We Do Not Part by Han Kang

Source of book: Audiobook from the library

 

Han Kang won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2024, the first female Asian writer to do so. I previously read her book, The Vegetarian, back in 2020, and it became one of the favorite books of one of my kids. 

 

I had been meaning to read more of her books, and this one became available when I needed an audiobook for my commute for rehearsals and concert. 

 

We Do Not Part is definitely not quite as weird as The Vegetarian. It is also much more political, after a fashion. Like some of her previous books, it is partly about a traumatic violent episode in post-World War Two Korea, one that is fairly unknown to us in the United States, despite our complicity in it. 

 

For me, the book had some very good parts, and a lot of beautiful writing. However, it also suffered from a certain amount of inconsistency, and got bogged down in the historical accounts to an extent that it felt like she really wanted to write a non-fiction book just on the massacre, rather than a novel with episodes from the past. 

 

The massacre in question took place just before the Korean War broke out. For background, Korea was occupied and colonized by Japan for quite a long time before the war. You can read some of that history in Pachinko by Min Jin Lee, which I thought did a good job of integrating the history with the modern day story. 

 

When the war ended, and Japan was defeated by the allies, Korea was “freed.” Which meant they got ruled by a US military regime, then a US-backed dictatorship. 

 

In the run-up to the Korean War, various rebel groups, many of them communist or leftist, vied for control of the country. Eventually, the hostilities escalated from a civil war to a proxy war between the US and China, with the Korean populace considered mostly expendable. 

 

One of the most sordid episodes before the war took place on Jeju Island, a large volcanic island off the south coast of Korea. I had never heard of it, but it is apparently a big tourist destination due to its milder weather. 

 

In retaliation against the rebels, the government murdered tens of thousands of civilians - men women, children, and infants. These ended up in mass graves, the existence of which was brutally suppressed by the Korean government until decades later, when the dictatorship was replaced by a democracy, and the survivors were able to put enough pressure on the government. 

 

For this book, Han Kang weaves elements of autobiography with fiction and with the historical events. 

 

Kyungha is a woman who seems to be a stand-in for the author. Like the author, she suffers from migraines, and has developed vivid nightmares after researching a massacre for her latest book. 

 

She reconnects with her long-time friend from college, Inseon, who is an artist, carpenter, and filmmaker. The two of them decide to do an artistic film about the massacre, one that utilizes Kyungha’s nightmare of trees shaped like humans with snow falling on them. 

 

Then, Kyungha receives a text asking her to come immediately to the hospital, and discovers that Inseon has severed some fingers while working on the carved trees. She also needs a favor: her bird has been left alone at her remote home and needs water and food immediately. This will require Kyungha to drop everything and fly to Jeju Island, find her way to the remote property, and see if the bird is living or dead. 

 

And all this occurs in an unusually strong storm that has dropped snow all over the island. 

 

Essentially, this, with some history of both Kyungha and Inseon, their families, and their relationship, which is kind of ambiguous, makes up the first half of the story. 

 

We get some hints of what is to come. Inseon’s mother was a child who, along with her older sister, survived the Jeju Massacre, losing the rest of their family in what turns out to be highly traumatic and horrible ways. 

 

For the second half, which is divided into two further parts, the line between reality, history, and hallucination becomes seriously blurred. The ending is ambiguous - what really happened? Was any of it real? And that actually works okay, although I do think that kind of ending is a bit trendy right now. 

 

The bigger problem is that so much of the second half becomes Inseon and Kyungha sorting through all the old newspaper clippings and other research that Inseon’s late mother did to research the massacre and try to find out what happened to her brother. 

 

And what I mean by that is that the plot goes so off track into the past, with laborious detail, statistics, anecdotes that are unconnected to the actual characters of the story - it really becomes more like a nonfiction account of the massacre as it occurred in multiple places - that the momentum of the book is lost. I also think that the author gets bogged down in her outrage at the inhumanity of the US-sponsored dictatorship and its thugs that she ceases to write in an effective or compelling way. It feels self-indulgent. 

 

Now, I do understand that some of this may be because I was never the intended reader for this book. It was written in Korean, for Korean readers, who I presume are more likely to see the incidents the way we Americans might see our own Civil War, and find the details more personal and thus compelling. 

 

For me, it was enough to get a taste of things. I can understand that our own understanding of the Korean War (like the Vietnam War) is deeply flawed on multiple levels. Both came from the end of a colonialist occupation. Both ended up as proxy wars between the great powers. And in both cases, the great powers either slaughtered civilians themselves, or encouraged the local governments and armies to do so. Although equally true is that things would probably have gone pretty FUBAR even if the US had stayed out of Korea entirely. Humans are just shitty, no matter our ethnicity. 

 

It is a shame that the book felt this way, because, had the historical stuff been edited better, and the book shortened by a good hour or two, it could have been a tight, effective story. Nothing important would have been lost by summarizing the historical details rather than creating a documentary within a novel. 

 

That leads me back to the main story, the one of two women who are bonded in a fascinating way. They each have their family trauma, and it helps to know the background. 

 

The atmosphere of the snowstorm is amazing, and the language of the descriptions is gorgeous. How much is original and how much is the translation by Emily Yae Won and Paige Aniyah Morris is not clear to me, but the combination makes for truly beautiful writing. 

 

At its best, the book is luminous and evocative, terrifying and sublime, deeply emotional yet restrained. For much of the first half, and for the final moments, I was completely sucked in and immersed in the storytelling. 

 

And then, an hour would go by at a time, and I struggled to listen, as it got bogged down in the details. 

 

I wonder if the curse of being an award-winning author is that editors are afraid to tell you to make cuts. Because I really think that had there been better editing, a better focus on the essentials rather than detail, and a little less of a preachy outraged tone, this could have been a truly amazing book. 

 

It’s still worth a read, I would say, because the good is so good, and you can, at least on the printed version, skim a bit when it starts to feel like a documentary. 

 

The audiobook, read by Greta Jung is good. Jung does a good job overall of portraying the characters. My only quibble is that at times it is a bit difficult to pick up the switch from the voice of Kyungha and Inseon, and since the stories being told shift often, this can make it a bit difficult at times to keep straight whose family story is whose. It’s a tough one to do, of course, because you have two women who are fairly similar - you can’t rely on dialect here at all. Overall, though, a good listening experience. 

Mojave Ghost by Forrest Gander

Source of book: I own this

 

My wife occasionally finds interesting collections of poetry by modern authors. This book is one of those.

 

I wasn’t really familiar with Forrest Gander before reading this book, which is one of his more recent ones. Gander is a native Californian, born in the Mojave Desert (of the title) - specifically Barstow. Which, if you know, you know.

 

He has written not just poetry, but fiction, nonfiction, and translations. His Pulitzer Prize came from one of his poetry collections, but he has won other awards for his translations from both Spanish and Japanese. 

 

Gander originally got his degree in geology, and had been planning to further study paleontology. However, a cancer diagnosis made him reconsider everything, and he switched to writing. 

 

He has taught, traveled, collaborated with artists in other media, and generally followed his own path. 

 

Mojave Ghost is an interesting book. It consists of a single rambling account of his journey along the 800 miles of the San Andreas Fault, primarily the part in the desert. But it isn’t exactly narrative. It is mood, observations, aphorisms, philosophy, and a bit of anything you might write a poem about. Throughout, it is haunted by his ongoing grief over the death of his first wife, but also twined with his awakening love for his current partner. 

 

It is one of those books that you don’t so much read as let it wash over you. And yes, it needs to be read aloud. The words are delicious, and the sounds are part of the meaning. There are a lot of unusual words, unusual choices of words, and some that seem almost made up. The meaning is in the sound, in the implication. 

 

Rather than try to further describe it, I figure I will just quote a few of my favorite passages. Understanding, however, that they are better in context, and that I could have picked many times as many. 

 

Back here, he imagines her

everywhere he looks. As the spring hills boing green.

 

All awake are the crows.

 

Flayed by the paper cut of her scent in his memory.

 

For her, it was home. This town

where various stirps of Christian 

fundamentalism intersect 

with unchecked retail sprawl.

 

Now the train just pass on through.

