reading review - citizen

Rankine collects examples of racism from both her life as well as the broader world around her, presenting these in essays, poems, or images throughout this short work. I found a number of her personal anecdotes were especially powerful, though I would not say the same for the various sections based on incidents pulled from the news, media, or popular culture.

Citizen by Claudia Rankine (November 2021)

The exception to the latter point above would be the observation that because white men cannot police their imagination, black people are dying. In addition to these types of insights, another strength of Citizen is the way it recreates the mood left in the wake of being victimized by racial abuse, which I would describe as the sudden reemergence of that instinct to shrink the possibilities around you as a necessary means of self-protection; once burned, you know not to touch the stove, and your future interactions with it are forever informed by the incident. I think Rankine says something to this effect when she describes the way you might pull back your presence or attention after being targeted by racially abusive language, given the devastating internal punishment of hearing and absorbing such words (though I'm not entirely sure this was in Citizen, as I didn't see it in my notes). To put it another way, it's better (or at least, safer) to pull back from the environment once the environment demonstrates the risk of full participation.

There is an interesting aspect of her piece about Zidane's headbutt on Materazzi in the 2006 World Cup Final, which got him ejected by a red card moments before the end of the game. There was an idea, initially corroborated by certain lip leaders, that Zidane was provoked into retaliation by racially abusive taunts, and I think this idea is somewhere in the foundation of Rankine's piece. The story that has emerged since then (based on comments from both players) paints a picture that is familiar to me from decades on a basketball court - it seems like Zidane essentially reacted to trash talk, specifically a comment referencing Zidane's sister, and at least in my interpretation it seems that it was just Materazzi's attempt to wind up the player. I can't say for sure, I suppose, if this changed how I read the piece, particularly as its main arc is not strictly about the headbutt (it's about the way we respond to the abuse of language), but that was certainly my initial suspicion.

Now as I think again about it, I wonder if this in some way helps the piece reinforce the overall point of Citizen - the situation of racism at this moment in time is such that it creates problems not just in its direct, obvious abuses, but also in the way it permanently alters the experience of the marginalized. There is something about a false alarm that suggests a truth known only to those ringing the bell - from experience, they know not just what to look for, but also why suspicion alone merits the concern being brought from shadow into light. Only those who know the pain of these abuses will notice the approach of another similar situation, or the evidence left behind by the same. This lesson from Citizen, perhaps entirely the accidental result of this soccer fan reading a timely book seven years later, is likely the one that will stick with me over my remaining years.

TOA Rating: Three stovetops out of four.

reading clearout - january 2022

Hi reader,

A new year, and a tiny formatting change, but still the same idea - my monthly summary of some reading that won't quite make it into a full reading review.

Wild by Cheryl Strayed (December 2021)

Despite this being a reread, I still wasn't quite expecting my main observation from Wild - it's an excellent book, which I determined based on how quickly I zipped through it. This isn't meant to imply that I thought it wouldn't be any good (I did decide to reread it), I just wasn't anticipating putting all my other reading on hold in order to get through this as fast as possible. (For context, I write this on a morning where I have six books "in progress", and in general I think it's relevant when I stop my other reading to focus on one book.) If you need a book to absorb your attention for a few days, I'd say this is as good of a bet as anything.

Wild has a rhythm that mirrors the daily pattern of Strayed's solo journey along the Pacific Coast Trail - the book maintains a steady progress like one would expect of any thru-hiker, yet regularly finds opportunities to stop and recharge the narrative in the manner of the same hiker making camp each night. I related to quite a few of the thoughts I collected from this memoir: the reckless invincibility you can feel after a loved one's death, the acknowledgment that the purpose of certain solo journeys is to make it alone, and - as I noted in life-altering fashion on that first read a few years ago - the unmistakable signs that it's time to abandon a decision, whether that be as momentous as certain lifelong commitments or as trivial as a shoe size.

Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges (November 2021)

A collection of short stories and essays, I found the overall reading experience to be mostly positive with the occasional piece being a bit of a slog. I reread "The Shape of the Sword", "The Library of Babel", and "The Garden of Forking Paths", though I imagine readers will present a wide range of their own favorites from this 1962 publication. The works in this book, particularly the stories, would likely be categorized among today's new releases as something between Harry Potter and science fiction, though I would discourage such a strict categorization - these are more like essay-length ideas. Not all of the ideas work out, with some simply not being good enough while others are ambitiously crammed into the ill-fitting short form. It strikes me that the first line of my notes is something of a reflection on the task undertaken by Labyrinths - intellectual ideas are doomed to a useless conclusion, and all lines in a philosophy book start as an attempt to explain everything. Perhaps it's more uplifting to leave on another note - despite the sensation that the days run together, there are always surprises in the day's unfolding, and I suppose Labyrinths contains a few of them.

Why Don't We Learn From History by B.H. Liddell Hart (December 2019)

I read this book over two years ago, which has left me with little sense of this work's pattern or rhythm. My notes suggest Hart makes an honest effort to answer his own question, though I worry he undercut his own point toward the end - by acknowledging that, historically speaking, "factual" statements based on history generally lose their value as more knowledge becomes available, Hart seems to explain why one might prefer to learn from other sources. Why bother with history if new knowledge will soon dilute the strength of today's lessons? But as he notes elsewhere, history is perhaps most valuable in its examples of what not to do - that we should never filter events through the "imagined" interests of national or military morale, that we should not expect unification to create progress if preserving unity becomes a priority ahead of producing ideas, or that we should never expect the ends to justify bad means. The idea that seems most valuable to me at the moment is that the best way to push a new idea is to frame it as a return to forgotten wisdom or principles.

lessons from toa, #1 - writing generating writing

The post last Sunday was a good example of something I've learned since the start of TOA in 2016 - the ideas in the final post are often generated by the process of writing. It also goes hand in hand with a thought that the writing in the final post is often generated by the process of ideas. I suppose this may lead to some confusion for the reader, which I imagine would center around three questions. If the final post is discovered along the way, then how do I determine where to start? What happens along the way that leads to these discoveries? And what happens to the original idea?

The initial question of where to start is answerable by looking at that example. The idea for last Sunday was to organize my top reading from 2021, and I logically started with the first book I finished reading that also made my 2021 shortlist. I set some basic parameters for myself - such as including a short blurb on how I saw the book in hindsight - then I began writing. This might sound almost too simple, but I think it's the right approach - if you make things too complicated at the beginning, then you make writing harder than it needs to be, and you make it less likely that you'll ever start writing.

The next question is probably the most interesting of the three, but also the toughest one for which to provide a definitive answer. What happens along the way? The short version is that it probably varies not just by writer, but also by topic. In writing last Sunday's post, there was a moment where I admitted to myself that despite considering A Room of One's Own one of my top reads from 2021, I didn't really have a clear reason for why I included it on the list. When I reviewed my original post about it in April, I recognized that I had already avoided the same question on the prior occasion. The process of discovering that I didn't know what I was writing about forced some deeper thinking, which I think is the crux of this process. The final outcome was essentially a hypothesis, which I was entirely unaware of when I had started - books written about the specific problems of a time can still resonate with me after some creative reflection. This came about because writing forced a confession that I didn't know what I was writing about after all; the post was impossible to write without new ideas.

The third and final question sounds good on paper, but it's a poor question because a little extra thinking reveals that there can only be one answer, which in a way is also no answer. What happens to the original idea? It is very simple - I'll either write about it, or I won't, and we just have to wait and see. It comes down to whether, having wandered off the original path to explore a new journey, I feel there is a decent reason to return to the original plan. There is no definitive process to govern the situation because the situation itself was a result of proceeding without a governing process - I started with a plan, yet retained the flexibility to reevaluate it along the way. I think that's the best way to describe this lesson - if you want to have your best idea, you have to accept that you need to start with a decent idea, then make it a better idea; your best writing is a result of starting on a path toward good writing, then looking for signs of the surprising detours that make it better writing.

toa books of the year (2021, part one)

Howdy reader! Slow start for me to 2022, and I have no imminent plans to hit the gas pedal. Stay tuned, though, TOA should be back soon enough with some real posts.

For today, a return to an old tradition - awards season! Let's start with the books of the year. Unlike in years past, I actually kept track as I went along, so this is going to be a much faster process than in prior editions. (I'm also not sure if I ever did one for 2020, so we may have a catchup post coming up.)

I sorted my shortlist in chronological order by when I finished the reading, then included alongside each book a short blurb with three components - links to past TOA posts about the book (if applicable, otherwise an estimate of the reading review date), some comments as I look back on the reading, and one parting thought from my notes (essentially, what I remember now from the book). The original plan was to do the shortlist today, then come back in a few days to sort out the finalists. As it turned out, I went on quite a tangent for my first entry, so we'll just go with that for today and get to the rest later. (However, for those interested I did include the full list at the bottom of this post.)

Thanks for reading my reading!

A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf (January 2021)

TOA Review: posted in April 2021

It's amusing to look back on what I wrote in April, which per TOA standards saw only about 25% or so of the post being actually about the book. This also was a reread, so the ideas lacked the appeal of originality that might apply for other readers, and I therefore skimmed over them in my review. I hope this was not a major oversight; I would say most of us by now understand both the point and the importance of Woolf's ideas. I think from my perspective a modern iteration of this work would look more so at systems rather than the individual, perhaps restating the main idea by focusing the lens on social structures - these are the only forces capable of freeing all people from the material constraints that prevent so many from writing fiction (or pursuing other creative work).

This leads me to wonder what the reaction to such an iteration would be in the present day. I wonder if Woolf, who by the language of our time would surely be described as "privileged", would feel required to reflect on her personal circumstances as it relates to her craft, perhaps sharing my suspicion that her circumstances would have a negative effect by default on the public perception of the work. To put it bluntly, Woolf was rich, and her point could read as something like "to write fiction you need to be rich, or at least have the circumstances that are currently enjoyed by the rich". I think if this book came out today, it would be seen as something that should have been by a writer from a poor background, perhaps scribbling out drafts on the bus while commuting from one minimum wage job to the next; the reaction to Woolf might be something like "how does someone who doesn't buy her own groceries know this is the only way to write fiction?"

This scenario may reflect my perception that people today will not read carefully enough to grasp a deeper point. But regardless of the reason, it would still be the same outcome, and it seems odd to me that this is more or less the accepted state of affairs, where certain descriptors about a person or a person's circumstances can qualify or influence how the public perceives a creator's output. It suggests to me that there is something specific to this age that makes people uncomfortable about stepping too far out of line, and in turn this feeling is reflected onto others by the way we collectively perceive their work within the constraints of who is qualified to produce it. In this current moment, I think a lot of time is wasted justifying the fact of the work itself, as if the strength of the idea alone is irrelevant unless it comes from someone qualified to express such an idea.

I think this speaks somewhat to the challenge facing a society as it makes strides against longtime challenges such as poverty - as more and more people reach a certain level of material comfort, there is a growing collective complicity in leaving others behind, and this is dealt with by ignoring rather than addressing the collective guilt, with those who step out of line to point out the problems being shouted down for their hypocrisy of speaking rather than taking action. The specific problem Woolf wrote about is not as relevant today, when so many societies around the world have reached a certain level of affluence, but it does beg a different question - why write fiction at all, supported by the minimum means required to pursue creative work, when so many remain in suffering? And why are so many afraid of confronting this situation, sometimes expressing this fear by citing the inaction of others to justify their own selfish indulgences, needlessly worrying themselves over a faulty premise that individuals are somehow responsible for single-handedly correcting the accumulated wrongdoings of billions?

But is it too much to at least do what we can? I write this on a day where wind chills dip sharply below zero, seated next to a spare blanket. I could bring it out and look for someone who may need it, but I don't do it, and not many would. I suppose it goes back to the top - the modern iteration of this work would need to restate Woolf's idea with a certain system change in mind, for at the moment it seems like we are disconnected from the sense that individual action can improve a global situation, particularly if it means we must risk the personal security that has rarely been guaranteed throughout the history of civilization. It may be that not just to write fiction but to right wrongs, to right and rewrite the nonfiction of history, requires more than just a room of one's own, but also the security that it will be there when we must return to it.

The security of having our basic needs guaranteed can be the foundation to take necessary risks, for establishing a fair and just society is just as much a creative act as writing fiction, given that such a society is yet to be found on this planet; we can only create what is yet to exist, but all creation requires risk. At its core this is the point of Woolf's work, the sense that material security emboldens us to do what is right by our hearts and minds. Her security enabled this examination of the effect that so many deep-seated injustices had on the ability of the women of her time to write fiction. In the present, we can only grow from and build on her example, seeing the world's crises as problems waiting for the solutions of creative work, and recognizing that securing the needs of individuals - a process which connects the feminist themes of Woolf's work to the ongoing battle for economic justice - will enable the people of today to perform a higher quality of such creative work.

Parting thought: Political action requires an issue to be simplified, which leaves the work of restoring nuance and complexity to those who come in its wake.

Remaining TOA book of the year candidates

The Body Keeps The Score by Bessel Van der Kolk (March)

Thirty-One Nil by James Montague (March)

Thinking Without a Bannister by Hannah Arendt (March)

On Immunity by Eula Biss (May)

Daddy Was a Number Runner by Louise Meriwether (May)

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders (August)

Race After Technology by Ruha Benjamin (September)

The Factory by Hiroko Oyamada (November)

Tenth of December by George Saunders (December)

Wild by Cheryl Strayed (December)

How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi (December)

toa rewind - sometimes i run and think, and sometimes i just run

Happy New Year reader! I thought I would usher in 2022 with a glance at the past year, perhaps by highlighting a few of the highest-rated or most commonly viewed posts. I may indeed complete this project in January - it's easier than actually writing, a task for which in this offseason I still have no interest. However, for now we'll just take a short detour into the familiar "TOA rewind" concept, highlighting this longer post from June 2020, which is about... about what? I guess like much of TOA, it's about a lot of nothing, or possibly a lot about nothing, either of which makes it an appropriate starting point for another year.

We should be back with a few more posts over the next month or two, including the usual lists of awards, top books, and so on, all of these being on the lighter side in accordance with the current offseason break. Sorry to disappoint, but for those incapable of reading between the lines I'll just spell it out - I'm burnt out. (Quite frankly, longtime readers probably are, too.) I'm guessing sometime in February or possibly March for a return to the more traditional pace. Thanks for reading, and see you in 2022!