Review - Anna Karenina

Yet another one of my Amazon reviews...

Anna Karenina (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (Barnes & Noble Classics)
by Leo Tolstoy

"I will punish him and escape from everyone and from myself..", June 28, 2007

The classic of all classics. I really like this translation - it was easy to understand, and the 40 pages of endnotes gave helpful and relevant historical information. I was most interested in Anna and Vronsky's relationship, although I didn't mind Levin's intense philosophical ideas too much. I felt sorry for Dolly and Karenin. I tried to hate Stiva but he's a likeable character in spite of his faults.

I used to regard Anna as more of a heroic individualist, a feminist. Daring to break society's strict rules so she could go after what she wanted. But she becomes more pathetic towards the end, and the reader probably feels sorry for her (as I did). Her insecurity irritated me sometimes, and she played immature games with Vronsky that he knew nothing about. For example, when she told a servant to tell him that she was in bed with a headache, she thought to herself, "If he comes in spite of what the maid says, it means that he loves me still. If not, it means that all is over..." I used to think in that way when I was younger, but it was such a waste.

Still, I regard Anna as one of my favorite literary characters. She is a miserably unhappy woman. She does not have her son, she doesn't love her daughter, she can't go out (while Vronsky can, of course), she has an overactive imagination about what Vronsky's doing. Vronsky says he cannot live without her, yet he is busy wandering about Moscow or Petersburg much of the time. She feels humiliated that she can't live without him. She "lowered herself" to be with him. I know women do this today, and it only ends up hurting, even killing, them. I wish some of Anna's so-called friends in society would have accepted her, comforted her. Instead, she retreats inside her mind far too much, becoming very irrational and unstable. To depend on one person for your happiness is unwise and unfortunate. Her inevitable breakdown has been forever immortalized by the last scenes and her last thoughts:

"Where am I? What am I doing? What for?"

P.S. This massive story of unhappy families is adapted very well by Masterpiece Theater - Anna Karenina (2000).

Jessica Savitch, RIP

I recently became intrigued by a freak drowning accident that happened on Oct 23, 1983 in New Hope, PA (about a half hour from where I live). I investigated the details online and discovered a lot about the victim, Jessica Savitch, the first major female news anchor on American television. I visited the site of her death in September and took all the photos shown here (photo of Savitch is from FindAGrave.com).

On the last night of Savitch's life, she ate at Odette's Restaurant in New Hope. (Odette's is now closed due to excessive flooding, but I think they have plans to reopen in a few years.) It was a rainy night when she left with her date, who was also in the news business. He drove out the wrong exit, even though there were signs posted - I guess it was too dark and stormy to notice them though. As they drove down the old tow path, the car fell into the Delaware Canal, which runs parallel to the path, flipping over in the process. Mud and water sealed the doors shut, so neither could escape. Savitch's husky dog was also with them.

Later, the coroners confirmed that no drugs/alcohol were present. Savitch was cremated.






On Wikipedia, I found that Up Close and Personal is loosely based on Savitch's life. After watching the movie, the only things that seemed true to Savitch's real life were the difficulties of being a female anchor in a patriarchal industry. She had to work extra hard to be taken seriously, had to deal with discrimination, etc. And the ending of the movie was quite different from the ending of Savitch's life. However, the violent scenes in Philadelphia were very authentic.
At "We the Media", it explains why Disney made such drastic changes to the movie. I love Disney (I especially admire their early animated movies such as Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid), but their reasoning doesn't seem so surprising:

"Disney, with its family reputation was also uncomfortable with Savitch’s addiction to cocaine. The transformation had begun… Savitch had once had an affair with CBS newscaster Ed Bradley, and we surmised that the interracial nature of that relationship might be another source of discomfort for Disney’s core audience. Her abortions could also pose a problem, as could her two marriages, especially the second to a gay gynecologist who, less than a year after they married, hanged himself from a cross-beam in the basement of her Philadelphia home.” (Dunne, 1997, p. 19-20)

I still admire her, though I feel sorry for her - she had a tough life. I wonder where she would be now, if not for this accident...

Review - The Stand

Another one of my reviews from Amazon. Absolutely one of the best books I've ever read.

The Stand
by Stephen King

An incredible post-apocalyptic journey, September 7, 2007

It's easy to be drawn deeply into this book, to feel so connected to the characters that to finish it is a kind of death. I still feel slightly depressed and it's been about a week since I finished it. King is constantly underrated and glossed over by elitist critics (such as Master Snob Harold Bloom, who never published any fiction worth reading), but this novel is truly a masterpiece and deserves respect. You know the plot - a superflu kills 99% of the population. The survivors migrate west to Colorado and Vegas, attempting to rebuild society, trying to figure out the meaning of their collective dreams. What is the "good" dream really about? Who is the "dark man"?