 

I’m not sure if this is referring to Barstow or not, but it could fit any number of desert railroad towns that are now just where the trains pass through on their way to somewhere else.

 

Back at Lana’s Diner, watching the woman

at the far table sweep her hair to her other shoulder

and flash her teeth at her companion.

 

Red sauce, says the woman when her eggs come,

and the waitress returns with ketchup.

 

As I’m picking up my check

from the table where I’ve eaten alone,

the waitress calls Come again, and

instinctively I answer, We will.

 

Handwritten note near the cash register:

Do Not Lean Arm on Pecan Roll.

 

So I pay up and step into humid

rock-flavored afternoon heat.

Dark pompadour clouds casting giant shadows.

 

There is so much in that passage. We all know the sort of diner, of course. The devastating realization that the speaker still thinks in terms of “we” even though she is no more. And that line about leaning on the pecan roll. That is hilarious. 

 

As latent with futurity as a closed stopcock,

the dawn redwood before it leafs out.

While in a brief sideshow, our lives take place nearby.

 

It’s so contagious: your quick, rubato, navel laugh.

 

Walking side by side

through Armstrong Woods,

its terminated air strong as snuff,

We feel the kick-in of elation.

 

Only in your company do I

concentrate and hold together

like the tightening vortex of a tornado.

 

I’ve wandered in Armstrong Woods several times, most recently with my wife, who adores the redwood forest. But how about that last stanza? There are these emotional punches throughout the poem, seriously excellent writing about feelings that can’t be entirely captured with words. 

 

Snorting at the uselessness of poetry, the proctologist

we meet at the New Year’s party is armed

with a restricted vocabulary of catch phrases and 

pomposities. A mind, you whisper to me

as we turn away, can rivel up like an old apple.

 

The words become so small, they cannot stand.

 

Oh god. Yeah, we all know that type.

 

Not, you say, to fall back

endlessly into the routine of ourselves.

Nor to compose ourselves always

from the same syllables.

 

I love that one. 

 

You tell me a heartache is not an object of perception.

I wonder. But what do I know of your heart?

 

Experience is first a matter of feeling.

Even the feeling of not having a feeling.

 

The tokens of love we exchange

don’t express love’s meaning so much

as its ineffability.

 

So my experience of you is infinite. Never

contained within your dimensions.

 

So many of the parts I loved are like this, trying to grab onto words that give a vision into inner life. This, in my view, is why the loss of poetry in our culture is one of the reasons for the rise of toxic masculinity and men who channel everything into anger. We need poetry. 

 

When they tell me it’s narcissistic 

to speak of regrets, to let myself circle

in this whirlpool and to go on

about it, when they tell me I need

to move forward, to focus outward,

to offer my attention to others,

 

aren’t they themselves prompted 

by an overbearing concern for control

which is another form of narcissism? Isn’t

this very mourning a constancy

to something beyond myself? Don’t

I have the right to my own experience

of heartache and anguish and failure?

 

You do, child. But not for so long.

 

At peace means despair

has settled in its place.

 

There is a profound truth there: that a concern for control, and particularly that form of control that demands that the sufferer avoid making others uncomfortable, is itself an expression of narcissism. I know it was (and still is) used as a weapon against me. Why do I bring up the past? Why can’t I just say only nice things? Why can’t I move on?

 

Maybe I can’t because I am still in mourning for the loss of my family, of my autonomy regarding college, of the love and acceptance I needed. 

 

I also find that enjambment does some good work in the second stanza. Reading aloud brings out “Isn’t” and “Don’t,” the speaker’s rebuke to the false comforters. 

 

Again, throughout the book, grief is mixed with the thrill of a new love. One does not displace the other. Both are true at the same time. 

 

I recall the human event 

of you turning your face

toward me for the first time. How

many lives before I fail to see it so clearly?

 

There are times when, in our mind at least,

we must swim back upstream

to where the love originated.

 

That it might be what it was and is again.

In bed and out.

 

Because all that is in me is in your eyes.

 

You, who are the discharge of my singularity.

 

So very good. 

 

She wasn’t fixed, necessarily, on happiness

which she couldn’t, in any case, distinguish

from luck. What she wanted was to flourish.

 

Happiness, she said once, is for amateurs.

 

The one exception to the poem as a running stream of thoughts and events is a section near the end where Gander sets a single stanza on each page, each with a Haiku-like image of a person or place. I picked this one, because I kind of resemble it. 

 

In long-sleeved shirts and hats with neck flaps,

they hike a thaumaturgic canyon path

limned with tall mustard flowers.

 

The final section is entitled simply “Coda,” and is a single stream of consciousness. The writer is at a place where the effects of the fault are visible, the rupture of the rocks, the displacement. It is in that desert place somewhere, but identifying details are sparse. The ending of the poem is so good that I will end this post with it. 

 

Heat and silence. Still, the ground insists

its openings will be filled. Why

not apply? Apply myself. Over and over. This argument

goes beyond me. I who have never been

homeless. Groundless. Am I just going to stand gobsmacked

at the mirror while my years run out? What

 

is left of experience that hasn’t

been measured? Is there

an app for that? As I bend, I feel

the weight of the specimen stones

I carry in my jacket pocket slide forward.

As I continue my solo descent

along the canyon’s seam. As I sip

and hold a quick breath. As I slip from sight

into a chimney of rock. 

 

I definitely enjoyed this book, and will probably have to add some more of his writings to my library. 

 

Radium Girls by D. W. Gregory (Empty Space 2026)

Back in 2017, I read The Radium Girls by Kate Moore as a random read off the library’s featured shelf. It certainly is eye-opening about the callousness of corporate capitalism when it comes to worker safety. That issue seems more relevant than ever, with the Republican party hell-bent on removing regulations that protect workers and gutting the agencies that enforce the rules. 

 

When I originally saw that The Empty Space was going to do this play, I assumed that the play was based on the book. It turns out that the play actually came first, by a decade. I have no idea if the play inspired Moore to write the book, but because the underlying facts drive both stories, the tales that both tell are essentially the same. 

 

Since I already wrote a summary of the basic facts in my prior post, I will just copy it here:

 

In the period of time spanning from the beginning of World War I through the 1930s, glow-in-the-dark faces for watches , gunsights, and aircraft instruments were in great demand. Back in that time, this was accomplished by using a paint containing the element radium, combined with zinc sulfide. The radioactive radium would stimulate a glow from the zinc. 

 

The radium paint was carefully applied to the dial by skilled painters - almost all of them young women hired for the task. In order to get the fine brush point, the painters were advised to use their mouth and tongue to shape the bristles before painting - a practice which predictably led to the workers ingesting radium. While radium was well known to be toxic at the time, this fact was hidden from the young women - and in some cases deliberate lies were told to them regarding the danger. Within a few years, the women began to experience radiation poisoning, and many of them died at young ages as a result.

 

In what is well known to lawyers and law students as a common theme of history, the corporations lied, bribed, threatened, retaliated, and fought against all attempts to hold them legally responsible for killing their workers. Finally, some courageous lawyers, working mostly for free, teamed up with the most determined of the workers, and won. Soon afterward, laws were changed to protect workers, and OSHA was created, to prevent this sort of horror from happening again.

 

The book is plenty long, and has the time to explore the stories of many more women than the play does. In addition, the book follows both the New Jersey factory (the one in the play) and also the Illinois factory (which is not in the play.) 

 

This matters a bit to me as a lawyer, because, while the New Jersey lawsuit settled (as depicted in the play), the one in Illinois actually went to trial, and involved some serious lawyer badassery from Leonard Grossman, who worked pro bono, taking the case all the way to the US Supreme Court. The appellate case actually made it into my law school education on the issue of when the Statute of Limitations begins to run when there is ongoing damage that was concealed. 

 

The play follows two of the women involved in the New Jersey lawsuit against U. S. Radium, Grace and Kathryn (Katherine in real life). 

 

It has been far too long since I read the book to remember all of the personal life details of the various women, so all I can say is that I think the play takes a few artistic liberties. 

 

For example, I can’t remember the whole thing of Grace putting off marriage and then getting left by her fiance Tom being in the book, although I might have missed it. What I was able to confirm from my notes on the book is that another Catherine, who spearheaded the Illinois lawsuit, tragically dying before it went to trial, was in fact married to a man named Tom, who didn’t leave her, but in fact stayed in the lawsuit after Catherine’s claim became one for wrongful death. 

