nonfiction

Review: The Twilight Zone, Nona Fernandez

One of the most powerful and unsettling films I’ve ever seen is 2018’s La Casa Lobo, an animated nightmare based on the real-life atrocities of the Pinochet regime in Chile. The film brought the horrors of that period to life within the confines of a single building — the viewer felt trapped in the claustrophobic wolf house.

Chilean author, Nona Fernandez, offers a more macro perspective in her equally powerful and hauntingly poetic book, The Twilight Zone.

To call this a work of fiction would be insufficient. It’s a blend of narrative storytelling, including fiction, journalism and memoir, which brings that period to life greater than reportage alone. During Pinochet’s US-backed military junta, beginning in 1973, thousands of people were disappeared, tortured, sexually abused and often killed. The fates of many of those are still unknown. Their deaths have been reduced to statistics.

The book’s narrator — a documentary filmmaker — attempts to restore their voices by speculating on their ultimate fates and showing them as more than numbers or victims. This is a delicate literary maneuver that, if handled poorly, would come off as pandering or even exploitative. However, Fernandez delivers it with such grace that it feels empowering and restorative.

Her master stroke in this novel, though, is the incorporation of popular culture.

One of the challenges of understanding history is context. It’s easy to distance ourselves from historical events and think of them as separate from our own timeline. However, Pinochet’s atrocities are not ancient history. They occured in my lifetime, and Pinochet himself only died in 2006.

Fernandez uses pop culture to drive home that point, starting with the book’s title — although I prefer the untranslated title, La Dimensión Desconocida. It sounds more appropriately menacing when it doesn’t share the name of my all-time favorite television show.

During the memoir sequences, Fernandez spends her afternoons watching reruns of popular American television shows and juxtaposes this with the atrocities that were being perpetrated against her fellow Chileans at that time.

It’s an unnerving contrast, particularly since I was watching those same reruns in that same timeframe. She takes it further by placing us inside the premiere of the narrator’s documentary film about Pinochet. It was relegated to the smallest screen of a multiplex that had dedicated all of its big rooms to superhero movies in varying degrees of high definition.

The narrator and her mother were the only ones in attendance, and they had trouble hearing the documentary over the surround sound explosions and dramatic overtures rattling the walls.

Literally, popular culture was drowning out the voice of Pinochet’s victims. The Twilight Zone is a good reminder to not let popular culture distract us from present-day atrocities. It’s an engrossing, hard-hitting journey into the dark heart of humanity.

Review: The Collected Schizophrenias

The Collected Schizophrenias

Esmé Weijun Wang

Stumbled upon this at my favorite local used bookshop, the Bookworm in Boulder, Colorado,CollectedSchizophrenias and what a lucky find. I was unfamiliar with Wang’s writing, but loved the theme of this essay collection: her life with schizoaffective disorder and other explorations of mental illness.

Through essays that combine research and personal experience, Wang shows us the different flavors of schizophrenia, which are more diverse than public perception or TV and film portrayals.

She addresses the media portrayal head on in the essays “Reality, On-Screen” and “The Slender Man, the Nothing, and Me,” which are, in turn, shocking and heartbreaking. The author — who is both wickedly smart and funny — studied at Yale and Stanford, yet, during psychotic episodes becomes so unmoored that her husband has to explain that movies and television shows are fictional.

She also explores the topic of involuntary commitment, the ethics of procreation and delves into the darkest corners of mental illness: violence (rare in actually, but over-represented in the media) in “Toward a Pathology of the Possessed” and Cotard’s delusion (belief that oneself is dead) in “Perdition Days.”

My favorites are “Diagnosis,” the lead essay that introduces us to her journey, and “Yale Will Not Save You,” which reveals the shortcomings of academic institutions in addressing the mental health needs of students.

The Collected Schizophrenias won the 2019 Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize, and that means something. Graywolf Press publishes incredible books that challenge and enlighten, such as Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties, which I consider to be one of the best books of the decade.

Likewise, The Collected Schizophrenias will challenge your preconceived notions of mental illness, introduce you to its many manifestations and delight you with confident prose, brutal vulnerability and a narrative quest that is more of a question than an answer.

Review: Paperbacks from Hell

The best gift for this Halloween is Grady Hendrix’s glamorously gory Paperbacks from Paperbacks_from_HellHell: The Twisted History of ’70s and ’80s Horror Fiction, a beautiful homage to the glory days of horror publishing.

Many of you will know Hendrix from his genre-bending novels My Best Friend’s Exorcism and Horrorstör (a wonderful IKEA-themed nightmare). If you don’t, you should make yourself familiar. His clear love of the genre and dark sense of humor is prevalent in his fiction, but even more so here.

Hendrix guides us through all aspects of horror fiction’s heyday, tracing its roots from the civil unrest of the 1960s and Gothic romances, through the domination of heavy hitters like Stephen King, Anne Rice, and Clive Barker, into the eventual over-saturation of the genre.

As a child of the 1970s and ’80s, I remember many of the titles and the experience of browsing through bookstores with actual “horror” sections. Forbidden to buy these extreme books, I ingested them through the cover art and back jacket, imagining what dark delights lived between the covers.

Reading Paperbacks from Hell was like revisiting those bookstores from yesteryear. While Hendrix has much to say about the history and content of these books, Paperbacks is a celebration of cover art and story concept, no matter how ridiculous, from Nazi leprechauns to vengeful insects. It is a coffee table book and artist portfolio all in one.

While Hendrix provides the narrative, his partner in this project is Will Errickson of the Too Much Horror Fiction blog, which revisits vintage scares. It is a labor of love for these two horror nerds, one that would make the 10-year-old me jealous (and the current me exhausted!).

Though he revels in the ever-more ludicrous story plots, Hendrix gives all of the entries fair consideration and validates every sub-genre (with the exception of splatterpunk). Some of the most important sections concern the Satanic Panic, which coincided with the high tide of horror fiction.

Some of my favorite parts are the mini-biographies of the cover artists and the back stories of their work. Though the cover art was sometimes the best part of these books, the artists got short shrift. It’s nice to see them getting recognition. I enjoyed learning about them.

Of course, we know how this story ends, and it is not happily ever after. Hendrix documents the various causes of death of horror publishing: over-saturation of the product; consolidation shuttered the small presses; with the introduction of cable television and VCRs, a large amount of the population just stopped reading.

Hendrix goes further, though, digging into obscure tax law and explaining how the Thor Power Tool case of 1979 changed publishing forever. Interesting stuff, but sad nevertheless.

Unlike those disposable pulps, however, Paperbacks from Hell is a timeless beauty: glossy pages, vivid graphics, embossed printing. This is a gorgeous book, one to keep and display and start awesome dinner-party conversations.

It was an emotional ride. Reading Paperbacks took me back to those early-’80s bookstores, wide-eyed and terrified, absorbing those beautiful and grotesque horror novels I was forbidden to read, but that forever influenced me nonetheless.

Review: On Tyranny

Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny is the most terrifying thing you’ll read this HalloweenOn_Tyranny (outside of a presidential Twitter feed, that is). This is the book for this moment, and even if you’re not much on politics or nonfiction reading, please set aside the hour it will take to read this book.

That’s not too much to ask for the defense of democracy.

Saving western civilization as we know it is a tall order for such a short book, but for On Tyranny, Snyder, a history professor at Yale University, doesn’t waste space on academic masturbation. He draws lessons from the 20th century for guidance on how to defend democracy in 2017 and beyond. This book is direct, intense, and a call to action.

The result is an instruction manual with 20 tips for fighting back against tyranny, ranging from the minute (“Make eye contact and small talk”), to the macro (“Take responsibility for the face of the world”). But even the most ambitious items on this to-do list come with practical, everyday advice:

“Life is political, not because the world cares about how you feel, but because the world reacts to what you do. The minor choices we make are themselves a kind of vote, making it more or less likely that free and fair elections will be held in the future.”

Lest you think this is a partisan polemic, Snyder does not target parties, but principles. Historically, the enemies of democracy have come from all over the political spectrum. Preventing tyranny requires a multi-party system and a vigilant, informed electorate.

“Any election can be the last,” Snyder writes, “or at least the last in the lifetime of the person casting the vote.”

Other advice includes protecting a free press, being wary of paramilitary groups and coded speech, and actively reading a wide variety of material—preferably on paper, not a screen. After all, interactive screens were tools of oppression in classic dystopian works by George Orwell and Ray Bradbury.

In particular, beware the mechanisms of terror management. From false flags to opportunistic dictators, real or perceived enemies at the gates have permitted internal threats to flourish. Let the Reichstag fire of 1933 be a lesson, he writes, as it is the blueprint for how would-be tyrants seize unchecked power: When the German parliament caught fire under suspicious circumstances, Hitler used the event to suspend civil liberties on an emergency basis.

Of course, these liberties were not restored once the dubious emergency was over. Liberties, once surrendered, are seldom returned without force.

“For tyrants,” Snyder writes, “the lesson of the Reichstag fire is that one moment of shock enables an eternity of submission.”

Fear is a powerful weapon. Politicians use it to gain power, and the media use it to boost ratings and readership. And fear is what makes our most-cherished institutions vulnerable.

“Courage does not mean not fearing, or not grieving. It does mean recognizing and resisting terror management right away, from the moment of the attack, when it seems most difficult to do so.”

Though the tyrants have their blueprint, Snyder has offered us a brilliant playbook for combating them. The important takeaway for me is that you don’t need to wait for the next election to do something productive. Simply engaging in the world beyond your head or screen (particularly in uncomfortable places) can make a difference.

“Power wants your body softening in your chair and your emotions dissipating on the screen,” Snyder writes. We should meet new people, go different places, and generally be present in the three-dimensional world.

And take to heart this bullet point from Snyder—tape it to your front door, hang it on your fridge, tattoo it inside your eyelids:

“We are free only when it is we ourselves who draw the line between when we are seen and when we are not seen.”

Recommended Reads: 03.15.16

Redskins: Insult and Brand
C. Richard King

RedskinsUnder Roger Goodell’s watch, the NFL has done all it can to insult and offend its fans. As much as I love football, it’s getting harder to support the NFL and Goodell’s funhouse-mirror morality. One of the most egregious offenses is the league’s continued use of the “Redskins” team name.

In Redskins: Insult and Brand, C. Richard King explores the term and its unfortunate intersection with professional football. King expands his study beyond the current debate to reflect on the complicated views white Americans have of minorities and the role economics and brand value play in the inexplicable defense of a racial slur.

 

Why Quark Rhymes with Pork and Other Scientific Diversions
N. David MerminWhy Quark Rhymes with Pork

Yet another example of a book that, had I read this in high school, would have steered me toward the sciences. Mermin is a heavyweight theoretical physicist, and in this volume collects 43 essays, some not previously published and many of them culled from his columns in Physics Today.

Technical, yet light-hearted and accessible, Why Quark Rhymes with Pork will be enjoyed by a wide variety of readers, not just the science-minded. Fans of Sam Kean and Mary Roach should get a kick out of Mermin’s essays.

Review: Forked

Forked: A New Standard for American Dining

Saru Jayaraman

Having spent nearly half of my working life in restaurants, I was excited to read Jayaraman’s defense of the AmericanForked service worker — especially since I was once employed by two of what she considers to be two of the worst employers in the biz: Olive Garden and Red Lobster.

Many of the back-of-the-house anecdotes in Forked are all too familiar to me, but Jayaraman, through her research and foundation, Restaurant Opportunities Center, augments these tales with stats and studies and facts that I, even as a fairly well-informed server/bartender/cook/dishwasher, didn’t realize. These include the history of the tipped economy and why it has lost favor in much of the world and that the federal minimum wage has remained at $2.13 an hour for nearly a quarter-century for those living off gratuities.

Jayaraman argues that the industry and its workers remain handcuffed by mid-1990s legislation put forth by Herman Cain, the National Restaurant Association, and Darden Restaurants, the largest restaurant company in the world. Darden’s flagship chain is the Olive Garden, and until 2014 it also owned Red Lobster.

Of the restaurants where I’ve worked, Darden’s were actually the nicest, which is more commentary on the sad state of the industry than a compliment to Darden. Jayaraman has an even lower opinion of their stores. In each section of Forked, she profiles a company taking the high road in its treatment of workers and a company taking the low road.

Not even unlimited cheddar bay biscuits could salvage a passing grade for Darden.

For me, the most illuminating aspect of Jayaraman’s manifesto is her discussion of sexual harassment. Now, it’s no secret (I don’t think) that restaurants are sexually charged work milieus. They are also an intersection of diverse populations. The back of the house, in my experience, was a mix of drifters, creative types, future scholars and criminals. Many of my co-workers went on to earn advanced degrees. Many of them came to work wearing house arrest anklets.

Meanwhile, the front of the house was mostly staffed by young women, some of them still in high school, who drew the salacious humor and advances of the boys’ club on the line. Some of it was naive or good-natured (I’m thinking of the potty humor and clumsy communication of teenaged boys), but some of it was creepy and misogynistic.

And all of it was inappropriate in the workplace, which is why I haven’t witnessed much of it since leaving the restaurant industry.

But even with this knowledge, Jayaraman’s research was alarming. Consider, she argues, that for millions of young women, hosting or waiting tables is their first job. “It is the industry through which they learn what is tolerable and acceptable in the workplace.”