King created several strong characters. Among my favorites are Glen, Tom, Nadine, and Kojak; I still grieve for Nadine, Harold, and Trashcan Man, all clever and pathetic in their own ways - and I believe many readers can sympathize with them. Trashcan Man began to thrive in Vegas, only to regress to his former ways and thought patterns because of a random comment made by a person from his new life. You can feel on top of the world, feel as if you're "fixed"...until you hear those words again, which trigger painful memories ("unquiet corpses come back to life"), and you might lose all progress made up to that point. You realize how fragile you are, and this can be terrifying.

Nadine and Harold are both disturbed souls, though Harold is driven more by revenge and Nadine is driven by evil. Nadine is tormented by and attracted to the dark man, but she is also drawn to Larry, who is desperate to make the right choices this time around to atone for his pre-plague life of darkness. The lines "Only this time the boy would catch her. She would let him catch her. It would be the end. But when he had caught her, HE HADN'T WANTED HER" are ones I can imagine Nadine replaying in her head as she travels over the mountains. She mourns for lost chances, acceptance, and goodness as she yields to her fate.

Along with the powerful theme of good vs. evil, a number of characters sacrificed themselves (for good and evil), seeked redemption, and many "innocents" were rewarded (such as Tom and Kojak). And remember that the devil is not all-knowing, but he does not want anyone to know this.

This novel really makes you think about the end of the world, and whether you would stand for good or evil. King, the dark genius, describes the growth of evil:

"Far away over the mountains was another cloned creature. A cutting from the dark malignancy, a single wild cell taken from the dying corpus of the old body politic, a lone representative of the carcinoma that had been eating the old society alive. One single cell, but it had already begun to reproduce itself and spawn other wild cells. For society it would be the old struggle, the effort of healthy tissue to reject the malignant incursion. But for each individual cell there was the old, old question, the one that went back to the Garden - did you eat the apple or leave it alone?"

The plague gave humanity another chance. They could build a superior society, choosing not to repeat mistakes from the past, or they could throw away this great opportunity to start over by giving in to the old ways. This chance is so rare that to waste it would be the worst mistake. And yet, inevitably, humans cannot be "good." The dark is too tempting, too consuming, and will always exist.

What is Grimace?

I don't remember how I became so interested in Grimace's true form, but I suppose it's because I go to McDonald's a lot and tend to ponder the finer things in life. At a McDonald's in upstate New York, I asked some of the employees about Grimace. None of them had the answer, not even the manager. Some guesses - gum drop, taste bud, milkshake. He couldn't really be a gum drop though, because McD's doesn't serve those. And he doesn't really look like a milkshake, but maybe a spilled milkshake. What's all this about the milkshakes? Well, we could remember how Grimace loved milkshakes!

A friend told me privately that he might be a moldy chicken nugget. I shudder at the thought.

I went to McD's official site and emailed them. Hector responded with a vaguely definitive answer. Basically, Grimace "can't be classified as any particular kind of animal." I hadn't thought of him as an animal, but I guess I'll have to be content with this answer.

Review - State of Fear

Occasionally, I get the urge to write a review on Amazon.com... I will post a few of them on this blog.

State of Fear
by Michael Crichton

"Nobody knows that I'm wrong," said Crichton...., October 1, 2007

...on the Charlie Rose show earlier this year (the video is on Crichton's official site). Nobody knows that the earth won't warm only 8/10ths of one degree Celsius, as Crichton predicts - no, he doesn't predict, he guesses. "We can't `assess' the future, nor can we `predict' it....We can only guess. An informed guess is just a guess." (from the Bibliography section of the novel).

It seems that many people don't get it - Crichton does not deny global warming. He believes the earth is getting warmer and that some of the warming (particularly the carbon dioxide increase) is due to human activity. I think a lot of people are upset just because he doesn't believe it's "catastrophic", he doesn't believe that entire populations switching to hybrid cars would save the world (and the world does not need to be saved!). He's not buying in to the popular consensus, and he proves that he doesn't need to. He's researched the matter like the brilliant scientist he is. Catastrophes are great for science fiction books and movies, such as Jurassic Park. State of Fear is also science fiction (the storyline), but its scientific facts are real and it's obvious that Crichton did a great deal of research. What other novelists use footnotes and have an immense bibliography section at the end of the book? His critics argue that he "picks and chooses" his data to support his "agenda." But who doesn't? Researchers do it, Al Gore does it, politicians do it, the media does it. And really, even when students write research papers in school, they have to pick and choose their data.

