims of abuse are not remanded, as is too often the case, back to the custody of their predator parents. I encourage you, likewise, to check out PROTECT and, especially if you like hard-boiled mystery novels, to check out Vachss. Most importantly, I encourage any victim of childhood abuse to find appropriate help.

For the rest of us, though, for those of us who simply had parents who were far from ideal, and that is to say for practically all of us, my childhood 'misery' doesn’t need your company and vice versa. By all means write about your experiences all you like. Share it if you wish with friends and family. But unless you really want to read in excruciating and breathless detail about, oh, say, the time when I was nine and I got spanked for shoplifting a comic book, thanks for not sharing with me.