 

Other than that, and regarding the legal and regulatory issues, I believe the play hews closely to the underlying facts.

 

This particular production was by local theater The Empty Space, which I have often praised in this blog, and for many years. It is a local gem that has been a big part of our lives since my wife and I were young adults. 

 

Making her directorial debut this time is our longtime friend Marina Gradowitz. And by “long time,” I mean literal infancy. It has been a great pleasure to watch her grow up and turn into a thespian badass. 

 

Usually, we have seen her on stage - and she is an excellent actor. If she is not on stage, she is typically behind the sound and light boards. 

 

For this play, not only did she direct, she also designed the sound (including the music), and the set, which I thought was really cool. In fact, so cool that I took a picture. 

 

As usual for The Empty Space, a lot had to happen with a minimum of space, budget, and time. Scenes had to change quickly, actors had to cover multiple roles, and actors had to project without microphones. In other words, the usual things that require creativity and vision. 

 

Marina added a decent bit to the play that wasn’t officially in the script. The most notable addition was in keeping the dead radium girls on stage after they start dying. Instead, they wore creepy masks and “haunted” the action with careful and disconcerting choreography. In a dramatic moment at the end, they take the masks off one by one as a reminder of the closing words of the play, that they were never mere “workers” as their bosses saw them - “I never saw their faces” is the lament of Arthur Roeder - but women, humans with value and worth. And faces. 

 

I thought it worked really well. It was a constant reminder of the steadily growing body count, the price of profits, the legacy of the lies. 

 

The other artistic decision that I thought was good was that instead of having an on-stage narrator filling in the details, as in the original, this was done through “radio broadcasts” - news coming over the airwaves. And it was done with that old-fashioned lo-fi vibe from the era. I loved it, and thought it made the flow of the play better. 

 

I should also mention Ron Warren’s light design. In keeping with the theme, there was a lot of lurid green, but also contrasting colors, done in a way that some really cool shadows were cast on faces and sets. It wasn’t anything fancy, but it was effective. 

 

The central character of the play is Grace, played by Charlotte Smith, who I have seen on stage quite a few times, although not usually in a lead role. She did an excellent job, sliding between the optimism of youth, determination for justice, and grief at an early death sentence. This is a pretty heavy play, so the brighter moments mattered a lot. 

 

The counterweight to Grace is Arthur, the president of U. S. Radium, who was largely responsible for the coverup and the character assassination of the victims. It was the discovery of his lies (and alteration of the report on the dangers of radium) that swung the litigation in favor of the victims. 

 

In the play, he is given more nuance than I recall him having in the book. Not that he is any less villainous. But he is given the chance to be haunted by the evil he has done, and given the chance to have second thoughts. 

 

Alex Mitts took on that role, a bit of a departure from his usual roles as the nice guy. I found it a perfect casting, and one of the finest performances he has done. (And I generally enjoy his work a lot.) From the beginning, I could feel the tension between the nagging of his conscience and the pressures from the shareholders and the reassurances from the company lawyers and scientists that the radium is safe. 

 

In fact, in the play, Roeder actually drinks some of the radium water quack remedies that are being pushed by the corporation. So he himself may well be doomed. 

 Grace (Charlotte Smith) and Roeder (Alex Mitts)

 

As I noted, there are a lot of doubled parts, and quite a list of secondary characters drawn from real life. A couple of times it was a few beats before I figured out whether (for example) an actor was a doctor or a lawyer after a quick change. But mostly it was smooth. 

 

I’ll specifically name Corissa Garcia, Alex Singh, Ian Sharples, Matthew Borton, Kiera Empsey, Carlie Wood, and Jason Dollar as holding down the supporting roles. There were a number of others in bit roles, and overall it was a good job. The story came through, which is the most important part. 

 

The vision for this production was excellent, and it was well executed. 

 

It really is a powerful story, and a devastating one. We aren’t that far removed from those pre-OSHA times, and our safety infrastructure is fragile and under attack. 

 

We really should have learned that industry cannot and will not police itself. It didn’t during the Gilded Age, when industry owned politicians. It didn’t during the Soviet era, when industry was owned by the government. It will never put people over profit, which is why it must be forced to, by regulation, investigation, and enforcement from outside entities - government, the press, unions. 

 

Radium Girls runs this weekend as well, so go see it if you can. 

 

March by Geraldine Brooks

Source of book: I own this

 

I had high hopes for this book. My youngest kid read Horse, another book by the author, and liked it. And, the book won a freaking Pulitzer. 

 

Unfortunately, this book was disappointing. The key problem was its use of lazy anachronism which rendered its female characters fundamentally unbelievable. 

 

I have run across this phenomenon before, of course. Plenty of genre fiction authors like to put 21st Century feminists in the past. For example, The Lie Tree is a murder mystery set in the past, with a protagonist who talks using modern feminist terms. But it is also YA and not exactly serious literature, so I just enjoyed the mystery. 

 

Serious literary fiction - particularly historical fiction - should be held to a higher standard. Which this book does not meet. 

 

The premise of the book is interesting, and it has its moments. 

 

The book is a riff on Little Women, which I read with a couple of friends in preparation for reading this book together. “March” is Mr. March, the father in that story, who goes off to be a chaplain in the Civil War, gets ill and nearly dies, and is brought home to convalesce. 

 

March is all about March, and also about the story that was never told about what went down. It is, I would say, intended as a bit of a corrective against the dynamic in Little Women, with Marmee being the impossible angel who never has a bad thought, and dad being the beloved and noble figure. 

 

Because Little Women has autobiographical elements, it is easy (and probably accurate) to see Mr. March as being the same person as Bronson Alcott, Lou’s father. 

 

And he was, well, a character. 

 

Part of the Transcendentalist movement, he was the True Believer, the ideologue, the guy who lacked basic practicality and common sense. 

 

Reading through his life story, it is clear that he had great intentions, and incompetent and misguided execution of those intentions. He also seems to have been allergic to taking advice from smarter people, including his long-suffering wife. 

 

This all comes through well in March, and is in my opinion the strongest part of the book. 

 

The book tells of March/Bronson’s early days selling notions in the South, where he (with his typical lack of common sense) fell in love with plantation culture, while failing to notice that it was propped up by the brutal enslavement system. 

 

It also tells briefly of the Alcott’s time as a stop on the Underground Railroad. It isn’t difficult to see that part of the challenge of that was for Marmee to keep Bronson from blowing their cover and getting his ass into hot water. 

 

And that was the one thing that the Alcotts actually succeeded at. 

 

Mention could be made of his ill-advised attempt to disrupt a trial. Or his many failed attempts at teaching, where he let his ideology get in the way of doing a competent job. 

 

And, my favorite, which was, sadly, NOT in the book: that time he tried to do a vegetarian commune except he was so extreme that he refused to use manure to fertilize the crops, because that was stealing from the cattle. 

 

(Note: I have cats. I can assure you that they have no interest in what you do with their shit…as long as you keep that litter box nice and clean for them.) 

 

Oh, and one more: the real-life Bronson may not have actually served in the Civil War, but he did get gravely ill…and shared his germs with Thoreau, who likely died of that infection. 

 

Plot spoilers ahead.

 

So, in March, Bronson Alcott’s letters and diaries and writings are drawn from, sometimes word for word, particularly his letters home while out volunteering. The incidents in the book that were not from Bronson’s life were based on other real-life events. Battles, personal incidents, and more. 

 

But there are a number of incidents which are filled in from the author’s imagination. 

 

The key one is the existence of an enslaved woman named Grace, who serves as part of the love triangle along with Bronson and Marmee. And the first part of the book is pretty darn horny. 

 

Which is, in my opinion, a bit of unnecessary artistic license. In the book, the couple has passionate sex by Walden Pond, resulting in a hasty marriage and the conception of Meg. In real life, the first Alcott daughter was born a perfectly respectable 10 months after the marriage. It was the marriage which was “scandalous,” as the couple - ages 29 and 30, by the way - got engaged without her family’s permission. But it can’t have been too scandalous - her brother (who introduced them) performed the ceremony. 

