A brilliant encapsulation of Ireland’s rise to fortune, and subsequent, ongoing collapse, by novelist John Banville (who is a fascinating and lyrical writer, and well worth reading):

IN the ravening years of the Celtic Tiger we had a dinner-party competition to define the figure most representative of the suddenly prosperous Ireland we so bafflingly found ourselves in. Someone came up with “a non-tax-paying businessman’s trophy wife.” This seemed right, and as time went on we added more and more details; at last count we had arrived at “a non-tax-paying businessman’s trophy wife driving her 14-year-old daughter to her drug rehabilitation session in an S.U.V. at 60 miles an hour down a bus lane while speaking on her cellphone, smoking a cigarette and making a rude gesture at a passing cyclist.” Over the past couple of weeks, however, the game has lost its savor. As one dinner guest murmured, “That poor little girl.”

Naturally, the question: Who was/is the States? (or, if you’re here, Germany).

David Foster Wallace apparently hung himself in his Los Angeles apartment this weekend. In his best book, Infinite Jest, he’d written with a horrifying clarity about depression, addiction and failure. In the context of a not-quite-science-fiction near-future, in the Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment (the U.S. has started offering years for sponsorship), in which large chunks of New England have been turned into a waste dump and forcibly ceded to Canada, and a group of wheelchair-bound Quebecois terrorists are seeking a lethally addictive film to use as a retaliatory weapon. A lot going on.

Maybe uniquely, he had an ability to write with incredible empathy about emotional swamps, while making it rib-splittingly funny and moving at the same time. It’s hard for me to remember laughing as hard at any other book; and yet the same book was full of deeply sympathetic character studies and an analytic eye that dissected or prophesied about modern media culture as well as anything I’ve ever read.

His later fiction never reached that peak (though if you haven’t read his essays, go right now and buy them all). One story in particular, the Depressed Girl, annoyed me, because it seemed he’d lost or willfully abandoned the sympathetic insight he’d had into emotionally drained or clinically depressed people.

Now maybe I understand it differently. That was the side of himself that he hated and feared. And which ultimately killed him.

Charlie Rose has a few interviews posted with him from the 1990s. The one here, following the publication of A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never do Again is heartbreaking, given the context.

I know, I haven’t been blogging lately. I’ve been traveling, in the States for the first time since moving to Berlin (more on that later, but it was only in going back that I finally felt like an expat). Also reading, evolutionary theory and sociobiology.

Which leads to this point. Reading this article on the growing branch of “neuroeconomics” (economists that actually look inside the brain, with MRIs and such, to see what’s happening in the course of an economic decision). It strikes me that a pretty simple evolutionary argument exposes a serious flaw in much of classical liberal (or conservative, in modern parlance) economics.

There’s an exercise called the “ultimatum game,” which behavioral economists use to study people’s preferences. Two people. A set sum of money, say $100, to be split between the two. Person A is given the right to set the distribution split, without any limits. She can say 50-50, for example, or 90-10. The only limit is that B has to agree. If B in fact agrees, they both get whatever cash A has doled out. If B disagrees, both get nothing.

A perfectly rational B, (classical economics’ rational actor) should in theory accept even a radically uneven (90-10) split, because he is getting a free $10. The fact that A is getting $90 shouldn’t matter, all other things being even (another big assumption, but skip that for a little while). In fact, studies show that B rejects a very large proportion of uneven splits, apparently because they seem unfair.

Irrational by “rational actor” standards, sure. But it strikes me that an evolutionary analysis shows why this is perfectly rational, even inevitable, from a genetic perspective. As Richard Dawkins (”The Selfish Gene“) describe, genes themselves clearly don’t have conscious preferences. However, behavior can evolve, as in the case of genetic-driven behavior which successfully allows an individual to accumulate more resources, which translates into greater ability to reproduce (more nuts gathered, for example, means that a larger number of offspring can be supported), and thus a wider propagation of that particular gene or genetic pattern.

Clearly, in a world of limited resources, there is competition for resources. Every individual would be best served by being in the position of the game’s A, getting more resources than her rival. In a strictly economic perspective, B’s getting a free $10 is a good thing, and should be accepted regardless of the unfair split. But in an evolutionary perspective, a gene (or gene-driven behavior) which happily accepted the 10 percent split while a rival took 90 percent, wouldn’t last. The A group, with more resources, would propagate at a much higher rate, and ultimately drive the B’s out.

It’s a bit more complicated than that, of course. A rise in the proportion of As probably wouldn’t be stable itself. But what might be stable is the rise of B’s who had evolved a sense of being cheated — who would reject the 90-10 split, leaving both parties with nothing, leaving them both poor but equal. From B’s perspective of evolutionary survival, equal at zero is better than being a little bit better off absolutely, but having less resources than A.

