I haven’t posted a video in ages!
This skit aired on Saturday Night Live this past week. I never watch SNL because I never find it funny, but when I saw this I laughed (even though it’s so. stupid). Enjoy. 
When American expat Pamela Druckerman starts her family in Paris, several things immediately become apparent: while she and other expats are looking exhausted and overwhelmed, the French mothers she encounters look amazing and calm. The French children in restaurants are typically patient and well-mannered. Informal chats with French acquaintances reveal even more: French children tend to start sleeping through the night when they’re a few months old. They are taught early on to have an open mind to different foods. Independence and curiosity are nurtured. What are the French doing that all the expats in Paris can’t seem to figure out?
When pressed for details, all the French parents Druckerman encounters will say they’re not doing anything special, but the more she studies French parenting culture, the more Druckerman is able to see that the French are doing certain things differently, and many of those things amount to a healthy dose of tradition and common sense.
This book has been making the rounds in the media lately, so there’s been a lot of talk about what the book is (a lot of it coming from people who haven’t read the book). Let’s clear some things up now about what the book isn’t. It’s not a how-to manual, and it’s not a screed on how the French are soooo much better and so much more perfect than Americans. Druckerman is very clear about this up front: she doesn’t want French kids (while she appreciates their bilingualism and their exposure to a different way of life, she also wants them to retain their American culture). She also mentions throughout the book that the French parents–and their French children–she refers to in the book are mostly upper/middle class Parisians and not representatives of The French as a whole. Ultimately, the book is an engaging memoir/cultural investigation that leaves the reader with plenty to mull over.
Jamrach’s Menagerie weaves a story quite unlike anything I’ve ever read. Set in mid-1850s, the book evokes Dickens-esque images of the working class people struggling to survive in the filthy, seedy areas of London. Jaffy Brown is eight years old when he beholds a sight that will capture his imagination for years to come: a beautiful white tiger, one of the many imported exotic animals belonging to Charles Jamrach’s menagerie.
Eager to be closer to these wondrous creatures, Jaffy begs Jamrach for a job. Jamrach hires him and places him under the tutelage of Tim, who is about Jaffy’s age but has been working for Mr. Jamrach for a long time. The two develop a love-hate competitive relationship, but become like brothers. Rounding out their trio is Tim’s strong-willed twin sister, whom Jaffy falls in love with.
Year later, when the boys are teenagers, they do what many boys their age do: become men by traveling the world as whalers on a ship. The opportunity arises when Jamrach is offered a lot of money to capture a “dragon” that has been spotted in some far-off exotic locale. The trip will take three years, and the boys will be on board to care for the dragon and make sure it returns safely to Mr. Jamrach. Though the boys grow up and experience wonders they could never have imagined while living in London, things take a turn for the worse when their ship sinks and the handful survivors are left stranded on life boats in the middle of the ocean.
So. The first–and last–time I read something by David Foster Wallace was back in 2009, when I read Infinite Jest as a participant in Infinite Summer (except, for me, it turned into Infinite Year). I liked the book even when I hated it, and I knew I’d be reading more DFW in the future. Even though Oblivion and The Pale King have been sitting on my shelf collecting dust for a really long time, I decided to go the audiobook route for my second DFW encounter and ended up requesting his first novel, The Broom of the System, from the library. And since I know that the descriptions of his books never fully do them justice (because he jumps all over the place plot-wise), I chose the book arbitrarily based on the fact that I liked the cover of the most recent paperback edition. Seriously.
I’m just gonna go ahead and do something I never do here. I’m going to use the publisher’s summary of this book, because…
At the center of The Broom of the System is the betwitching (and also bewildered) heroine, Lenore Stonecipher Beadsman. The year is 1990 and the place is a slightly altered Cleveland, Ohio, which sits on the edge of a suburban wasteland-the Great Ohio Desert. Lenore works as a switchboard attendant at a publishing firm, and in addition to her mind-numbing job, she has a few other problems. Her great-grandmother, a one-time student of Wittgenstein, has disappeared with twenty-five other inmates of the Shaker Heights Nursing Home. Her beau (and boss), editor-in-chief Rick Vigorous, is insanely jealous. And her cockatiel, Vlad the Impaler, has suddenly started spouting a mixture of psychobabble, Auden, and the King James Bible, which may propel him to stardom on a Christian fundamentalist television program.
…yeah. How is anyone supposed to summarize that?
In December of 2009, Google made an important change to its search functions that changed the Internet: it started personalizing and predicting everything for you. In The Filter Bubble, Eli Pariser argues that though personalization has its perks, it also has its downsides: you’re all alone in your bubble, so you’re largely shielded from seeing things that might challenge your ideas and beliefs; the bubble is invisible and the agenda behind it is opaque; and you don’t choose to enter it–it’s happening automatically unbeknownst to most people.
To a certain extent, personalization has been going on for a long time now; companies like Pandora, Amazon, and Netflix have long thrived on correctly predicting things that their users will like. But Google’s shift in 2009 has had its share of consequences: it’s not as easy as it once was to fall down a rabbit hole of Google search results and stumble upon interesting links (this is especially obvious with Google’s image search functions); those are more likely to be filtered out now. And since it’s easy for Google to track a person’s online footprints (particularly if they use other Google services like Gmail), its also easier for companies to purchase your information and tailor their marketing so that it specifically targets your browsing interests.
As Pariser shows, Google isn’t the only one anxious to get ahead in the personalization game: the company is constantly going head-to-head with Facebook in a battle over who can hook the most people–and get the most information from them–with its products. Just as with Google, the filters it creates can have a negative impact. For example, if you “Like” something on Facebook, you’re more likely to see more of the same. This has consequences when it comes to major world events. Fewer people are going to “like” depressing stories about famine or the atrocities of war; as a result, less hard-hitting current events are going to pop up inside their filter bubbles.
Attending college in 1970s Bombay, Armaiti, Laleh, Kavita, and Nishta had the whole world before them. They were smart, idealistic, inseparable activists who were determined to fight for social change. A couple of them had boyfriends that they would later go on to marry, but most importantly, they had each other.
Thirty years later, time and distance have separated the four women. Laleh and Kavita are still best friends, but Kavita is hiding a major part of her life from Laleh. No one has heard from Nishta in years. Armaiti, now living in the United States, is the one to bring the four back together when she reaches out with devastating news: she has terminal cancer and would like to see her friends one last time.
I thoroughly enjoyed so many aspects about this book. On the surface, The World We Found is a beautiful study of close female friendships, the kind where you can go ages without seeing each other and still be able to pick up where you left off. Some of my closest (and oldest) friendships work this way, so this aspect of the plot was completely believable for me.
But the real beauty of the book is how there are enough intricate layers to person talking about it forever. The title is one such indication: the world that the women find themselves in–and the people they have become–is at times in complete opposition to the world they were fighting for as college students. Social justice–especially with regards to socioeconomics and religious tolerance–was something they once passionately fought for; as adults, most of them are living comfortably enough to think about those things only in principle; when put to the test, they know that the ideals they once believed in would now require too much sacrifice.
Reba Adams is working as a journalist in El Paso, Texas. Running as far as she can from her troubled family back on the east coast, Reba wants nothing more than to make it as a journalist in a big city, and El Paso is just a stop on her way to the top. The trouble is, rather than getting juicy assignments, she’s stuck writing fluff pieces for a local magazine. Even more troubling is that she has a fiancé, a Border Patrol agent named Riki Chavez, from whom she’s been growing further apart ever since their engagement.
Reba’s latest assignment: feel-good Christmas stories, which brings her to Elsie’s German Bakery. She just needs to get a few good quotes about German Christmas traditions, but the elderly owner is elusive; whenever they sit down for an interview, Elsie gives vague answers or strays off topic. Elsie’s energetic middle-aged daughter, Jane, is no easier–every time they sit down to chat, Jane ends up getting Reba to talk more about herself than about German Christmas traditions. But after Reba is finished with her story, she can’t help but keep going back to the bakery; she, Jane, and Elsie are fast becoming good friends.
Jumping back sixty years, the book flashes back to Elsie’s girlhood in Garmisch, Germany during World War II. Her sister, whose Nazi fiancé died in duty through unclear circumstances, was left to have their child out of wedlock. “Luckily,” she was spared disgrace and admitted into the Lebensborn program; as a result, only Elsie is left to help her parents run their bakery during the lean war years. She is courted by Nazi officer, which would give her family some protection, but she longs for a marriage of love rather than convenience. As the war progresses, Elsie is forced to make difficult decisions that will affect her and her family for the rest of their lives.
The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich
Audiobook Publisher/Year: HarperAudio, 2009
Narrators: Peter Francis James & Kathleen McInerney
Source: Library
What it is: The brutal murder of a white family on a farm in North Dakota sends an angry group of men out to the nearby Ojibwe reservation in search of the murderer. The injustice of what happens will have repercussions for years to come. Two generations later, a part-Ojibwe/part-white girl named Evalina is trying to piece together her family’s involvement in what happened.
Why I listened to it: I’d never read anything by Erdrich before, and I picked it up on a whim when I saw it at the library.
What I thought: Parts of this book were positively breathtaking–I was often stunned by Erdrich’s poetic prose. Unfortunately, I can’t say this about the book as a whole. There is a lot to keep track of: multiple genrations, multiple narrators, side plots, etc. I wonder if it would have been easier to follow along if I’d read the book because I usually have no problem juggling different characters and plots. I read somewhere that the book originally started as short stories. If that’s the case, I can see how the book turned out somewhat disjointed; read as stories, some of the chapters would have come off as phenomenal. Overall, I didn’t not like it, but it wouldn’t be the first Erdrich book I’d recommend to people.
If this book were a beverage, it would be: whiskey.