She backs this up with data (higher rates of sexual harassment in states paying tipped workers differently from non-tipped workers) and anecdotally (women who failed to report sexual harassment in later employment because, compared to what they’d endured, “it was never as bad as it was” in restaurants.

But for all there is to recommend Forked, there is a bias that must be acknowledged. The book promotes the work of ROC, a nonprofit co-founded by Jayaraman, and lacks the outsider perspective of books like Nickel and Dimed and Fast Food Nation.

While this bias is worth keeping in mind, it doesn’t discredit her argument — her research and data are still valid, just maybe not as comprehensive as that of independent lab testing.

That only slightly tempers my enthusiasm for this book. Forked is well-written and informative, and I think it’s a must-read for American diners — especially if they’ve never known the joy of cleaning out the deep fryer.

Recommended Reads: 2.2.16

Lit Up: One Reporter. Three Schools. Twenty-Four Books That Can Changes Lives

David Denby

When I was in high school, I wanted to write my junior project on Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five. I chose it 9780805095852_LitUp_JK.inddbecause it was a controversial and frequently banned book, and I thought, from the title, that it might be a horror novel. I went to our school’s library and looked it up in the card catalog (here is a link if you don’t know what that is), only to find that it was already checked out.

The library had one other Vonnegut book, so I figured I’d give that one a try. That book was Cat’s Cradle, and it’s not hyperbole to say that it changed my life forever.

That’s what great books are supposed to do. Great books stay with you. They inspire you. They grow with you. I’ve read Cat’s Cradle two more times since high school, and I look forward to reading it a few more times before I die.

I may have never picked up that book — and pursued a literary life — were it not for that junior project. This is why education and youth literacy is so important — and why New Yorker staff writer and culture critic David Denby’s new book, Lit Up, is a must-read.

In something of a sequel to his Great Books, Denby returns to 10th grade English class to see what literature is being taught and how it is being received by youth whose lives are dominated by LCD screens.

I hope that somewhere, some alienated teenager has flipped to the last page of Cat’s Cradle, intoxicated by its madhouse narrative, and is reading that devastating final paragraph that begins, “If I were a younger man, I’d write a history of human stupidity…”

I also recommend Denby’s 2009 book, Snark.

 

The Sound of Time

Jeremy Essex

This book may as well have been custom made for me. It involves the graveyard shift, factory workers and aThe Sound of Time psychology student. There wasn’t much I enjoyed about working in a steel mill, but one thing I loved was the creepiness of the rusted factory.

Cleaning the warehouse evoked a unique sense of dread. I was alone, sweeping the aisles between stacks of steel coils fifteen feet high. Knowing that if one of the coils fell, it would be a long time before they found me.

Essex’s novel is less about the physical threats of factory work, but more about the ghosts allegedly haunting the place. Essex incorporates quantum physics to add another layer of creepy.

Forget ghosts. The spooky implications of quantum physics can elicit more chills than a campfire tale.

The combination of setting, science and quality storytelling make The Sound of Time a hit for horror fans.

Recommended Reads: 01.26.16

New year, new reading list. Here are some January releases to kick-start 2016.

Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right

Jane Mayer

In recent years the Koch brothers have become liberal bogeymen, invoked in political ads, petitions and editorials to maximize fear factor. Certainly, the truth behind these billionaire brothers is more complicated than that, but they are rightly the focus of Mayer’s history of how the wealthiest Americans have rigged the political system in their favor. Folks of different political persuasions may disagree on ideology, but we should all be able to agree on the importance of transparency. That is what Mayer hopes to provide in this highly acclaimed investigation.

 

DemocracyinBlackDemocracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul

Eddie S. Glaude

Staying in the political realm, Princeton professor Eddie Glaude offers this poignant and difficult narrative about the state of race relations in America. For a brief time, we lived under the comfortable illusion of a post-racial country, but since electing its first black president, America has grown more racially divided. Glaude chronicles recent injustices and proposes a bold fix in Democracy in Black.

 

TheConfidenceGame

The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It… Every Time

Maria Konnikova

At some point, the market will grow weary of the Gladwellian genre, but not yet. There’s a good reason for that. We are learning more about our brains and our behavior every year, and the findings are compelling. Perhaps the mind has its own ego that loves to read about itself? So much for navel gazing. Now it’s all about the brain gazing, and in Konnikova’s new book she shows why even the brightest among us are capable of being conned.

Author Interview: Joanna Mishtal, The Politics of Morality

Growing up in the west, I had a fairly uncomplicated view of the Soviet Union. In the 1980s, they were the EvilThe Politics of Morality Empire. Then down comes the Berlin Wall. The Iron Curtain crumbles. Freedom wins the day. Roll credits.

Of course, history is never that simple.

Anthropologist Joanna Mishtal grew up in Soviet Poland, defected to the United States as a teenager, and now studies reproductive rights in her country of birth. Her research uncovers a thornier narrative of post-Soviet Poland. Rather than a secular democracy, the Catholic church has assumed a dominant political role.

As a result, Poland has some of the strictest abortion laws of any European Union country, and Mishtal explores the effect this has had on women and women’s rights in her first book, The Politics of Morality: The Church, the State, and Reproductive Rights in Postsocialist Poland.

The book, published by Ohio University Press, blends politics, personal narrative, Polish history and peer-reviewed research. Full disclosure: I have known Mishtal for close to a decade and I proofread early drafts of a few chapters.

Mishtal provides a unique view of Polish politics, having experienced both Soviet and post-Soviet culture as well as having lived in the west. Most impressively, she is able to switch easily between detached observation and insider familiarity, lending a unique voice to her research. Her personal insights enhance the narrative while her use of case studies give flesh and bone to the academics.

With Russia once again a wild card, the EU in crisis and Poland’s recent swing even further to the right, The Politics of Morality is a timely and important read. We are still figuring out both the history and consequences of the end of the Cold War, and Mishtal’s is an important and necessary voice in the discussion.

She recently sat down with Ensuing Chapters to discuss The Politics of Morality.

 

Recommended Reads: Apocalypse Edition

 

Picturing the Apocalypse: The Book of Revelation in the Arts over Two Millennia

Natasha O’Hear and Anthony O’Hear

Revelation is one of the most vivid works of literature ever etched into papyrus. It has inspired artists for nearly Picturing the Apocalypse2,000 years, stoking the fires of Michelangelo, Blake and Bosch and establishing the premise of countless bad horror films. In this impressive study, Natasha and Anthony O’Hear examine 120 works of art rooted in the closing chapter of the New Testament. The authors (a father-daughter tandem) breakdown the works into 10 different themes, including the Four Horsemen, the Seven Seals and modern popular culture.

Picturing the Apocalypse is well-written and beautifully illustrated with all of the artworks discussed. I was personally drawn to the religious history of the book, but also enjoyed the art history and theory, the literary and cultural development of Revelation and, ultimately, a fresh look at the text through the modern lens.

If not for you, this is a great gift for fans of art, history, philosophy, literature or anyone looking to upgrade their dinner-party conversation.

 

Secret Science: A Century of Poison Warfare and Human Experiments

Ulf Schmidt

Few things whet the American appetite more than atrocity and conspiracy, and readers get a hearty portion of both inSecret Science this comprehensive account of 20th-century military research. Germany’s use of chlorine and mustard gas in WWI may be the most salient example of chemical warfare, but what makes Schmidt’s account so compelling is his emphasis on Allied experimentation.

The narrative revolves around the British research center, Porton Down, and chronicles the moral dilemmas created and ethics breached in the shadow of two world wars and a global nuclear standoff.

Secret Science is both history lesson and cautionary tale, though I imagine most readers will enjoy it for the former more than the latter. History tells us that ethics usually lose out to expediency. Note the use of torture, indefinite detention, drone warfare and citizen surveillance in response to the War on Terror.

When it comes to safety, there are always extenuating circumstances (politically speaking), so I’m doubtful that the lessons of Secret Science will make inroads where they’re most needed, unfortunately. Schmidt does, however, provide us with a darkly entertaining history of the uncomfortably recent past that should chill (and in some cases vindicate) the most hardcore conspiracy theorist.

Secret Science is not light reading (I’m referencing the text itself now, rather than the content). It’s an exhaustive academic study that may not grab casual readers.

But if you’re into military history and government cover-ups, this book is worth flexing a few more of those reading muscles.

 

Under the Black Flag: At the Frontier of the New Jihad

Sami Moubayed

The dialogue on terrorism has taken a sharper tone in the aftermath of Paris. Piled on top of the horror and despair Under the Black Flaghas flowed a polluted stream of rumor, wrath and confusion. Which makes Sami Moubayed’s Under the Black Flag all the more important.

Moubayed is a Syrian journalist and historian with roots in the country’s past — and an insider’s view of its turbulent present. He provides an account of ISIS and the rise of jihadism with a depth that no cable-news sound bite or Internet meme could capture.

If you want to understand where ISIS came from and where they (and us) are headed, read this book.