I’m sure evolutionary-minded economists have puzzled this all out before. But it has interesting consequences for thinking about our consumption decisionns, and our preferences for a fair vs. unequal society. The conservative argument that it is OK if the rich get very rich, as long as the poor get a little better off in absolute terms, probably violates a kind of internal fairness system we’ve developed over the years in order to keep ourselves alive. So much for “rational actor.”

From an NYT blog, a Steve Jobs quote bashing Amazon’s (no longer new) e-book reader:

“It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.”

So, fellow writers, fellow readers, throw up your hands in defeat, the iPod generation has triumphed. Burning books is so twentieth century, we will simply declare reading to be a waste of time, a marketplace irrelevance, and move on.

What a prick.

(via Appalachian Geek, who has much smarter things than I to say about it)

The Guardian wrote this weekend about Picador’s plan to stop publishing most literary fiction initially in hardback form. That means even stellar writers like Delillo, Naipaul, Banville and Cormack McCarthy will be going straight to paperback.

I read this with an initial twinge of irritation and sadness. I love hardback books, what reader or writer doesn’t? They’re beautiful, solid, lasting, and look good on a shelf. Sometimes they even have resale value.

And yet. About ten seconds later, I realized this could be some of the best news to hit the publishing industry in some time.  Here’s why, nicely wrapped up in one rival publisher’s comment:

Rival publishers described it as “a seismic change”. “Hardback then paperback has been the model for 60 years,” said Dan Franklin, the veteran publisher at Jonathan Cape.

What kind of business model doesn’t change for 60 years? I’m as book-y as they come; and yet I scour used bookstores for paperbacks, the same way everyone I know does. Hardback books aren’t serving the mass market, and they aren’t serving the writers who produce them.

When my co-author and I did our first (and as yet only, but wait…) book, it was hardback only. We were shocked at the discounts, shocked at the haphazard marketing dollars spent, shocked that our publishers had no interest in moving it to paperback, despite the fact that our core audience was mostly unlikely to shell out for hardback. We’re still trying to get the rights back so we can publish an updated version ourselves.

Publishers simply haven’t adapted to a market that has changed very, very radically in 60 years, and probably most in the last five. This is a step in the right direction, even if it’s a little sad. So be it. If my next book (fingers crossed) comes out only in paperback and digital form, I won’t shed any tears.

Incredible how time sneaks by and I make excuses not to blog, like this is some chore or activity I might actually get paid for. Oh foolish reflexes…

It’s snowing outside (or at least it was when I was originally writing this), thick flakes filling the air like it’s the middle of winter, although the newscasters on N24 are adamant that this is only an Herbststurm. They call it a hurricaine too, and touted it for three days running on the morning news, which I can’t really say I agree with, but headlines are headlines, you gotta keep people watching the ads.

Last I checked, we were just barely coming back from Greece, or maybe bouncing down to Heidelberg and the Weinstrasse, and later Prague and Czesky Krumlov with my parents. Apparently a whole season came and went. Time now for serious work again. And Russian novels; as the first flakes came down yesterday we ritually went to visit St. Georges bookshop and I picked up a copy of “Anna Karenina.” Did I say work? I meant hot toddies and books thick enough to chew on.

And so before disappearing back into silence, I must recommend a recent new discovery, the pair of Soviet science fiction writers responsible for Tarkovsky’s “Stalker”, Arkadi and Boris Strugatsky. They’re the most famous Russians of the genre, yet not well known in English-speaking circles, or not as well as the far more widely published (and Polish) Lem.

Forget about that “Stalker” reference; they wrote it, and the book it’s based on, “Roadside Picnic”, but in fact they are closer to Philip Dick or a sci-fi Chandler. Their writing is smart and funny, dark and noir-ish, their jaundiced view of human nature and institutions reflected through characters’ helpless and corrupt responses to alien or fantastic events rather than simply our own decaying urban environments.

A page about them is here, with several English translations of their work available for download. “Roadside Picnic” is one of them, I highly recommend it to anyone with any taste at all for noir or sci-fi. If anybody in Berlin has a copy of the seemingly out-of-print “Monday Starts on Saturday”, can I borrow it?

We’re back from two weeks in Poland, Hungary, and Romania, of which more, including pictures, later. But first a bit about Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, or Witkacy, a Polish artist who dominated that portion of our trip.

The son of an impossibly stern 19th century artist and critic with Nietzschean ideas of modern education, Witkacy was allowed complete freedom as a child — with the single caveat that he grow up to be a groundbreaking artist. So, you know, no pressure. He turned out as a mischevious, creative, self-doubting wreck, but entirely unique.

His paintings, once he matured, lay somewhere between Chagall and the German Expressionists, a riot of color, and cartoonish, nightmarish absurd compositions. His main love was theater, in which he wrote from what he called a “Theory of Pure Form.” He essentially believed that the best art offers a kind of internal geometry that resonates with the reader/viewer/listener in a non-rational way. The actual content of a work is irrelevant, he believed; only the underlying form itself would trigger this “metaphysical feeling,” a state more important than a simple emotional or intellectual response to the work.

In effect, he saw art as a drug. Rational and emotional responses were traps. He spent his entire life looking for transcendence of one type or another, found it himself in a series of drugs, and saw art as the only path that didn’t bring with it a hangover and self-recrimination. If he could have been religious, he might have been happier.

This metaphysical response was theoretically possible in realistic writing, he thought, and he had nothing but praise for the old Greeks; but modern post-Enlightenment realism in the theater had dulled audiences senses, so that all they knew how to experience was an emotional or intellectual reaction. The only way to let audiences find the Form was to use the grotesque, the perverse, the absurd. And he did; his plays are in a sense similar to the later absurdists, irrational, confusing, sometimes hilarious, full of nonsense philosophy and gunfire and reanimated corpses.

None of this brought him money to live, unfortunately. Depressed, he started a one-man portait-painting firm. Several types were on offer: good, realistic ones for which he charged the highest prices, and then others done under the influence of a variety of drugs, which were brilliantly distorted. He published his “Rules” of the firm, with detailed explanations of the types, and strictures such as “Any sort of criticism on the part of the customer is absolutely ruled out. … Given the incredible difficulty of the profession, the firm’s nerves must be spared.” But he hated it, and saw his role as an artist diminishing. When the Nazis invaded in 1939 he fled to the east, and then killed himself on hearing that the Soviets were invading from that direction.

Dead, he offered an appropriately Witkacy-esque sequel. Rediscovered by avant-garde directors in the 50s, his plays were re-performed. As Polish national sentiment rose in opposition to Soviet control, the Communist government ultimately hailed him as a national hero. In 1988, the government finally decided to exhume his body and rebury him as a symbol of national pride; they “found” his body and buried it with honors in Zakopane, the mountain town where he’d mostly lived. An expert consulted looked at X-rays of the corpse and realized it couldn’t be Witkacy, who had lost teeth; the government tried to cover this up and went through with the ceremony, but the information leaked out, turning the whole event into a farce worthy of one of the playwrights own works.

…even in Berlin.

…O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I though well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

Most everyone is familiar with how the Afghans kicked the Soviets out after years of bitter battle. I was less familiar with an earlier version of roughly the same story, almost 150 years earlier, when the British first decided to invade in order to put their own ruler on the throne, and forestall a largely theoretical alliance between the Tsar and Afghanistan on India’s borders.

The British army had little trouble sweeping over the initial Afghan resistance. It installed itself in Kabul, with an occupying authority, a local government propped up by British troops, and all the comforts of home (or Indian home) such as port, cigars, and imported prostitutes. A year or two passed in relative comfort, until the locals started rioting. They surrounded one of the top Briton’s homes, sent someone in to show him a “safe” way out, who then led he and his brother to their deaths in the crowd. Sporadic reisistance spread, until there was an actual Afghan army on the march, led by the former ruler’s son.

The British, under a wholly incompetent general, and unwilling to be pushed into actual discomfort, offered to withdraw. A negotiation proposal came from the young Prince: a secret agreement would be signed, allowing the Brits to stay for 8 months, and giving the prince a share in government, at the expense of other Afghan leaders. The top British official accepted, went to sign, was kidnapped and killed.

Forced out, the rest of the British force, and their huge accompanying crowd of servants, wifes, etc, (16,500 people in total) took march across the passes on Christmas Day, 1841. Afghan patriots harried them all the way back, killing most of them. A single soldier, an army surgeon made it back, charging on horseback to a fort on the Indian side of the border.

The incident, according to the ridiculously nostalgiac history of the Victorian Empire that I’m reading, is still remembered with glory. From the book, in an author’s footnote:

As for the retreat from Kabul, though largely forgotten in Britain, it is vividly remembered in Afghanistan: when in 1960 I followed the army’s route from Kabul to Jalalabad with an Afghan companion, we found many people ready to point out the sites of the tragedy, and recall family exploits. I asked one patriarch what would happen now, if a foreign army invaded the country. “The same,” he hissed between the last of his teeth.

But no worries, Afghanistan is wholly peaceful now. Everybody loves us. Nothing to see there.

A real loss to journalism and politics. There isn’t anyone in the US who can take her place, whose tongue is as sharp, but whose satire is made even more poignant by her real understanding of, and even sympathy for, the blemishes of democracy.