 

We also learn that during his trip south, March/Bronson met Grace and had an affair of some sort with her. (He is a thoroughly unreliable narrator, so we can’t believe what he says.)

 

Later, by coincidence, they meet again during the Civil War. Maybe they rekindle their affair? It isn’t clear. And then again, she becomes his nurse during his illness.

 

At this point, we get the story, not from March/Bronson’s point of view, but from Marmee’s.

 

And this is where the book totally lost me. (Although to be fair, there were huge problems already when it came to Grace, so…)

 

Marmee finds out about the affair, confronts Grace, etc.

 

The whole episode is so anachronistic that I just couldn’t suspend my disbelief any further. 

 

Because the Bronson portion of the book was at least based on his writings, he came off as fairly believable. His voice seemed to belong to his era. 

 

But neither Grace nor Marmee would have acted like that, or talked like that, or really existed in those forms at all. 

 

Let’s start with one thing at a time. 

 

So, initially, Grace is plausible. An enslaved woman who is really the daughter of the master, and raised with a higher level of education. Okay, that did sometimes happen. 

 

Along comes March, who becomes buddies with the master, while clearly having the hots for Grace. Fine, plausible. 

 

But from there, things go sideways. The idea that somehow Grace would bare her heart to this white guy who not only was buddies with her enslaver but who continually put his foot in his mouth is ludicrous. Grace is no fool - and neither were other enslaved people. Which is why, in books written by the enslaved who freed themselves - see Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - they made it clear that you never told a white man more than you had to. 

 

Ironically, Brooks gets this right in the episode of the young woman on the Underground Railroad. We never learn her name, she never tells her story. 

 

And this is to people who are literally helping her to freedom. Not to some random white guy crushing on the master’s library. And certainly not to someone who easily could (and eventually does) get her beaten within an inch of her life. 

 

Of course March would be that stupid. But Grace would not. 

 

So then we get into that stupid scene where Marmee hears March call Grace a term of endearment. 

 

Neither Marmee nor Grace behaves how any reasonable person would have in that era. Or any person at all. 

 

I start with the fact that social expectations were different regarding male sexuality. 

 

Most men lost their virginity to either a sex worker or a servant/slave. This is not merely well established fact, but it was socially expected. Male virginity and marriage was not expected, and was widely looked on as showing a lack of masculinity. And women thought this way too. (Seriously, I’ve read the books by female authors!) 

 

In a more recent book I read, The Ministry of Time, there is a great reference to 19th Century sexuality. A main character, brought back to the present from that time, is tested for STIs, and comes back negative. The modern doctors correctly conclude that he is likely a virgin. 

 

This isn’t to say that there weren’t men who were virgins at marriage, but that social expectations were to the contrary. 

 

The likelihood that Marmee cared about March’s sexual history before marriage is extremely low. And given March’s delirium at the time he uses his term of endearment to Grace, there is no reason she would automatically assume she was a current (or even past) lover. 

 

But even more ludicrous is that she pretty much stalks Grace, shows up at her employer’s house, and confronts her. Why on earth would she do that? What is the point? 

 

If she thought Grace was a threat, she could simply, like any white woman of the era, made a complaint and ruined Grace’s life. Or at least had her reassigned. Why would you make a scene, make yourself look bad, and possibly put Grace’s life at risk?

 

And, on the other side, why the hell would Grace once again bare her soul to this furious white woman?

 

All she would have had to do - and would have done in real life - would have been to deny any connection. March presumably mistook her for someone he used to know. He was clearly delirious. And all black people look alike, right? (Sarcasm font, but you know what I mean in this context.) Just deny and play dumb - a little code switch would have been so easy for an intelligent black woman with lots of experience. 

 

And then, Marmee would look even more crazy and foolish than she already did. Which is why I strongly doubt she would have bothered with a confrontation. Even if she were as foolish and impulsive as March/Bronson, she surely would have known this wouldn’t end well unless she got a confession. Which rarely happens in real life. And would certainly not have happened in this case.

 

Marmee is essentially a 21st Century semi-feminist woman, one that both is justifiably frustrated with the double standard and holding modern views of expectations of male behavior. (Modern religiously biased expectations, one might say.) 

 

Okay, so I have vented properly about this. (My wife, for what it is worth, shares my frustration with lazy anachronism in writing.)

 

In thinking about why Brooks struggled with this, I have a few theories. 

 

First, she is an Australian white woman writing about the American Civil War. Now, I am not one of those who thinks writers should only write what they know. But I also have reservations about writers inserting themselves in unfamiliar contexts and cultures, at least without a great deal of care. 

 

For example, I suspect that a white American writer would be equally clumsy writing about indigenous Australians during the age of conquest. There are things a guy like me would miss - the nuances, and the cultural baggage that still remains from the era. 

 

Another theory is that Brooks seems good at imagining herself in this book. Marmee reacts to March and Grace the way Geraldine Brooks would respond. Grace reacts to March and Marmee the way Geraldine Brooks would respond. 

 

March feels real, because he is based on Bronson Alcott and uses his words and ideas. Marmee would feel more real if she sounded like, to use a couple of examples, Mary Wollstonecraft or Elizabeth Cady Stanton. 

 

I want to contrast this with a few books written by other authors that felt far more resonant. First is James by Percival Everett, which our book club read a couple years ago. The other is Tar Baby by Toni Morrison, which I am reading right now. 

 

In both cases, the white characters seem thoroughly realistic. Both male and female characters feel realistic. 

 

And the reason why is that they act, talk, react, and behave consistent with their time, place, and station in life. As a white guy, I feel like I have met people like the characters, whether in real life, or in books of the era. (Everett’s white characters are better than Mark Twain’s black characters - it’s quite striking.) 

 

One final quibble, which would have been minor if the other issues hadn’t been there: the book isn’t subtle, but rather preachy. I won’t get into it, but there were times I felt the book dragged for that reason. It was set up to show the ills of the enslavement system, and the unconscious prejudice of New England, which is fine, but it felt to me a lot like Brooks was trying to educate people who had no idea that the North was racist too. Or even that rape was endemic to the antebellum South. 

 

That said, there were some things that I thought were well done in this book. 

 

I thought that a lot of the section from March’s point of view did a great job of letting his own sense of self-importance and white-saviorism show through in his own words. He is clearly unaware of what he sounds like, and that makes him a good - and believable - character. 

 

The more that a scene is drawn from historical records, the more believable it feels. This includes the battles and the incidents in Alcott’s trip through the South as a young man. 

 

While a bit preachy, I did appreciate that the book captured the general resistance toward the education of black people, and the mistreatment of “contraband” - the freed peoples that the Union army failed so badly. 

 

There were also plenty of pithy comments on religion which seem fully true today as back in the day. 

 

The anti-war ideas of Marmee are the most era-appropriate of her views. 

 

And, at the core of the book, I think that it does capture a lot of the complexity of Bronson Alcott: his noble aspirations, his lack of sense, his talent at doing and saying the wrong thing, his inability to spot con artists, his unwillingness to listen to advice and take counsel. Again, the part of the book from his point of view is better written. 

 

I’ll share a few of the quotes that were interesting to me. This one, from Alcott’s writings, is good. 

 

“I find it suits me, this job of chaplain. I am, indeed, a ‘chapel man,’ who carries within himself all that’s needed for worship. At last, it is possible to have a part in faith without carved pulpit or Gothic arch, without lace altar cloth and without robes, save my suit of unornamented black.”

 

Or this one:

 

One of these, who was clearly dying, said he was a Catholic and asked if I was a priest. Knowing full well that there was no priest to bring to him, I looked around to see if we were overheard, and then I whispered to him that I was. I let him make his confession, and gave him absolution as I had seen the Fathers do it. I have wondered, since then, if I did wrong. I cannot think that even the exacting God of Rome would find so. 

 

And this one:

 

If there is one class of person I have never quite trusted, it is a man who knows no doubt.

 

There is a nice call out to the Quakers, who are well documented as having been the backbone of the Underground Railroad and the Abolitionist movement generally. 

 

In Concord, because of our work in the Underground Railroad, we had come to know many who fit the latter description. Mostly they were Quakers, whose abolitionism and pacifism sprang from the selfsame core belief: there is that of God in every person, and therefore you may not enslave any man, and neither may you kill him, even to liberate the enslaved. 

 

And one here from Marmee’s point of view:

 

I am not alone in this. I only let him do to me what men have ever done to women: march off to empty glory and hollow acclaim and leave us behind to pick up the pieces. The broken cities, the burned barns, the innocent injured beasts, the ruined bodies of the boys we bore and the men we lay with. 

 

I am reminded of the profound and powerful poem, “The End and the Beginning” by Wislawa Szymborska, also about the process of rebuilding after war. 

 

By the way, the above passage is one that I felt was likely that Marmee could have thought in that era. 

 

I’ll end with a bit that really nails the problem with March/Bronson: his savior complex and sense of self-importance. Marmee may sound a bit modern here, but I believe the sentiment is realistic. 

 

“Brave enough! How brave do you need to be to satisfy yourself? I said pride, and pride it is, when you speak so. For it is not enough for you to be accounted commonly courageous. Oh no: you must be a Titan. You must carry all the wounded off the field. You must not only try to save a man, you must succeed at it, and when you can’t, you heap ashes on your head as if all the blame were yours - none to spare for the generals who blundered you into that battle, or the stretcher bearers, who also fled for their lives; or for Stone’s own panic, or for the fact that he never troubled to learn to swim, not even a modicum of blame for the man who shot him…You did not kill Silas Stone, or Zannah’s child. The war killed both of them. You must accept that.”

 

This is really the story of March’s life: go in trying to be the hero, ignore what the smarter people advise, do something stupid, and fail. Or, in some of the cases above, just try and fail - the incident on the battlefield was not March’s fault, and he had no time to think. 

 

In this sense, we can all draw a bit of a lesson. We can’t do everything. We won’t succeed at everything. But we should try, and we should listen to others, and we should be humble enough to realize that our powers are limited, and that all we can do is what we can. We are not responsible for outcomes, just for our actions. 

 

I really wish I had been able to like this book. It was a promising premise, it had its moments, but it was ultimately doomed by anachronism and difficulty in creating believable female characters. 

The Gluten Lie by Alan Levinovitz

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

 

I have had this book on my “to read” list for a number of years, but had put it off for a few reasons, including the fact that I didn’t want to make waves with certain relatives.

 

The main thing that triggered my reading of this now is that, with the re-election of the Orange Asshole, crucial government positions have been filled with the grifters and charlatans of the “alternative medicine” movement, resulting in the gutting of our evidence-based medical research, the undermining of vaccines, and the promotion of pseudoscience (aka fucking lies) as if it were the equivalent of careful research. 

 

This includes thoroughly unqualified and downright loony figures such as RFK Jr. and professional snake oil salesmen like Mehmet Oz. 

 

I also was triggered a bit by a claim from one of the true believers in the gluten lie that the existence of transgender people was caused by eating gluten. This was so far outside of any possible reality - and also a full sign that the belief had become a religion and ideology - that I figured the well-being of my LGBTQ children deserved a post about how trying to find a “cause” of human variety is rooted in both bigotry and superstition. 

 

I also have a lot of history with this particular form of grifting, starting in my infancy. I will talk about that throughout this post. 

 

I will also discuss the ways that the particular form of thinking (or, more accurately, not thinking) that lies behind the diet grift have infected all elements of our society, to our great detriment - and that includes religion and politics particularly. 

 

The same embrace of superstitious bullshit that leads to the diet grift also is a significant factor in the success of religious false prophets like Bill Gothard and James Dobson, and also political con men like the Orange Asshole. 

 

To set the stage for this book, I think it helps to understand the author and his purpose. 

 

Levinovitz is not a scientist. He is not a medical professional. 

 

Rather, he is a scholar (Ph.D) and professor (James Madison University) of religion. 

 

The book therefore, is not about refuting the lies and bullshit of the “diet will cure everything” grift. If you want that, I recommend following the Science Based Medicine blog. 

 

Instead, what Levinovitz does is examine the mythology behind the grift - because what is happening is nothing whatsoever new. In fact, you can find it in recognizable form literally thousands of years ago. And around the world. 

 

Because the root isn’t anything related to science or medicine - it is a religion. A form of superstition. A belief in fundamental falsehoods about our human past and deep mistrust of modernity, progress, and the present. 

 

(Now you can see why this applies so equally to politics and religion…) 

 

Put another way, Levinovitz analyzes the grift not as being about physiology, but about psychology.

 

This makes a lot of sense to me. I have talked a lot in previous posts about why I don’t even engage with MAGA people anymore. For the same reason, I do not engage with “alternative medicine” believers either. When it comes to family with these beliefs, I do my best to just ignore them and change the subject. 

 

In a related but different context, Cory Doctorow noted that arguing with people who are “true believers” in a grift is like arguing with Scientologists. The conversation is doomed from the start, because it isn’t about an exchange of information or a search for truth. It is always and always and always about defending the superstition from any intrusion of reality that might challenge it. Always. 

 

Before I dive into the book itself, let me give some background information on myself. Some of the history I have included in other posts over the years, but I don’t remember entirely where, so rather than link or try to dig it up, I will just tell the stories as I need to here.

 

I was a very sickly child. 

 

My poor mom ended up giving up on any attempts to have a career in large part because I was sick so much as a toddler that it wasn’t practical. Likewise, when I started school, I caught everything. During my short career as a normal school kid (even if it was John MacArthur’s private church school), I missed so many days due to bronchitis and other issues that the principal recommended we homeschool. 

 

If not for antibiotics, I would certainly have never lived to adulthood, and even then, my health remained fairly fragile until my 20s. Let’s just say that I have never taken health for granted, or been able to believe that illness was caused by moral weakness. 

 

Understandably, with an ill and difficult child, my mom looked for answers. 

 

And there were certainly grifters more than eager to sell them to her. 

 

One of the earliest one was the idea that by taking pills made from bovine adrenal glands, my own adrenal supply would grow, and thus my immune system would grow stronger. 

 

Leaving aside all of the other falsehoods and leaps of logic, the idea that eating cow adrenals would help my own is precisely the same “you are what you eat” superstition that leads to eating tiger penis to cure erectile dysfunction. There is no plausible scientific pathway for it to work. But it is an ancient superstition. 

 

In reality, my health very slowly improved, regressed, improved again, and so on. But it wasn’t the cow adrenal that did it. If anything, what worked best was being loved and cared for by my parents. 

 

And the antibiotics and vaccines and eventually limiting my exposure to large groups of children. 

 

My entire life after that was a sequence of one stupid diet or “health” change after another. First, it was about fixing my body - getting me healthy. But later, it became about “fixing” me in other ways. And that involved our foray into Gothard’s cult, and all kinds of psychological manipulation to try to make me into a different, more compliant, less obstinate person. To a degree, that project to fix me has continued to the present day. 

 

And it is all based on the same superstition. In fact, when I first started getting the background knowledge in science and medicine to recognize these as grifts, it became the source of a lot of needless conflict with my parents. About diet, of course, but also about religion, politics, music, education - because it affects everything.

 

So, let’s jump into the book a bit. Gluten is just one of the chapters. Levinovitz also looks at the vilification of fat, sugar, and salt; and the promotion of “detoxes.” 

 

He ends the book with a brilliant section. He ostensibly gives his own “miracle diet,” blaming all food packaging (plastic, paper, aluminum, and glass) for everything. 

 

Then, he reproduces the same section but with notes in the margin, showing where he stole his language from - it is nearly word-for-word from the grifts he discusses earlier in the book. By pointing out how the language and ideas are just recycled from fad to fad, and also how fallacies and junk science are used to support the claims (instead of actual evidence), he makes it clear that anyone - AI included - can create one of these grifts. They are all so alike that they take zero creativity to create. 

 

The book starts off with the MSG scare of the 1980s - which I remember well. For a while, my parents thought my brother was sensitive to it - headaches, etc. - but after the scare subsided, the issue went away as well. MSG, of course, is a natural substance (as are all of the substances vilified in diet grifts), present in things from mushrooms to seaweed, as well as in soy. And indeed in a lot more foods than one would realize without looking it up. 

 

Why was MSG targeted, though? The reason - this will become a theme - isn’t physiological, but psychological. 

 

And the solution made sense. Most domestic cooks were unfamiliar with monosodium glutamate, a foreign, scary-sounding chemical. 

 

This led to bans, removal from baby food, and a bunch of other actions that turned out to be unsupported by the actual evidence.

 

In contrast to popular belief, clinical trials strongly suggested that MSG did not produce symptoms like migraines. Today, food allergy experts believe that the overwhelming majority of reactions to MSG are psychological, not physiological. 

 

Fast forward to today, and can you think of the last time you even heard about MSG? And yet, it is still in common use…

 

A factor that comes into play here, as the author points out, is that figuring out the effects of diet is incredibly complicated. You really can’t do the kind of study necessary to figure out long-term effects. You can’t do double-blind (the gold standard) because how do you fake eating something like bread? Nobody is willing to limit their diet for decades just to do research. (Or at least very few.) And separating out an identical control group is even harder. Everything is connected. In the context of MSG, the author notes:

 

For most of us, cutting out MSG or going gluten-free involves broader changes in how we approach food. That makes it difficult to sort out what caused what. Your headaches went away - but was it the absence of MSG or an increase in home-cooked meals? Did you lose weight by going gluten-free or by eating less fast food? To complicate matters further, discovering a dietary solution feels empowering, and empowerment itself can lead to significant positive physiological changes. 

 

This is another reason why controlled studies are needed to determine effects. The placebo effect is very real, as is the nocebo effect. And this has always been the case. 

 

When the general public believed that demons made them sick, exorcists made money selling holy water. Now we are bombarded with thousands of dietary solutions to our health problems, endorsed by genuine doctors and nutritionists - fat-melting miracle pills, detoxification smoothies, vitamin-rich goji berries - and we buy them, figuratively and literally. Frequently these solutions come packaged with a scapegoat. Get rid of this one terrible substance and there will be no more cancer. No MSG, no headaches. Eliminate gluten, eliminate Alzheimer’s. (And melt fat in the process!) It’s that simple: point an accusatory finger, tell the right story, and a new demon is born. 

 

To conclude this opening chapter, Levinovitz lays out his central argument:

 

Everyday foods don’t have life-giving or death-dealing properties. Grocery stores aren’t pharmacies. Your kitchen isn’t stocked with silent killers, and the charlatans that make a living on false promises and uncertain science need to be revealed for what they really are. The time has come to slay our dietary demons, by exposing the falsehoods and liars that give them life. 

 

The next chapter is entitled “Science Fiction is Still Fiction” - and it is all about the underlying superstitions. The opening is worth quoting at length. 

 

I am a scholar of religion. My job is to read ancient texts - myths, histories, commandments, prophesies - and then figure out what they meant and why they were persuasive. Although I specialize in classical Chinese thought, knowledge of other traditions informs my work. This is true for anyone who studies religion. If you are puzzling over the story of Noah’s ark, it helps to examine similar flood myths, like the one in the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, which comes complete with ark and animal rescue, or the one in the Hindu Mahabharata, where, in addition to rescuing animals, the hero saves the world’s grains and seeds. The recurrence of this story, at different historical moments and with cultural variations, means that flood myths should be read as metaphors for divine punishment and cleansing, not as ancient weather reports. It also means that if a new myth surfaces about some forgotten North American flood, we probably shouldn’t waste our time searching the Grand Canyon for remains of an ark. 

 

Nice mention of Gilgamesh there. 

 

Religion and science are commonly understood to be separate explanatory systems, so my expertise may seem unrelated to nutrition. Modern debates about gluten, fat, sugar, and salt look scientific, not religious. They involve discussions of gut microbes and glucose, not gods and devils, and they draw evidence from peer reviewed studies, not divine revelations. Again and again, the specialists I interviewed for this book asked how I ended up writing about a subject so different from what I typically study. 

My answer was simple: I told them about the grain-free monks of ancient China. Like all diet gurus, these monks mocked the culinary culture of their time. They promised that a revolutionary diet could cure disease, quickly converting a substantial cult of followers. And, of course, they were wrong. The key to understanding and debunking fad diets, I suggested, wasn’t science, but rather history. Once you see enough of the same archetypical myths and the same superstitions, new dietary claims start to look a lot like flood myths.

 

And that, my friends, is exactly why I steadfastly refuse to read any of these diet books. It is why I rejected Grain Brain and Wheat Belly - books mentioned and quoted in this book, and pushed at me by certain relatives. Not because I went through and debunked the pseudoscience, but because they had all the hallmarks of another superstition. A “flood myth” so to speak. I saw no point in proving that there wasn’t an ark in the Grand Canyon. 

 

Levinovitz recounts the stories of the monks, who rejected grains, claiming they poisoned the body. And also claimed incredible benefits, including immortality and the ability to fly and teleport! Avoiding grains cured everything, including death. 

 

So yeah, that right there is a religion, and a ludicrously false one too. So why are they believed?

 

People in ancient China weren’t stupid. Plenty of them doubted accounts of flying alchemists who never got sick. But despite basic logic and evidence to the contrary, the philosophy of the grain-free monks gained popularity. That’s because then, as now, the appeal of dietary fads had to do with myths, not facts. In the case of the Daoists, grain prohibition represented rejection of modern culture and the promise of return to a mythic natural paradise. Suffering, disease, and death were ineradicable aspects of the present, so monks explained their dietary practices with an appealing fiction about a preagricultural paradise past.

 

You will see this in every single diet fad, every “alternative medicine” claim - and indeed, in all fundamentalist religion. The belief in a mythical past paradise, lost to modern ideas, diets, music, culture, and so on. 

 

The specifics change with time, of course, because they are a reaction to present culture, not eternal truth. The Daoists themselves eventually shifted to prohibit meat, not grain - a full change from their prior rules. 

 

Rejection of the status quo - not science - determined the food prohibition du jour. But although the specific prohibition changed, the archetypical myth of a dietary route back to paradise remained constant, along with its false promises of eternal youth and perfect health. 

 

Does that…sound familiar? 

 

Oh, and there is another factor here, both with food and with toxic religious beliefs. 

 

Rejecting a food - as the Daoist monks rejected grain - can also help define your membership in a superior group. We see this in the cross-cultural prevalence of food-based insults collected by anthropologists: “cannibals,” “pork eaters,” “sweet-potato eaters,” “turtle eaters,” “frog eaters,” “locust eaters,” “elephant eaters,” “shit eaters” and so on. To begin eating a forbidden food means becoming a member of the group you once defined as inferior and unclean. 

 

You might add in our time “they’re eating cats and dogs” - the MAGA lie about the Somali-American community. 

 

This also is why the vision of St. Peter (regarding the eating of “unclean” food) was such a revolution. The point was that food (and other tribalist cleanliness rules) should not be a barrier to fellowship between humans. 

 

You can see this too in the terminology used: 

 

Modern American food discourse - including legal and scientific discourse - bristles with moral and religious vocabulary. Foods are “natural” or “unnatural,” “good” or “bad.” Bad foods may harm you, but they are “sinfully” delicious, “guilty” pleasures. Good foods, on the other hand, are “whole,” “real,” and “clean” - terms better suited to monastic manuals and philosophical treatises (what is real food exactly?) than to scientific discussions. 

 

I already mentioned the challenges in researching food, from poor self-reporting to the difficulties in creating double blind controlled studies. I also want to note that Levinovitz is clear in the book that he doesn’t consider “official” food recommendations to be any more reliable. And this is in large part because official guidelines are as biased and political - and superstitious - as the alternatives. And both are based on the flawed idea that we actually know - that we have proof - of the relative health of various food options. There are a lot of single studies - flawed and unduplicable - which have created beliefs that will not go away. 

 

This leads, in turn, to the constantly changing recommendations we see, and that undermine public health on issues that truly matter. 

 

Other than “eating vegetables and exercising are good, smoking and drinking too much and eating junk food are bad,” we lack definitive knowledge. 

 

Hence why, when I was a kid, it was all about eating carob instead of chocolate, while now chocolate is recommended as a superfood. And you can fill in the blank with any number of changes. 

 

(To be clear, RFK Jr.’s reworking of the food pyramid isn’t based on evidence either: it is based on a toxic masculinity belief in the superiority of red meat for white male dominance. This idea is nothing new - you can find it throughout American history…) 

 

I love that Levinovitz takes the time to go through how impossible it is to eliminate confounding variables in studies - what one eats is so interconnected with everything else. And also that he says it out loud, about the constant reversals of “healthy” and “unhealthy” foods. 

 

In truth, there are no reversals occurring, because nothing was ever established in the first place. 

 

I tend to agree with the author: by decoupling food and purity guilt, we can actually enjoy our food, and bond with other humans as we eat together. 

 

(Before you worry about my diet, I grew up eating vegetables, cooking from scratch, and being gracious when invited over for dinner. I just don’t spend a lot of time worrying about what I eat.) 

 

Before I get into the next chapter, the one on gluten, I want to make one thing clear: celiac disease is real, and people with it should not eat gluten.

 

I have friends with celiac - diagnosed by reputable physicians using scientifically appropriate tests, not fake-ass crap from the anti-gluten charlatans. I do my best to accommodate their needs when I cook for them. 

 

Levinovitz also spends a good bit of time in this chapter talking about celiac disease, how it was discovered, and the horrible trials of those suffering while doctors said it was “hysteria.” So don’t think he is a denialist at all here. Quite the contrary. 

 

The issue isn’t celiac, or even gluten sensitivity generally. The issue is the lie that everyone should stop eating gluten because it is a universal poison. 

 

As far as we know, gluten is not toxic to the general population. It does not cause autism, or Alzheimer’s, or ADHD. It does not give you wheat belly or grain brain, because there are no such things. 

 

The fact that billions of humans have consumed gluten for tens of thousands of years alone should be an indication that it is not anywhere near universally toxic. Rising lifespans as food insecurity became less common should also be seen as evidence that grain is actually a good thing for humanity. 

 

Levinovitz also points out a fascinating correlation - one that holds for a lot of diets. 

 

Put simply: in some cases, eliminating gluten is just a proxy for cooking at home and cutting down on junk food. 

 

Yep, if you are actually cooking from scratch rather than mindlessly eating, you will probably eat less, and also enjoy what you eat more! Who knew?

 

But there is also a placebo effect: doing something intentionally can increase a sense of well-being. 

 

Research suggests that placebo effects increase when the treatment is branded, expensive, and highly ritualized. Gluten-free diets - and most elimination diets - usually fit all of those criteria.

 

And, one might add, the sense of being special and better than everyone else. (See: religion…) 

 

But what about reports of adverse effects from gluten and other supposed “toxins”? Well, those are nothing new either. 

 

Mass sociogenic illness combines two kinds of lies: misinformation about external dangers (the Coke is poisoned), and self-deception about the effects of those dangers (the Coke is making me nauseated). It is a well-documented phenomenon, dating back to at least the fifteenth century, when groups of nuns who believed they were possessed by demons would imitate animals, bare their genitalia, shout expletives, and thrust their hips as if having intercourse. Demons no longer factor into most people’s health concerns, so their role has been taken over by chemicals, bacteria, viruses, and the other invisible antagonists of modernity. 

 

Although, he might be surprised how many people, like my mom, are still obsessed with demons. 

 

It is correct, however, that actual physical symptoms are all too easily created by beliefs - non-existent “toxic gas” will make people vomit and have seizures, believe it or not. So it is no stretch to conclude that the lies contained in books like Grain Brain and Wheat Belly have created symptoms in millions of deluded people. 

 

Nausea, headaches, and dizziness are no less worrisome if they are induced by books and articles instead of pills - and we should guard against the side effects of dangerous lies and misrepresentations just as we do against the side effects of dangerous medicine. 

 

I also want to mention the author’s examination of the relationship of the gluten lie to eating disorders. (I would include orthorexia in this, but the links to anorexia and bulimia are strong enough to be deeply concerning.) 

 

The death rates from those disorders are appallingly high. And, as the author notes, there are at least ten times as many deaths yearly from eating disorders than from all food allergies combined. Feeding the disorders with misinformation is more deadly than actual allergies. 

 

There is another problem with needless food restriction as well, which isn’t talked about enough. And bonus points to the author for pointing it out. 

 

When you restrict your diet, it cuts you off from participating in the culinary culture you live in. It separates you from other people. (And, because it is usually expensive - as noted above - it particularly separates you from people less privileged than yourself. It is a form of snobbery.) 

 

Levinovitz talks with people who went with restrictive diets before seeing the light, and they talk a lot about having to bring their own food with them everywhere, and being unable to enjoy food with others. 

 

Before we leave the chapter on gluten, I want to mention a great line about false prophets. This applies to the religious ones and political ones too, of course. Very much so. 

 

False prophets of diet often obscure their lies with an avalanche of hundreds of studies, knowing readers lack the time to actually check them all out, and see if they support the claim. (TL;DR: usually, they don’t.) 

 

When people like Perlmutter and Davis fill their books with scientific citations, they effectively camouflage their true identities. Fortunately, there’s another way to identify false prophets: just compare how they talk with past peddlers of miracle cures. When you do, you’ll find that not much has changed. Like faith healers, proponents of early-twentieth-century dietary regimens would testify to their near instantaneous life-changing power, often starting with their personal conversion story. In the words of food historian Harvey Levenstein: “[They] would tell of their own devastating health problems, miraculously cured by the proposed diet - mysterious or common physical or psychological ailments that had once defied the greatest of modern medical minds had disappeared once certain foods were added or deleted from the diet.”

 

Hmm. Sound familiar? 

 

Moving on to the next chapter, the one on fat. I found this interesting because of the shift during my lifetime. Which went from “fat is bad - eat very little fat” to “carbs are bad, eat more fat and protein.” And yes, this was one of the trends that jacked me around when I was a teen. Why couldn’t I have just been allowed to eat like a normal person? Sheesh. 

 

It is in this section that Levinovitz talks about the other core belief of diet superstition: “You are what you eat.” 

 

And man, isn’t this a seriously enduring myth? As the author puts it, “Belief that you absorb the physical - and moral - qualities of your food is a near universal superstition.” It is in every culture. 

 

(Note: At the molecular level, even, you are not exactly what you eat. Your body takes stuff apart and reassembles it into human cells.)

 

As usual, Levinovitz sees parallels in ancient - and modern - China, where tiger penis is coveted, driving the poor cats to the brink of extinction. 

 

But, I would expect we should be able to agree, tiger penis won’t cure limp dick. It is simple magical thinking, not reality. 

 

Nowhere is this magical thinking more prevalent than in our fat-shaming. (Which is in contrast to how we treat anorexia…)

 

Like George Will and everyone else who blames fat people for being fat, physicians have been hypnotized by the you in you are what you eat. If you are eating too much, then the fault must lie in you.

 

After going through both the reality of the science we have (which is at best inconsistent), and noting that you can get fat eating pretty much anything if you eat enough of it, he gets again to the root of the matter. 

 

So next time you feel guilty about eating butter or crispy chicken skin, try to remember the source of that guilt. Remember the tiger penises. Remember Galen and his snails.

 

For sugar, Levinovitz looks at another myth, which is that “whatever gives you pleasure is bad” - aka, the Puritan approach. Which is very much a part of the gluten lie and most other fad diets. 

 

[Paul] Rozin hypothesized that for Americans, fear of sugar is a manifestation of subconscious Puritan values, the belief that “anything that is extremely pleasurable, and that includes sex and sweetness, must be bad.” Two decades later, Rozin believes very little has changed, and a form of secular puritanism continues to inform our food taboos. 

 

In this chapter, as elsewhere, Levinovitz notes that not only is the poison in the dose, otherwise fine food can be overdone. In this case, there is nothing inherently horrible about sugar. The fact that eating mostly sugar is problematic does not mean a moderate amount is bad. 

 

I love that Levinovitz takes on some common myths about sugar here. These myths are deeply rooted in racism and classism, and result in policies that are intended to punish the poor for their poverty. 

 

First, contrary to popular belief, white children actually get a higher percentage of their calories from sugar than black children. 

 

Second, lower income children do not get a higher percentage of their calories from sugar. 