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
Publisher/Year: Grove Press, 2002 (reprint)
Format: Paperback
Source: Library
What it is: A tragicomedy about the misadventures of Ignatius J. Reilly, an obese, offensive, haughty 30-year-old medievalist who lives with his mother in New Orleans. He’s often mistaken for a vagrant because of his unkempt appearance, and he can’t hold down a job, but that doesn’t stop him from looking down upon everyone.
Why I read it: For my Pulitzer Project.
What I thought: I kind of don’t even know what to say. Toole was a talented writer, and so much of this book is hilarious; the secondary cast of characters takes Ignatius everywhere, from jail to a second-rate strip club, to the flamboyant, wealthy gay scene in the French Quarter. The book is fantastic in small doses, but if I tried to read it for long stretches of time it started to get on my nerves. I spent most of my time wanted to strangle Ignatius, but I was also dumbfounded by the extent of his willful obtuseness. I really have to hand it to the 1981 Pulitzer voters for going so far off the beaten path and choosing Confederacy as the winner for that year.
If this book were a food, it would be: a hot dog.
It’s Atlanta in the 1980s, and Dana Lynn Yarboro and Bunny Chaurisse Witherspoon are two teens growing up not far from each other. They may run into each other because of school events or occasionally cross paths in public, but Chaurisse is completely unaware of Dana’s existence. “My father, James Witherspoon, is a bigamist,” Dana intones at the beginning of the book; as part of his second family–his hidden family–Dana and her mother know all about Chaurisse, but Chaurisse and her mother know nothing about them. Told first from Dana’s point of view, then Chaurisse’s, Silver Sparrow tells a powerful story of what happens when the walls of secrecy begin to crumble.
Dana has always grown up with the knowledge that she is her father’s “other” daughter. While she and her mother, Gwendolyn, receive regular visits and some financial support from James and his brother, Raleigh, the women have always had to live with the glaring reminders that they come second to Chaurisse and her mother, Laverne. The tolls of secrecy have not only been financial and emotional in nature. Now that Dana and Chaurisse are of age to start thinking about which college prep programs and summer jobs they want to apply for, Dana is especially feeling Chaurisse’s invasive presence in her life; her father won’t allow her to work at any location or participate in any extracurricular activity that Chaurisse wants to be a part of. Dana and Gwendolyn are strictly forbidden from mentioning James in public or going anywhere near Chaurisse and Laverne, and as a result, they live very isolated lives.
Dana and her mother have always discreetly spied on Chaurisse and Laverne, doing things like parking the car nearby and observing them from afar. But Dana can’t stand it any longer and begins to take it even further, seeking out ways to directly approach Chaurisse. She soon is in over her head, developing a cautious friendship with her half-sister, who isn’t aware of Dana’s real link to her. Halfway through the book, the point of view switches and Chaurisse assumes the role of narrator. When everything spins out of Dana’s careful control, it is through Chaurisse’s clueless eyes that the reader gets to experience the dramatic fallout.
Me, five years ago, Times Square: I’m spending the night on the sidewalk, under a massive Mamma Mia! billboard. It’s raining, I’m completely soaked, and I’m freezing my butt off in the -2° wind chill. The next 24 hours are a very cold blur, but a few things are certain: I get one of the coveted wristbands to meet System of a Down at the Virgin megastore, then I jump in a car with complete strangers to go stand in line for the actual concert at Webster Hall. Since I’m solo, I don’t have to worry about getting split up from my people, and I’m able to brave my way through the mosh pit to be near the stage. When it’s all over, I exchange numbers with the cute guy I met, take the train back home to Yonkers, walk home in the dark, and promptly fall into bed. I answer to no one, and it’s exhilarating.
Me, two days after that: It’s Thanksgiving and I’m all alone. I’m horribly ill, and I’m positive that no one will find me until my rotting corpse stinks up the place, a thought that makes me cry in self-pity. I’m pretty sure that my ribs were bruised in the mosh pit because I can’t take more than shallow breaths without feeling stabbing chest pain. I’m paying dearly for being one of those people who does questionable shit like stand in sub-zero temperatures just to get an album signed, and I’m mad at myself. The scene from Bridget Jones’s Diary, where she dies and is eaten by dogs, keeps floating through my delirious mind.
Such is the life of a (sometimes irresponsible) single. Granted, I knew the worst-case scenario was that my roommate would come home in a few days and find me battling pneumonia: I was single, not a singleton, a single person who lives alone. But now that I’ve entered my 30s and can see myself being quite content as a singleton for the rest of my life (unless I meet someone who’d be willing to live á la Tim Burton and Helena Bonham Carter), I know that the melodramatic scenarios that Bridget Jones and I have envisioned aren’t completely farfetched. After all, single people dying in their homes–the hundreds of isolated people who died in Chicago’s 1995 head wave, to be exact–served as the impetus for Eric Klinenberg’s Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone. Worrisome as some of the topics in this book may be, Klinenberg presents eye-opening sociological observations about the lives of singletons.
