The Righteous Mind and A Thousand Acres

Most of my short reviews start, in my head, as long ones. Thousand-plus-word things. I often take hundreds of words of notes on the books I read without ever turning them into anything resembling a coherent argument about the work... because good sentences are easy, but smart structure takes time and attention. And like most people with a full time job and a part time drinking problem, I only have so many hours in a day to devote to writing and reading, and sometimes (often times!) other books or writing projects take my attention before I can organize my thoughts about the book I've just finished.

Here are some sort reviews that deserve to be much, much longer!

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt

I've been a fan of Haidt's research for a while, and written about it elsewhere. The basic argument of the first two-thirds of this book is... 1.) Moral reasoning is a post-hoc process. Intuitions come first, reasoning second. We often circle around sacred, social values and then share post-hoc "reasons" why we are right. Haidt introduces the image of our minds as a small rational rider on a large intuitional elephant.

2.) Morality can be described more broadly than in terms of Fairness and Harm. His research has suggested that those who identify as conservative tend to have a broader palate of morality than those who identify as Liberal, considering not only Harm and Fairness (which all Westerners think of as highly important, regardless of politics), but also Purity, Authority, and Loyalty as moral considerations.You can take Hiadt's surveys at YourMorals.org.

And 3.) Humans are really groupish and we tie our moral thinking to the groups in which we belong.

These ideas are basically valuable as a vehicle for appreciating the biases in your own moral stances, and trying to overcome the Manichean grossness of modern political discourse, or more broadly for just understanding people unlike yourself, which I think is one of  the (the very?) highest aims a person can take.

The last section of the book talks about religion, and is sort of a response to who he calls "New Atheists," like my boy Sam Harris. I wish I had the energy to write down my thoughts about this. Basically: Haidt's talks about "beliefs" in a context of behaviors and social groups, where all of these elements influence one another. It seems much richer and more complete to me than the way thinkers like Harris usually choose to talk about beliefs (though I hope they wouldn't disagree with the conceptual model). But I like Harris because I think of him as more understanding of religious conviction than thinkers like Dawkins and Hitchens (boo!), and I think his work just focuses on a particular relationship within the kind of model Haidt describes rather than necessarily rejecting it. Both writers are either misunderstanding each other, or I'm misunderstanding both.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in politics, in science, in the differences between conservatives and progressives, in understanding people unlike themselves. The writing is good and the structure is so elegant. Just read it!

Here's a highly-condensed version of Chapter 12, on politics and polarization.

A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley

This novel is a retelling of King Lear in semi-contemporary, rural America. I don't know that I would've recognized that if it weren't written on the back cover.

It's a story about a farmer who turns over ownership and management of his farm to his three daughters and their husbands. He begins to go senile shortly thereafter, and as the family unwinds all sorts of secrets surface.

Some of the middle parts are occasionally clunky, particularly with some of the major "twists." But at its best the character writing is incredible. I started to mark the best lines, thinking I would lay a few of them down for you here, but if I included all of the exceptional sentences, there'd be more words in this single review than exist in total on my blog.


Letter to a Christian Nation  by Sam Harris

Somehow, this short book was available on Youtube. Nothing surprising! Same old Sam Harris--good stuff!

The Descendants by Kari Heart Hemmings

The Descendants is a book about a wealthy man in Hawaii--Matt King--who, after the hospitalization of his wife, must take care of his two semi-estranged daughters. As his wife takes a turn for the worse, they travel around the island, delivering the bad news to friends and family members. Later, he confronts his wife's lover. Alexander Payne made a movie out of the story starring George Clooney.

When I was in college (that's right--COLLEGE), I took a Post-Colonial Literature course. It was one of the best, and most difficult courses I took. In addition to several amazing novels, we read a fair amount of "Theory," like Edward Said and Hommi Babba, and (at least when I'm paying attention) it still effects the way I see media.

Tangential to the family drama, The Descendants is hiding a second story--a story about Matt King's looming decision regarding a large piece of land he's inherited. You see, he's the descendant (!!!) of a white missionary and Hawaiian princess, and as a result his family is one of the largest land-owners in the state. He describes his situation at one point like this: "We sit back and watch as the past unfurls millions into our laps." I picked up the book hoping that it would provide more depth to the identity and colonial conflicts of this second story than the movie did.

Matt and his daughters are phenotypically white. They don't speak the local pidgin. Although technically the descendant of Hawaiian royalty, he has no real love for its history, and admits that he likes the strip malls and condominiums more than the Hawaiian towns they are replacing.

But outside of a few sprinkled lines, Hemmings doesn't take this story as seriously as the first. There's no shame in that, necessarily;  I'd prefer to read a perfectly crafted domestic drama (e.g., Revolutionary Road, The Corrections) over some abstract exploration of identity politics any day.  Unfortunately, Hemming's insights into the minds of her characters didn't hit home for me. Her writing is sparse and good enough, but there were maybe only one or two occasions when I had that big, transcendental feeling of "Yes! That is how it feels to be a person!" that good interior writing can bring.

It may be that I've been reading short stories so much that I'm a little impatient with the relative looseness of a novel, but.

So, anyway, the movie was better!