Books on Popular Economics
The first thing that comes to many minds hearing the word Economics are complicated policy decisions made by nations affecting the lives of millions of their denizens. While it is true that economics drives many of such decisions, basic economics also plays an important role in our daily lives. Using Lionel Robbins definition from An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science this field of inquiry is “the science which studies human behavior as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses“. This broad definition firmly puts in perspective that whether we like it or not many of our key decisions are in the end economic decisions. However, unlike popular science, books on popular economics (not just popular books on economics) were never the norm of the day. Though one might argue that books like Tipping Point and Wisdom of the Crowds are in fact works on economics, they often masqueraded as some management hocus-pocus or general reading.
Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner’s Freakonomics however changed that. It was unabashedly a book on economics and deals in a rational manner with issues that normally have no connection with the field: cheating school teachers and sumo wrestlers, the discrimination against certain sections in game shows and against black-sounding names in job interviews, the links between abortion and crime rates and whether crime pays or not. Most of these issues are often drowned in rhetoric on social norms and morality but Levitt and Dubner prefer to make their arguments based on logic and rationality going as far as to define practical ways to measure the effect of what they preach. Their approach is refreshingly different because they neither put these studies on a pedestal, accessible only to a select few, nor did they water down the analysis to an extent that any serious thought into the matter would have found their logic to be tenuous. Rather Levitt’s intellect and Dubner’s skill in prose produced a book with which an interested reader could constructively engage.
The second interesting work in this field is by Tim Harford. While in Freakonomics, it was Levitt who did the economics and Dubner who did the writing, Tim is both rolled into one. However, he unlike Levitt is not an economist but rather a student of economics. His books The Undercover Economist and The Logic of Life are peppered with references to works of economists both past and present. Also Tim shows an willingness to grapple with much greater canvasses though his work then does not remain as impeccable. Harford’s books deal with issues ranging from the differential pricing of coffee and difference between a Walmart and a upmarket retail joint to world trade and development of third world countries. Tim’s books cover much wider ground but its solutions lack the immediacy that Levitt provides.
While the above are great introductions to the field of Economics for a layman, reference must be made to a couple of more books. The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers by Robert Heilbroner and New Ideas from Dead Economists by Todd Buchholz are great reads to get a grasp how the current thinking has evolved over the years. Another book similar in its subject matter to Freakonomics or Undercover Economics but a trifle more rigorous in its treatment of subject matter is Micromotives and Macrobehavior by Nobel Laureate Thomas Schelling. This book is an excellent read for it shows how small deviations from the norm by individuals often results in situations that can best described as utterly deviant in the macro level. People who liked reading Tipping Point will find much to appreciate in this.
Economics and rationality has become very often either the stick to beat down arguments branding them as “economically unfeasible” or has become the whipping slave for all with the argument of “there is no rational man”. Between each of these extremes however, there is much that we as imperfectly rational beings and societies, glean from two and half centuries of studies in this field and these books are great attempts at that.
A Hero of our Time - Mikhail Lermontov
The Hero of our Time is, my good sirs, indeed a portrait, but not of a single person. It is the portrait of the vices of our whole generation in their ultimate development.
Pechorin is not your typical hero. Infact he might be amongst the most villainous of characters in the whole of literature, because his acts of treachery and betrayal are conducted not with a selfish motive that can be understood, but rather with a nonchalant attitude that is frightening. That this work was greeted with mass outrage by critics, after its first publication in 1840, is therefore unsurprising. What is surprising however, is that this brief psychological sketch, still manages to ensnare the reader’s mind and with great precision and effectiveness paint the picture of a man who very well might be a product of his generation rather than an aberration.
There is not much to write about the plot; primarily because the book lacks one. It is rather a collection of snippets from the life of the main character. The book in short is not about the plot; it is about Pechorin, its protagonist. It starts with the narrator hearing a story about Pechorin from a fellow traveler in Caucasus. The next episode is the narrator himself meeting Pechorin in person and the final parts are snippets from Pechorin’s diary. The reader thus gets a 360 degree view of the character. As far as I know it is the most complete character description in literature encompassing the first, second and third person’s viewpoints. Readers often complain about one dimensional characters; A Hero of our Time is an exercise in creating a multidimensional one.
Pechorin is the quintessential Byronic hero; someone who is “mad, bad and dangerous to know”. The second and third person viewpoints sketch out the essence of his character for the reader. However, it is in the first person description, that we realize what is it like to be such a character. It is often said that once the problem is known it is an easier problem to fix it. Pechorin diaries show the mind of tormented character, who knows what is wrong and how is it that he has reached this wrong state, but is utterly unconcerned by this apparently wrong state and the consequences of this wrong action. Is this what Lermontov calls “the portrait of vices of out generation in their ultimate development”? But the most damning critique of the societal norms is that in spite of his character flaws and its causes, Pechorin remains a human capable of feeling love, grief, longing and desire.
The way the character is developed reminded me of The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg and Viper’s Tangle by Francois Mauriac. Also those who will see shades of Pechorin in Turgenev’s Bazarov (Fathers and Sons) or Dostoevsky’s Raskolnikov (Crime and Punishment) are not alone. After reading this work, I am fairly sure all that came after it could not remain unaffected by this great piece of literature.
The Dark Phoenix Saga - Chris Claremont (writer) & John Bryne (penciler)
Jean Grey could have lived to become a god. But it was more important to her that she die … a human
X-Men remains one of the most enduring and loved comic book franchises of all time, because in Stan Lee’s words “never in the history of comicdom have there been stories more filled human interest, believable characterization, far-out fantasy combined with stark, shattering realism“. And no story arc epitomizes these words better than the Dark Phoenix Saga, the tale of Jean Grey realizing her ultimate potential and horror of being the Phoenix and choosing to sacrifice herself to save the universe.
Since the time it was first published, Jean Grey has been resurrected many times over as her moniker Phoenix suggests and many others have taken the mantle but nothing matches the sheer shock of seeing Jean Grey, literally the girl next door, turn into the devourer of worlds. Even when she destroys a world and the billions of lives inhabiting it, genocide of a scale that Hitler would flinch at, the reader is still forgiving her for she is not Jean Grey but the Dark Phoenix. But she realizes, much before the reader does, that the Dark Phoenix and Jean Grey are one and the same. It is not possible to let one live and other die. For the safety of the worlds she has to die.
But again in Stan Lee’s words DPS is not only about Jean’s sacrifice; it is also about Cyclops‘ sorrow, Kitty Pryde’s discovery of her powers, the deviousness of Mastermind as Jason Wyngarde and diabolical conniving of the Hellfire club. It is first and foremost a very very well told story; much better than one will find in award winning movies or best selling novels.
Lastly, though the X-Men movies are amongst the reasonably well made comic book movies, X-Men-The Last Stand, which incorporates elements from this story arc, does scarce justice to the Dark Phoenix Saga. It neither brings out the frailty of Jean’s humanity in face of Phoenix’s divinity nor does it show her mental strength in choosing and accepting her fate.
Eastern Promises - David Cronenberg
David Cronenberg is one of my favorite modern day directors. His films showcase his ability to abstract the surreal out of the ordinary, and magnify it making us view the world around us a little differently. With movies such as The Fly, Crash, Videodrome, eXistenZ, Naked Lunch and History of Violence, he brings out the horror in our daily lives. His movies however remained nightmares; dreams from which we woke up shaken but with the knowledge that it was a dream. If to make a film is to create a new world, the primary task of the director then is to build bridges - emotional or otherwise - with the real world. It is not enough to start from the real and descend into the surreal - a film needs to continuously reinforce this connection. It is in this aspect that I felt Cronenberg was not so successful in his earlier ventures. And it is primarily in this aspect that he excels in Eastern Promises.
Like many other Cronenberg movies, violence - real or imagined - remains the central theme here too. But the plot allows him to depict the violence in this world and not in some dream world. The result is that we have a gangster movie that matches Godfather or Goodfellas in it’s depth. Much like the much vaunted Marlon Brando epic, what is seen and heard on the screen is merely the tip of the iceberg. The main action remains unseen and unheard, left to the viewer to imagine. While Cronenberg showed dreams in his earlier movies here he gives the viewer fodder for nightmares. The film captures human depravity when endowed with absolute power, and yet also shows that such depravity will leave a mark that proves to be the perpetrator’s undoing.
However, where it matches Godfather in depth it fails to match in it’s width. Godfather was not about the transition from one era to another, it was also about the era’s themselves. Eastern Promises remains the story of only the transition. But then it probably is not meant to be an epic, but merely a strong reminder of the reality of the world we live in.
Snow Country - Yasunari Kawabata
Writing about Snow Country, the immediate metaphor that comes to mind is that of a Haiku. The reviews at the end of the book alluding to it, and the Japanese connection, though definitely existent, are not the cause of this comparison; rather the fact of it being a short piece pregnant with such numerous possibilities that prompts it. Also similar to Haiku is the challenge thrown to the reader – of figuring out the complete picture from the description of a small and yet significant portion. The description would allow many explanations, but in very few of those would the described event carry such weight. Snow Country to an extent can be seen as an exercise in figuring out the unknown at various levels; plot, character and even the geography.
Yet Kawabata does leave us with some clues; for he thus outlines the content of his description very early in the novel:
“In the depths of the mirror the evening landscape moved by, the mirror and the reflected figures like motion pictures superimposed one on the other. The figures and the background were unrelated, and yet the figures, transparent and intangible, and the background, dim in the gathering darkness, melted together into a sort of symbolic world not of this world.”
It is this world of juxtapositions and shifting realities, this quicksand of human emotions that Kawabata endeavors to describe.
Snow Country is primarily the tale of two women, Yoko and Komaku, and futility of their relationship with one man, Shimamura. While the theme of a decaying beauty waiting for its beloved is not new, it is Kawabata’s characterizations which lend the novel its uniqueness. Yoko and Komaku provide the buttress for each other characters and the counterpoint for Shimamura’s, much like a haiku again – it is through description of Komaku’s activities that we are asked to deduce Yoko’s character, while their undying flames of passion are contrasted against the cold lassitude and timidity of Shimamura. His annual bouts of remembrance and return to the snow country are beautifully set against the changing seasons. While saying nothing explicitly, the entire setup of the novel points towards one inexorable end.
The only problem with Kawabata is that the reader needs to extremely culturally sensitive. Since the actions described are often mundane, the text can become boring and as a consequence the reader can miss some action that is not culturally significant. However, for if invested with adequate patience Snow Country can be an extremely enriching read.
The Renaissance: A Short History - Paul Johnson
Renaissance has unlike numerous other academic labels of history, remained etched in the public imagination. This single word elicits at once, the awe of viewing the entire spectrum of limits of human achievement and, the fervent hope of all good and great that is yet to come in its image. Its utterance immediately brings to life an age when knowledge was acquired for knowledge’s sake, patrons acquiesced to the primacy of the creator and not their baser desires and the creator was as free to choose the content and delivery of his ideas without fear of sanction from higher authorities. Renaissance means a lot many things in the mind of the general public and in this book of fewer than two hundred pages, Paul Johnson manages to reinforce and buttress with facts why it has an undying place in our collective imagination.
In The Renaissance: A Short History, Johnson outlines the achievements of this period by first considering literature, and the works of Dante, Boccaccio, Machiavelli and Chaucer before moving onto the visual arts which he further categorizes into sculpture, architecture and painting. Johnson acknowledges that this mode of presentation may be confusing since most renaissance artists crossed the boundaries between categories and the major studios of the day where they worked contributed in all the fields but the alternate chronological approach would be unenlightening. For a book of this size, Johnson could have very well written a catalogue of the primary figures in Renaissance, with their birth dates and their primary works. However, within each category he defines a starting point and from then on traces the advancements in techniques and modes of presentation achieved by the different masters and with each pushing the envelope a little further.
The book’s true brilliance lies in uncovering the underpinnings of the movement (if we may call it so). Johnson lays great emphasis on three things that were responsible for the creative outpouring of this age. Firstly, the patrons acceding to artists in all matters concerning art and to a great extent tolerating the individual quirks of artist gave the artist freedom to innovate for “each time they commissioned a master, they were striving to help him push forward the frontier of knowledge and skill a little further – or in some cases a lot further”. Second was the spirit of competition, especially in visual arts. Military and commercial rivalries between cities of Florence, Venice and Milan boiled over to the arts and overall led to greater number of commissions. Also, the rise of the cult of individual artist demanded every artist sets the mark a little higher in “a race within generations and between them”. Lastly, the preeminence of the church and the lack of significant opposition to the Vatican allowed the ecclesiastics to turn a blind eye towards the broadening of subject matter (Boccaccio’s Decameron) and mode of portrayal (nudes in painting). In fact, the Vatican itself became one of the primary commissioners of the Renaissance masters.
However, the hold of Renaissance on popular imagination is primarily due to the characters that populated this age and not so much because of the superlative works they produced. In Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Donatello and many others, we have men for whom the word genius was created. While Johnson never gives a biography of these great men, whose achievements he outlines with such skill and veneration, he nevertheless cannot resist mentioning some individual quirks. Coupled with the simple language used, this makes the book an extremely light and enjoyable read.
Akhenaten, Dweller in Truth - Naguib Mafouz
In literary terms, there is very little innovation in this novel. The book essentially consists of a series of interviews conducted by Meriamun, who enraptured by the fallen city of Akhenaten decides to pursue the truth. Every interview goes over the basic plot - Akhenaten rebellion against Amun (the presiding god), the announcement of his new religion, his marriage to Nefertiti, their rule and shifting of the capital and finally his fall from power followed by Akhenaten’s death. The plot itself remains static and the different narratives do not fulfill the purpose of filling up gaps in this plot. Rather each narrative changes the setting and the dramatis personae; thus the causality that is implied by a linear historical narrative is fundamentally challenged. This more than anything else is the greatest achievement of Mafouz in this work.
I would not say, this is a great work of fiction. Mafouz himself has written much better. For the sheer beauty of his prose one need not look beyond Arabian Nights and Days: A Novel, while the aforementioned Cairo trilogy is a testament to his deep understanding of the Arab society. However, Akhenaten, Dweller in Truth, is not only a novel. It is also a subtle (but not damning, for the seeker of truth does not judge) attack on an establishment that chooses to see truth as it defines it.
His Dark Materials trilogy - Philip Pullman
As demanded by a task of this magnitude, the trilogy is vast in both scope and scale spanning a number of parallel universes, numerous characters from forgotten races and a final confrontation with God himself in attendance. However, it is in the details that Pullman falters. The plot meanders as we start the second book, every page sees a new character coming in to complicate the already complicated plot. Older characters are conveniently forgotten only to be brought out of oblivion when the situation demands. As a book which argues in favour of the free spirit against the shackled existence under an authority, it pays too little attention to the players other than the main protagonists. Whatever, their world view might be Tolkein ended up inventing an entire history to give each of his characters a place and Lewis never complicated his plot enough to get too many in the first place.
The Golden Compass, Subtle Knife and Amber Spyglass are interesting fantasy novels with an even more interesting plot line but people expecting a classic of the magnitude of Lord of the Rings or even Harry Potter will probably be a little disappointed. For those interested in reading fantasy with a slightly different flavour from that of Lewis and Tolkein should definitely look at the Earthsea novels of Ursula K. Le Guin.
In Concert Performance - Nikolai Dezhnev
Though often described a anti-Soviet-Communism satire, the scope of In Concert Performance far exceeds this narrow definition. It is at once, a treatise on humanist philosophy, a discussion on the nature of good and evil and a magical story of love-at-first-sight. And if it has to be read in one way, I would read it as a damning account of how mindless bureaucracy not only inhibits but butchers free spirits. And this is not true only for the Communist Russia. He does not absolve either the Department of Light or Dark of any blame. The story of Lukary, the protagonist of the story, reminded me of Stanislav Petrov who in 1983 decided that the US missile attack his computer terminal showed was a machine error and not a real attack. Had he been just a cog in the system, he would have been instrumental in starting the third world war. But his decision was made on human instincts. And for it he was/is forgotten and shunted into the shadows not only by his own countrymen but also in the other side. Breaking the chain of command is a crime whichever side you are on. Cold War must had many such heroes, and being a physicist and international diplomat Dezhnev probably knew more about them than us.
The beginning of the novel, when the author is setting all the pieces on the board before letting the story unfold were wonderful. They are written with intensity and force, in a manner that does not let the reader wait to catch his breath while introducing him to a smörgåsbord of characters from from this world and the one beyond. The novel effortlessly flits from the Russia of 90s to the Spanish Inquisition and the Dezhnev seems as adept in portraying the futility of pursuing a Theory of Everything as he is in describing the Anna’s emotions as she sees Lukary for the first time. However, somewhere in the middle Dezhnev’s focus shifts from the story he is telling, what happens to Anna and Lukary’s love, to fairly long winded discussions on the nature of existence, good and evil and such. Of course they are interesting to read but they lead nowhere in the resolution of the main plot which then shifts a gear and moves into Russia of 1932. The novel then suddenly reads like The Day of the Jackal (another one of my favorites, but where does it fit in here) before moving back to 1990s trying to close the narrative.
While both Bulgakov and Dezhnev dealt with essentially the same topics: good vs. evil, nature of time, Russian identity, the notion of sanity in an insane world, to the extent that even many of literary devices used were also the same, where one succeeded the other failed. Dezhnev took his eye (or rather his pen, typewriter, keyboard or whatever he was using) off his characters. The beauty of The Master and Margarita lies in the fact that Bulgakov always moves forward with the story at a breathless pace and that with all the fantasy involved, it always remains a human story. At the end you might not be sure where you are but you had hell of a journey that you can identify with. The same sadly cannot be said of In Concert Performance however which only in its opening chapters matches the brilliance of the Bulgakov’s work and where too many Deux ex machinis make it feel like hiss agent was really on his back to deliver the book to his publishers.
Lest my words be construed as an indication that one should not read this work I shall only cut-and-fit what Roger Ebert wrote while reviewing Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain: In Concert Performance “overreaches on every level” with a “big subject, big canvas” and “big ambitions” while trying to “cram just about everything” into a novel; this is definitely not a recipe for smooth reading “but I’d much rather watch somebody shoot for the moon when the stakes are sky-high than sit back while they play it safe.”
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If You Are Afraid of Heights - Raj Kamal Jha
“Look at the picture on the cover, there’s a child, a girl in red dress; there’s a bird, a crow in a blue white sky. And then there are a few things you cannot see“
Thus starts Raj Kamal Jha’s second novel that deals with things one misses in the monotone of day-to-day existence. For how many of us really look at the cover of a book carefully; seeing it as the first page and not merely an appendage. By tempting the reader to go back to the cover Jha sets the tone for the rest of the book; motifs and themes are repeated and three disjointed narratives intertwine at critical junctures. The dog with a stump for a tail, a building that seems to be crying, a building named Paradise Park that reaches to the sky, a crow-rider, the crying of a girl all appear and reappear in the various stories. And the reader might have to go back to see how they connect. If they do at all.
If You Are Afraid of Heights (IYaAoH) is three stories told from three different PoVs. In the first Amir meets with a accident and is nursed back to health by Rima, who just happens to be at the scene. Amir dreams of a girl and her mother drowning and Rima disappears mysteriously without a trace, after having gone to investigate the sound of a girl crying. The second story describes Mala’s investigation of the death of a girl in a remote village. She meets with the doctors, police officers, the mother and neighbors of the girl without any real progress but resuscitating memories of her past. The third is the story of a girl who is afraid that her parents will fall prey to the spate of suicides happening in their neighborhood and her conversation with a crow-rider who has been following her parents the entire day.
Jha’s narratives inhabit the world between the real and imaginary, the waking and the dreaming; he describes the world in a sort of hallucinatory haze induced by dope. It describes a state of just broken sleep and with eyes yet to open. The recurring motifs in a apparently random fashion and the temporal dissonance in the narrative, lends credence to the fact that Jha is probably stringing together three dream worlds and asking the reader to deduce the reality using Jungian techniques. Equally probable though is the fact that any or all of the three are real. In my opinion, the obfuscation is intentional allowing each reader to get his own version of the story. IYaAoH is not realism by any stretch of imagination but it is also not magic realism, for the unusual is not dealt with a straightforward manner, but is rather not spoken of. We know something is being swept under the carpet and yet the realization of it seems to just elude our grasps. Jha obliquely hints at incest, insanity, schizophrenia and domestic violence but never brings these themes out in the open. The novels limits itself to describing the contentious rationalism we shroud our daily experiences in, to explain things more “simply”. Jha’s training as a journalist is put to good use here. The gift of describing settings in an eloquent and poetic manner adds to the dream like quality of the narrative while the first person narratives of Amir, Mala and the child add to the immediacy. For it is through their actions in response to the external that the characters are primarily developed.
IYaAoH, for the impatient can be a frustrating novel. Its denouement does not lead to any tangible answers. There are gaps that need to be filled up and the anticipation built up is not always in consonance with the coming revelation. And the writing style might not be that original for the readers of Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. But for all its flaws it is a work of great ambition and imagination. It attempts to delve into the psyche of an individual and give voice to the deepest and the darkest of the human states. And this allows the work to transcend cultural and linguistic barriers and appeal to everyone, not just Indians.
