People Who Buy and Sell People

Due to circumstances beyond my control, I am unable to present a new book review this week. Until next week, enjoy this 2009 classic from my newspaper days.

Rachel Kushner’s Telex from Cuba offers a whirlwind tour of pre-Castro Cuba. Her insights into U.S. dollar imperialism are educational and reveal how people treat humans as commodities to be expended. A mass ensemble occupies United Fruit’s empire in verdant Oriente Province like American pharaohs. They buy presidents, sell workers, and insulate themselves from consequences.

K.C. Stites was born in Oriente. A true company son, his youthful eye sees Cuba’s whites grow squalid, even as he enjoys his life of Yanquí privilege. Everly Lederer moved to Oriente as a girl. She shifts from Treasure Island fantasies to an unruly youth, running wild with the boys and romancing a Haitian servant. In Havana, a French gunrunner falls for an enigmatic dancer. He loses himself in her radical ideals even as she becomes Cuba’s own Mata Hari.

The story runs from 1952 to the revolution of 1958. It draws historic figures like Castro, Batista, Christian de la Mazière, and Earl Smith into a vast portrait of United Fruit’s decadent decline. She lets them present themselves, the bad with the good, in all their waning glory. Not every plot thread is treated equally. Some are soap operatic, feeling quick and crude.

Those few readers who still revere la revolución may not appreciate Kushner’s frank handling of the Castro brothers. She hangs some pretty blunt terms on them. But overall, Kushner draws an interesting image of decay in a world that will never exist again.

Valerie Martin’s parable of human commerce is more explicit in Property. She shows that owning people makes owners into small, filthy wrecks of humanity.

Manon Gaudet marries for money, and gets Sarah as her house slave in the bargain. Then her odious husband makes Sarah his mistress. To amplify the insult, Manon cannot give her nameless husband children. Sarah has the only son in their house.

As Manon survives epidemics, slave revolts, and her vulgar husband, her world narrows to focus wholly on Sarah. An umbilical of hatred links the women. When violence leaves Manon widowed and alone, her only joy comes in tormenting Sarah. She becomes poisonous, spewing self-hatred outward onto her slave. Property is an ironic tragedy. The more wronged Manon thinks herself, the more abusive she becomes.

Manon survives lies, humiliation, and violence, to emerge a smaller person. Everything she touches turns to ash, as she blames anyone but herself. This book is a necessary antidote to the romanticism of Gone with the Wind. It reveals the antebellum South as no showcase of posh gentility. But its pious tone implies the author thinks she is writing another Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Martin takes a stand against a life that hasn’t existed for nearly 150 years. Why?

In fairness, Manon is more nuanced and realistic than Simon Legree. And Sarah’s willfulness is a good counterpoint. They are intriguing characters in a perversely attractive story. But it says nothing readers don’t already know. It’s just a new angle on an old story.

Kushner and Martin tell languid literary tales of human trafficking. Russell Whitfield aims for adventure in Gladiatrix.

Lysandra is a Spartan warrior priestess until chance makes her an arena slave. The daily struggle to survive gains new implications on the bloody sands of the Roman sports ground. A gladiatrix is a mix of athlete, warrior, and porn star. Lysandra’s fierce, sexually charged tale transforms her from a green recruit into the Danica Patrick of ancient Anatolia.

Whitfield’s First-century Roman setting is a field where history doesn’t know much. This gives him room to build his narrative so that it doesn’t seem like a museum display. This novel lavishes readers with violence and sex. Wall-to-wall arena brawls are the order of the day, with excruciatingly detailed injuries and deaths.

The sex is pretty explicit. Forbidden to sleep with men, Lysandra has a tempestuous affair with a fellow gladiatrix, with every step of their lovemaking spelled out on the page. A lesbian once told me there are two kinds of lesbian porn: porn for lesbians, and porn featuring “lesbians” for straight men. Lysandra’s liaison is the latter.