Crichton is very logical, so I still don't understand what's so controversial or "right-wing" about his major points:

-No one knows how much of the warming is natural
-No one knows how much of the warming is due to human activity
-No one can predict the future climate more than 10 days in advance

Crichton reminds us that current weather predictions are rarely made more than 10 days in advance, and even then they can be wrong. Computer models can't predict El Ninos correctly either - "and if you can't predict El Ninos, the predictive value of your model in other areas is suspect." Just like in court, if it is revealed that the defendant lied about something, how can the jury believe anything else he/she says?

The character of Ted Bradley embodies the current celeb/media obsession with halting global warming (an arrogant notion, according to Crichton, that mere humans can affect the complex atmosphere of an entire planet - more precisely, "a coupled non-linear chaotic system" which is impossible to predict). Bradley, along with other limousine liberals in the book, brag to each other about buying hybrid cars for their staff, but they are traveling in a private jet during this discussion ("Just by making this trip, they're generating more pollution per capita than most people on the planet will generate in a year."), and SUV limos are ready to meet them at the airport. I know some celebrities do practice what they preach, but the majority does not. It reminds me of that activist who set fire to a Hummer dealership's fleet a few years ago. Afterwards, she hopped on her private jet to travel somewhere. How inconsistent.

I've been a Crichton fan for about 13 years now, and I only read the book because he wrote it - global warming never interested me too much - however, I dislike SUVs and think they're wasteful and unnecessary for the most part, and I try to conserve energy, water, and gasoline. I wouldn't mind paying a carbon tax. And Crichton certainly isn't against conservation and carbon taxes either - he wants to improve our environment - he just doesn't define global warming as an emergency and doesn't think we should be spending so much money on this unpredictable theory as opposed to AIDS and other true emergencies. But anyway, I enjoyed the book more than I thought I would, particularly the parts in Antarctica (which is getting colder, by the way). And I respect Crichton even more as a writer because he dared to write this. After reading this book, I am thoroughly convinced that I don't need to worry about the ice sheets melting. The sky is not falling. But if it does, I doubt that humans could do anything about it.

thumbs up, thumbs down

Each week I look through the local Penny Power (a free mini-newspaper with want ads and regular ads) to look for intriguing Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down stories:

philly homicide count - 336

Philadelphia violence is out of control. Obviously. I'm not going to propose a solution, but I will mention what won't work. Creating more gun control laws won't stop criminals from breaking those laws and buying guns illegally. They will always find guns when they need them, and that's how they stay in power. Hiring more cops might work (Mayor John Street, mad genius that he is, cut the force by 500 several months ago). Nutter's "Stop and Frisk" plan might work. But really, I don't see how this can be solved. I don't mean to sound pessimistic, because I'm not. I'm a realist.

I've made it kind of a hobby to keep track of the murder rate. The Philly Inquirer publishes a brief murder count on their website every so often. Appropriately, the article is entitled "A City's Deadly Toll." My calculations show that the current murder rate is 1.1 murders per day -today is the 309th day of the year and there have been 336 murders. It's actually getting better though - a few months ago, the rate was about 1.2 per day. Last year's grand total was 406, and my guess for this year is 423, but that seems a little high at this time.

NBC10 gets credit for the Philly map at the top of this post. It's known as the "Safer City Map" and is updated at regular intervals. If you mouse over a blue or pink person, the details of the crime will show up:

It's important to realize that more than half of the crime victims are also criminals, while most of the murderers are out violating their parole. This makes for a great system. (End of sarcasm.) However, I am truly sickened when a 4 year old child playing outside is shot, when the mother of five children is shot, when a stray bullet kills a man inside his own home as he's getting dressed for work. It makes me angry and sad, and I wish I could execute the murderer myself. Someone's gotta do it.

my connection to Madonna

I grew up in the same area (the rural-suburbs north of Philadelphia) and attended the same high school as Alex McArthur, the actor that played Madonna's boyfriend in her "Papa Don't Preach" video. McArthur graduated before I was born, but I probably touched some of the same doorknobs, lockers, and handrails that he did. And he touched Madonna, which is one of my goals in this life. We probably had some of the same teachers, too. (I had the same biology teacher that my mother had, and she is five years older than McArthur.) I am probably the only person in the world who made the effort to post his senior photo online - I went to the local public library, asked to see the yearbooks from 1974-77, and made a copy. He graduated in 1975, twenty-five years before my own graduation.

The Video: