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Deep Straights: Is there a Solution?

Deep Straights: Is there a Solution?

By Damon Griffin

In Bill Mckibben’s book Deep Economy: the Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future, every hot-button issue of environmental and economic decline is touched on: Global Warming, income division, the food crisis, Healthcare crisis, Corporate Lobbying, Globablization and Over-Spending. The book spends a large amount of time talking about the first issue in particular; McKibben’s advocacy of a more homespun, communal approach to managing the economy and everyday life in the United States is framed as an attempt to fix Global Warming more than any others. McKibben’s theories (about how a culture of selfishness and individualism inadvertently leads to environmental damage is well argued and his admonishing views of how the common population simply has the wrong mentality could turn in to condesenscion, but instead provides grounds for optimism. But what is truly an area for debate and controversy in the book is the way it touches on general politics.

The books rhetoric, never explicit, brings to the forefront of one’s mind two words: one is Capitalism, and the other is that always-feared word ‘Socialism.’

Uh-oh. Is McKibben really advocating a Socialist society? He does write of a trip to Cuba, where he advocates their farming system and production of food over the U.S system. One poster on Amazon.com wrote that McKibben is advocating ‘Outright Communism.’ He is not trying to do any such thing, although it could be concluded that his view of the way American society should be is more of a Social Democracy that what we have now: a Capitalist Democracy. McKibben writes that his ideas are not ‘Liberal or Conservative,’ though even he realizes that his idea of a communal, less individualistic society relates to Liberal, Social-Democratic politics, in opposition to the every-individual-for-himself economy we have today, which leans closer to a Conservative, Libertarian model. A blog post does not have much room for an in-depth Political Science discussion, but there certainly is a major discussion Deep Economy can provoke: the upsides of a communal economy and society as opposed to a global, Capitalist economy, and its’ downsides as well. This same discussion could provoke a shallow, misunderstood controversy as well; ‘Socialism’ versus ‘Capitalism,’ ‘Radicalism’ versus ‘The Establishment.’

Kundera’s ‘The Hitchhiking Game’

Kundera’s ‘The Hitchhiking Game’ By Damon Griffin Most people know of the book, or at least the film, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which is Czech author Milan Kundera’s best known work in the western world. This was indeed the first book of his I read, and with great enthusiasm. But this summer I read several more of his writings, which included a short story called ‘The Hitchhiking Game.’ It is this story that I want to focus on for the remainder of this post. Because if you don’t have time to read a novel, or just don’t want to, you can at least read ‘The Hitchhiking Game,’ and your’ exposure to Kundera will be sufficient. The story was originally written in the late 60’s, during a time of immense political turmoil and artistic hope in Czechoslovakia. The ‘Prague Spring’ had been crushed by Russian forces in 1967, but there was still much revolutionary artistic activity happening in literature. I mention this only to point out that ‘The Hitchhiking Game’ was essentially a part of a long rebellion at the time, even though nowadays, it does not read that way. It is just a very weird, clever (maybe too clever) love story to us now. A boy and his girlfriend (referred to throughout as only ‘the boy’ and ‘the girl’) stop for gas during a drive on their vacation; while waiting, the girl goes for a walk down the road and a few minutes later is picked up by her boyfriend; they proceed to play an inside-joke type of game, in which they do not know each other, and the girl is a submissive plaything and the boy is a tough misogynist; the game starts out as mere pretend, but gradually turns genuinely hostile. Yet in a sense, there are several rebellions in this story; the two lovers are rebelling against social norms by the very nature of their game, rebelling against each other by seeing how one-dimensional, shallow and eventually violent they can act towards one another. So in a sense the story is a series of rebellions, though also a character study in the truest sense of the word; the intensely detached tone and constant shift-of focus between the two characters somehow elicits the reader’s sympathy for them. The story can be found in the collection Laughable Loves, alongside a few other memorable Kundera stories.

The Eyre Affair

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde reshaped many of my ideas about reading and books-it’s one of the most creative and fun stories that I have ever read. The Wall Street Journal writes: “Filled with clever wordplay, literary allusion and bibliowit, The Eyre Affair combines elements of Monty Python, Harry Potter, Stephen Hawking and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But its quirky charm is all its own.” That cover blurb (along with the Jane Eyre title reference) sold me on it. Thursday Next is Fforde’s heroine, and she’s a literary detective in a very unfamiliar version of 1985 England. When arch-villain Acheron Hades kidnaps Jane Eyre from her own novel, Thursday Next is hot on his heels. I’ve really liked Fforde’s subsequent books, but The Eyre Affair is his first, and in my mind, best outing. I think if you’re a bibliophile or a verbivore, it’s hard not to love!

The Alibi

I read The Alibi by Sandra Brown.  This is the first book by her that I’ve read, though she’s a pretty popular mystery author.  I actually read an excerpt of it in a magazine many years ago, and it stuck in my head-so when I saw it on the recreational reading shelf, I knew I had to check it out! It’s set in a very sultry Charleston, South Carolina and opens with the murder of wealthy, sleazy real estate magnate, Lute Pettijohn.  Hammond Cross is the young attorney of sterling character and pedigree, who hopes to use the case to cement his ascent to lead prosecutor.  (We learn that in South Carolina, “County Solicitor” is the correct term, in place of “District Attorney”).  Brown weaves together a tangled web of over-the-top Southern characters.  There are intersecting love triangles involving Hammond Cross, his cut-throat professional rival, Pettijohn’s drunken socialite widow, and the obsessive investigating detective.  But the story’s real tension revolves around “the alibi”-Hammond’s rendezvous with a mysterious stranger, who becomes the prime suspect in the Pettijohn case.  And neither she nor he, are about to reveal their relationship.  It’s a legal ethics minefield and probably pretty far-fetched, but I still found The Alibi to be absorbing and exciting. Pick it up to enjoy over the last weekend of summer!

Tristram Shandy

I finished Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, another one of my TBR 2008 Challenge books.  This is often hailed as the first post-modern text, and a few years ago, I saw a film adaptation A Cock and Bull Story, which I found to be a lot of fun.  So I was quite looking forward to this.  It’s a (very) rambling story where the narrator recounts his birth-paying particular attention to circumstances surrounding his conception, his father, and his uncle Toby.  Sterne has no compunction about breaking off a chapter, just as it’s about to reach a resolution.  It’s a narrative of interruptions, and so it requires a good deal of focus to follow the novel’s train(s) of thought.  Have any of you read it? What did you think?