High art this ain’t. In places, despite clever historic reconstructions, it's downright dumb. But it's also gobs of fun. At root, this is a boys’ action-adventure story. The twist is, the action-adventurers are women. Whitfield keeps it from feeling like a mere twist, though. For all its genre predictability, this book is a rousing romp through historic sports.

Gladiatrix is speedy, cinematic, and multi-dimensional. Nobody will mistake it for great literature, but it’s full of slick, audacious storybook fun.

How To Argue About God

Unfortunately for anyone who starts a brouhaha over God’s presence, absence, or nature, no one is neutral on the topic. People invest great effort and energy in their belief—or unbelief—until it merges into their identity. Sure, some people don’t care much about the question, don’t invest themselves in it; but those people will not be persuaded by any argument, no matter how well staged or deeply felt.

Alister McGrath grew up amid the Belfast Troubles, when religious identity spurred some of history’s worst violence. He dealt with this reality by rejecting all religion. But as he reveals in Why God Won't Go Away, he couldn’t sustain that attitude forever. Now a professor of theology, McGrath has gained fame in Britain for publicly debating Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, leaders of an emergent anti-religious company called the New Atheists.

Along with Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris, Dawkins and Hitchens have recently changed atheism’s tone into aggressive evangelism. All four proclaim the inherent triumph of atheism, which they promulgate but don’t define. McGrath does not fault their unbelief, but he stresses flaws in their reasoning. He emphasizes their harsh jingoism, not far from imperial conquerors. He shows how, even in their own words, their intensity is only steps removed from violence.

But McGrath lacks the same eye of discretion on his own side of the aisle. I remember hearing Krista Tippett, author of Speaking of Faith and host of the radio show of the same title. Back in 2007 she said: “I haven't interviewed Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens for the same reason I never interviewed Jerry Falwell, which is that he had all the answers for himself and everyone else.” This sums up the problem with the entire debate.

The stridency of current atheist rhetoric positively corresponds with unpleasant Christian militancy. People who seek rules to live by, whether the Ten Commandments or the Three Laws of Thermodynamics, often become shrill when they think they’ve discovered rules for everybody. This behavior brings the tone of debate down globally, isolating people who believe deeply but not aggressively. Humankind suffers.

McGrath observes early that Daniel Dennett’s “relative lack of verbal aggressiveness and ridicule possibly explains why Breaking the Spell failed to sell as well as” deliberately inflammatory works by Harris and Hitchens. Anyone who watches TV knows bombast and grandiloquence get attention, even when they’re stupid. Unfortunately, that’s sort of the point. The debate is defined by people who grab attention rather than advance shared understanding.

Notably, if we can take McGrath’s self-deprecating narrative seriously, atheists, who form a much larger population share in Britain than in America, are more embarrassed by New Atheist bluster than Christians. He says that “my most vociferous defenders are moderate atheists—often academics—who are sickened by such mindless hostility and alarmed at the damage it’s inflicting on the public image of atheism.” Who can blame them?

But as they change the verbal tone, Christian militants and New Atheists also openly bid for political authority. American conservatives see Christianity as a natural ally, though that’s a debate for elsewhere, and make religious orthodoxy a litmus test. Meanwhile Sam Harris openly desires to scrub God from political debate and public decision-making. Taken from a longer view, both positions seem misguided.



As Peter Hitchens (Christopher’s Christian brother) asserts in The Rage Against God, Christianity suffered in Britain after World War II substantially because the postwar generation saw the church throw its lot in with the Empire. When one declined, they both did. Sadly, we’ve seen the same course of events in America, with a President who claimed to receive messages direct from God hastened an unpopular war, which likely contributed to declining church attendance numbers.

This coarsening of religious discourse, coinciding with unacceptable political rabble-rousing, lowers acceptable standards in contemporary society. Instead of communicating with our rivals, seeing them as human beings with their own hopes and dreams, we accept mudslinging, heel-dragging, and ad hominem attacks as normal. The gaps widen, people don’t talk to one another, and before long, we don’t feel we should communicate.

God’s presence or absence cannot be determined through laboratory science. Spirit cannot be abstracted from its environment for intensive empirical research. Thus we absolutely need to speak to one another, as human beings, about this vitally important topic. Shouting, caricaturing, and trying to silence the opposition will only lead to retrenchment and exasperation.

These questions won’t go away. And we owe it to each other to seek the answers.

Casey Anthony: the Difference Between Justice and Rage

By now you know that Casey Anthony was found not guilty yesterday, July 5th, in the death of her daughter Caylee. Within minutes, the Monday-morning quarterbacks weighed in: did the prosecution let justice down? Did the defense circumvent the law and let a killer walk free? Or perhaps, are our assumptions wrong, and did she really not kill her daughter?

I was in high school in 1992 when jurors returned not guilty verdicts on the police accused of beating Rodney King. Many of my friends felt American justice fumbled terribly, and right on our doorstep too (I lived in San Diego then). I would not join the chorus in second-guessing the jury, because I believe jurisprudence needs to remain independent of public opinion. But too many friends assumed I meant that the accused cops were innocent.

Let me be plain: based on the evidence I saw on television, the cops who beat Rodney King were probably guilty of misconduct and brutality. If I had to judge on Casey Anthony based on what I know, she looks guilty. But remember, jurors are sworn to a higher standard than I am. When they ruled Casey “Not Guilty,” they were not saying she isn’t guilty, much less innocent. They were saying the prosecution hadn’t proved Casey guilty.

From my La-Z-Boy, it sure looked like the prosecution did a lackluster job. They pushed for the death penalty on a case with too little evidence. Their sleepwalking approach to this case made me wonder why they pressed charges on such tender premises. Then I realized they probably had another spur to action.

I've already commented on the moralistic hysteria accompanying this case. Since then, the news media has observed crowds jockeying for limited gallery seats, catcalling the defense, and picking fistfights. Commentators have spent less time and energy on actual proceedings than on Casey herself, deriding her stone-faced demeanor and wondering whether her refusal to wear her heart on her sleeves proves psychological pathology.

Relentless personal judgement has been the elephant in the room with this case. Nancy Grace’s strident condemnation soured me on the morning news. News programs rerun footage of Casey Anthony being escorted in handcuffs while an off-camera crowd shouts “baby killer,” repeating the same footage so often that it becomes clear the image serves to let journalists insert unannounced editorial opinion.

Democracy is not about the quadrennial right to vote for talking head-in-chief. More than any other element, democracy depends on the hope that, if accused of a crime, citizens can rest confident that our cases will be heard by our peers, who agree to judge us according to certain rules. If that guarantee gets hijacked to mollify media hysteria, democracy has been subverted.

When a representative of the court attempted to address the crowd yesterday, he was shouted down by citizens crying slogans like “No Justice For Caylee!” Their behavior combined the worst aspects of tourists and rubberneckers at a traffic wreck. Such herds always accrue to disasters like this, but justice requires they must not set the standards for a reliable trial.

I’m not alone in this opinion. Both the prosecution and the defense, in the wake of the verdict, spoke harshly against the media coverage, which made gathering a jury pool exorbitantly expensive and difficult. Both Caylee as victim and Casey as defendant deserve justice, and when the court cannot assemble a jury, or even guarantee the defendant’s bodily safety, this flies in the face of justice.

For hours after the jury read their verdict yesterday, countless TV talking heads spoke at (and past) each other about what this means for Casey Anthony, her family, and general society. News anchors read strangers’ Tweets and Facebook updates like news. In the 24-hour news cycle, which must manufacture something to report constantly, we think we’ve grown accustomed to manufactured apocalypses, but I discovered yesterday that I am not.

As a Christian, my heritage teaches me what happens when crowds start baying for blood. Not that anyone would confuse Casey Anthony with Jesus; but herd behavior has little to do with justice. Whether Jesus before Pilate, the Nuremberg Rallies, or a Klan lynching, clamoring crowds, however benevolent in their language, pervert the course of justice.

Casey Anthony has been ruled not guilty, not innocent. Free citizens should not permit angry outbursts to stand in for redress or law. And if media-generated hysteria again pushes action on a case not yet ready to run, we shouldn’t act surprised when guilty citizens walk free.

Three Summer Beach Thrillers

I get called “elitist” whenever I say this, but a large segment of publishing caters to people who don’t read much. Books appear every year meant to let people mark time on airplanes, diddle around before bedtime, or fall asleep at the beach. Please don’t mistake me: I don’t mind these books, or the people who write them. But some such books are better than others.

Take Erica Spindler’s Watch Me Die. Glass artist Mira Gallier hasn’t accepted her husband’s death in Hurricane Katrina. Without her business restoring church windows, she’d collapse. When the priest in the church she just finished dies beneath defaced windows, she feels deeply about the murder. Then the bum who threatened her, the father-in-law who nurses a grudge, and others near Mira die violently, with biblical quotes written over the bodies. Somebody’s tightening the net around Mira, and if she can’t figure out who fast, she’ll get arrested—or worse.

Admittedly, nothing innovative happens in this story. Its egregious red herrings, suspects who burst up like whack-a-mole puppets, and Agatha Christie-like plot will seem entirely familiar to anyone who has read more than three amateur sleuth mysteries. Spindler hammers clues so vigorously that veteran readers know who to dismiss fairly early. It hits so many clichés so fast that parts of it descend into comedy.

Yet Spindler crafts characters of such internal complexity that readers want to finish the story. We know, because we’ve read this plot before, that the characters make bad choices. We know, because we’re not stupid, how the story will ultimately resolve. Yet we persevere because we care about these people, and want to see them come out okay. Spindler knows what audiences crave, and gives it to them.

James Barney could take some lessons in that area. His debut, The Genesis Key, has a more ambitious background story, yet plays everything by the numbers. Like Spindler, Barney does nothing new; unlike Spindler, Barney does nothing to make the story appealing. Long, talky exposition, frenetically short chapters, interchangeable characters, and comically overwritten dialog conspire to steal all energy from this book.

Dr. Kathleen Sainsbury’s research into human aging only aims to eliminate Alzheimer’s and dementia. But her late parents’ archaeological research opens Pandora’s box when ancient DNA offers to give centuries-long lifespans to those who can afford it. Suddenly everyone wants something from Sainsbury: treatment, money, power, or blood. The mild researcher finds herself at the nexus of conspiracies, maneuvers, and multinational black ops.

Combining cutting-edge science with Biblical exegesis and ancient folklore, this book ballyhoos the venerable theme that There Are Certain Things Science Should Not Know. Its amateurish conflation of the Bible, the Epic of Gilgamesh, rudimentary genetics, and political intrigue intend, perhaps, to illuminate deeper human truths. But as one expository monologue mounts on another, while the science gets only sillier, my only reaction is laughter. And I just can’t make myself care about these entirely interchangeable characters.

Kath Russell blends these two approaches in A Pointed Death. When biotech entrepreneur Nola Billingsley said she wanted to see embezzler Roger Chen dead, she never thought she’d live to see it. But as both his victimized employer and the one to discover his body, the cops rush her to the top of the suspect list. Now, as she tries to rebuild her career, she also has to stay one step ahead of the police to prove her innocence.

Russell’s writing has the technical density Barney shares, but she doesn’t resort to creaky techno stereotypes—characters explaining the obvious to each other, long monologues from dark strangers, or ubiquitous nosy journalists—like Barney does. Russell reveals details by having characters interact like human beings. This means readers have to keep up, but Russell makes that easy by avoiding jargon or pointy-headed discursion.

Also, where Erica Spindler is deadly earnest, and James Barney is pathetically earnest, Russell has a sense of humor. Her storytelling resembles TV shows like Monk or The Closer, character-driven series where the often workmanlike mystery matters less than the characters. For Russell, the investigation is essentially the pressure cooker in which she combines the characters, then waits to watch them interact.

Calling thrillers like these “beach reading,” and admitting they challenge readers as little as possible, is not a slight. These authors hope to keep you awake past your bedtime. But there are ways to do that right, and ways that are merely ridiculous. It pays for readers to stay smart in picking out their dumb reading.

The Big Bang Theory Theory (Part Three)

The Raj/Howard Continuum

Kunal Nayyar as Raj Koothrappali;
Simon Helberg as Howard Wolowitz

If Leonard and Sheldon represent conflicting impulses about human relationships and belonging on CBS’ The Big Bang Theory, their friends Raj and Howard represent another root human conflict.  On the surface they seem to struggle with their desire to have sex, coupled with their powerful will to sabotage themselves.  But on closer consideration, both want something deeper than sex: they want fulfillment.  And they achieve that simple human desire in ways that subvert every expectation.

From the first episode, when Howard and Raj are thunderstruck by Penny’s beauty, both characters declare their obsession with having sex.  Yet that same first episode establishes that they accept, in advance, that they will not have sex.  Therefore, Raj turns mute, while Howard becomes bombastic and odious.  This gives them advance insurance that they don’t need to expect much; going in, they know they will fail.

We can read this two different ways.  In the first reading, this makes a statement about science, and the ways people create limits for themselves according to their expectations.  As Rampton & Stauber demonstrate, the scientific process is complex, time-consuming, and expensive, so many practitioners create ways to abridge the process.  Note that at colleges like CalTech, where these characters work, “hookup” culture has done something similar for sex.

But the second reading says less about them than about us.  Audiences come to television with certain learned expectations, and often rebel when they're disregarded.  In particular, we expect to see couples circle one another in a tightly choreographed dance that can last years, like Ross and Rachel on Friends.  We think we know how couples behave on Planet Sitcom, and who rightly belongs together, like Leonard and Penny.  These two remain blind to these rules.

Thus they subvert not just our expectations, but the language of sitcom writers everywhere.  These two fail to make significant connections outside their narrow circle, at least until Howard meets Bernadette in the middle of Season Three.  The Ross/Rachel dynamic of circling, coming together, flying apart, yet remaining ultimately in one another’s orbit, ultimately doesn’t apply to these characters.

But it precisely describes their bromance.    These two have the kind of arguments which sitcom lingo tells us couples have, because they displace their psychological drive away from girls and onto one another.  There’s nothing notably homosexual about either character, and on the rare occasions when the slightest sexual tension arises they recoil; but they have the relationship courting couples always maintain on Planet Sitcom.

Leonard’s mother points out, first in Season Two and again in Season Three, that Howard and Raj have an ersatz homosexual marriage.  Though both characters reject that reading, and their intricate arrangements keep each other’s bodies at arm’s length, when they need the emotional satisfaction of another human soul, they seek each other.  So their continuum isn’t really about sex, despite surface appearances; it touches much deeper needs.

Like all married households, theirs develops its own esoteric traditions.  Though they keep separate apartments, they’ve learned to speak each other’s language and anticipate each other’s actions.  And they’ve learned to key off one another regarding their shared, yet fruitless, desire for sex.  Going through the motions has become their equivalent, in a traditional marriage, of Thanksgiving dinner or board game night.

Humans can live without sex, but we can’t live without connection to another soul.  In that way, we might reject homosexual interpretations and regard Raj and Howard as a faux monastic community.  Like Benedictines, who choose a task within the monastery, they’ve chosen applied physics, while games and comics comprise their liturgy.  Note that both characters have rejected their family’s religious heritage; they share a secular orthodoxy of alternating insight and frivolity.

In a way, despite their constant sexual frustration, they are happier than either Leonard or Sheldon.  Where those two want something they cannot have without a price they will not pay, Howard and Raj have let their wants become a public mask.  They certainly have what they need.  And while they may work themselves into the occasional tizzy over their need for common sexual release, they share a bond that would make most married couples jealous.

It’s actually reassuring to see such a happy couple on network television.  Since happy people tend to be kind of boring, the media spotlight people wracked in misery.  Though these two suffer their setbacks, and often get shelved behind Leonard and Sheldon’s humorous bumbling, they have a wealth of connection that few stars can touch.  And good for them, too.

Part One: The Leonard/Sheldon Disjunction
Part Two: The Penny Polarization