 

Third, Americans do not eat more sugar than other first world citizens. 

 

These myths are behind policies to try to “force” low income people, particularly those with darker skin, into “eating better.” Which is another way of blaming the reduced health that goes with poverty on the impoverished rather than examining how unjust systems create poor health. 

 

Helpful in this discussion is an examination of history, particularly how sugar went from “medicine” for those able to afford it - the “superfood” of its day - to evil once penny candy made it accessible to low income children. Gee, nothing classist (or racist) about that at all, right? 

 

There is another fascinating fact in this chapter, that I bet most of us didn’t even think about, regarding a survey of childhood activities that is pretty representative of these kinds of studies.

 

They also filled out questionnaires about physical activity, television watching, and video game playing, so investigators could control for these factors. And right here, before any discussion of the results, we see evidence of glaring white-hat bias. There was no survey about how much book reading or studying the children did - both sedentary activities. Why? Because “virtuous” sedentary activities are rarely considered as possible contributors to obesity. Does increased homework lead to obesity? Does reading lead to obesity? No one knows, and you’ll be hard-pressed to find any studies of how book reading or studiousness relates to obesity. The thinking is magical, pure and simple. Just as evil origins create unhealthful products, good activities can’t possibly lead to bad consequences. The result is unreliable data, skewed by white-hat bias.

 

Levinovitz explores this further with what he sees as both the key problem and an avoidance of the harder questions. To look at “one macronutrient” as the sole source of issues is problematic to start with. But it also distracts from the deeper problem, such as children whose access to food other than junk is limited by poverty and lack of available parental time. 

 

(I grew up in a neighborhood where this was an issue, and the rotted teeth that resulted was a clear social signal of poverty. The problem was parents who had to work multiple jobs to avoid becoming homeless, and thus had zero time to cook. The cheapest calories were the quick and sugary junk snacks.) 

 

When we talk about poverty, and when we talk about pleasurable foods, we have to discuss the self-righteousness that comes along with that discussion. 

 

Obviously some people enjoy being at war. They enjoy feeling like the good guys in a battle against evil. The world is clearer that way, easier to navigate, and every choice is infused with meaning, purpose, and virtue. Puritans saw sin everywhere - in music, dancing, colorful clothes, and pleasurable food. In a puritanical food world, we see health dangers everywhere. Every culinary choice is filled with meaning, purpose, and virtue, and helps assert control over one’s moral and physical destiny. Sadly, just as there was no evidence of Puritans going to heaven more regularly than anybody else, there is no evidence that living in a food hellscape of demonized macronutrients and toxic chemicals does anything more than make you feel holier-than-thou.

 

Amen. 

 

For me, sugar is not my friend, at least late at night. It can trigger migraines (I discovered this in my teens) if I don’t have some protein with it. But I do not studiously avoid it. I have no fear of going out for ice cream with my kids, or having cake at a party, or anything else. Moderation is fine, and the joy of sharing pleasure with others is more important to me than feeling self-righteous about my food. 

 

The next chapter, on salt, is definitely personal to me. I live in Bakersfield, where it gets hella hot in the summer, and it is super easy to lose salt through sweat. I am also an avid hiker, and sweat easily. 

 

I need my salt.

 

Or I get cramps, and other bad stuff. 

 

Fortunately, the whole “salt is bad” thing is such a steaming pile of horseshit that I just can’t even with it. 

 

It is based on a few flawed studies that really only applied to the extremely small percentage of people whose blood pressure is sensitive to salt. For the rest of us, we need salt in proportion to our water. 

 

And the “recommendations” from organizations which should know better, like the American Heart Association, are so low that they render food inedible. Did you know that you pretty much get your limit in sodium just from eating unsalted food? And it’s worse if you eat vegetables!

 

Following the Committee’s guidelines would have required people to abandon any semblance of culinary culture and adopt a radical diet of unsalted fruits, vegetables, starches, and uncured meats. 

 

And to what purpose? To satisfy a dogma that has zero scientific basis? 

 

I will also note here that my wife’s grandfather, toward the end of his long and largely healthy life, tried to cut salt back, and ended up making himself ill due to its lack. There is real harm from this superstition-based nonsense. Unless you are the rare person for whom salt is uniquely problematic, enjoy some salt on your food. 

 

Here too, a line from 5000 year old Chinese writings is used, not just in a flim-flam book, but in a scholarly article. This is deeply problematic and unscientific. Oh, and it’s not actually in the text either - it appears to have been made up. The actual text suggests treating high blood pressure with…more salt. 

 

But that’s beside the point. The real problem is the inclusion of the quote in a scholarly article. Even if the quote were accurate, it exemplifies a dangerous and deceptive rhetorical device known as the argument from antiquity. Arguments from antiquity carry weight, rightfully, in the realm of theology, where claims can be true simply in virtue of being spoken by ancient prophets or written in revealed texts. Yet in the science of nutrition, the wisdom of Eastern ancients deserves no special attention, unless we are willing to reconsider the medical value of bloodletting, faith healing, and, my personal favorite, “bathing in dog feces to exorcise a demon.” The argument from antiquity is just a version of the myth of paradise past. Instead of a long-lost era when people lived well, the argument from antiquity appeals to a long-lost era when people thought well, romanticizing the wisdom of ancients along with their lifestyle.

 

A few thoughts here. Yes, mostly agree. But I also think the argument from antiquity is deeply harmful in theology too. And I have plenty of experience with that. 

 

The ancients thought women were subhuman? Weren’t they wise! The ancients enslaved black people? Weren’t they wise! And on and on. 

 

Here is the bottom line: the people of the past were every bit as full of shit as we are today. In fact, they are often more so. And especially when talking about “lifestyle” stuff. Everything they said should be subjected to the same skepticism we treat modern thinkers with. 

 

There are some hilarious passages in this chapter. For example, the ex-German researcher who studied red blood cells. The best source was baby alligators, which he and his assistants carried around in their pockets. Leading to the quip:

 

The alligators were probably more fun than Kempner, whom one patient would later describe as “a stern dictatorial man, always dressed the same way, in a blue blazer and white ducks - like someone’s Nazi grandfather.” 

 

Levinovitz questions why, despite the lack of evidence, government agencies still keep pushing this pseudoscience? Particularly since in the case of salt, there isn’t any real financial interest pushing for it?

 

So why don’t the CDC and the AHA admit uncertainty, even at the potential cost of public health? Perhaps because dictating dietary rules, a sacred role that was once the province of priests, contributes to a savior complex. 

 

This resonates for me. My mom certainly had and has a savior complex. Perhaps it originated in her good-faith attempts to improve my health. But it continues, because the role of dictating rules to others is a hell of a drug. 

 

The final full chapter is on the detox nonsense. And yes, went through that too. Again, this is why I have been able to identify these hoaxes - they all sound alike. 

 

At this point alarm bells should be ringing. Paradise past, this time in Tibet. Claims of extraordinary medicinal power for a single food. If something seems suspicious to you, that’s good. 

 

While this applies in the book to Goji berries, I can remember the fads in my teens. Blue-green algae. Kombucha. Wheat grass juice. Any list of juices and shakes. It was all supposed to be magic. But it wasn’t. Just expensive, and often disgusting. 

 

At this point, Levinovitz talks about the mythology again. 

 

Now that you know the history of nutrition myths, you’ll be surprised how easy it is to identify new ones for what they truly are. The same themes pop up again and again: the same emphasis on good and evil, the same false promises, the same superstitions. Sometimes you’ll even see the exact same plot, modified very slightly in its details. 

Scholars of folk and fairy tales call this kind of repeated story a “tale type.” 

 

The author suggests we need a whole category for “food tales.” Which would include subtypes like “miracle food from Tibet” and “dietary cures for chronic disease” and “everyday food that is actually poisonous.” 

 

Once you can identify the type of myth, it is easy to recognize that it is superstition, not science, no matter how “scientific” it appears. 

 

Put differently: whenever you read a headline about some new carcinogen or cancer-fighting superfood, it’s probably not worth reading any further. 

 

So how should we actually eat?

 

What’s left? Eat in moderation, drink in moderation, don’t be sedentary. That’s it. Veganism, fat-free, salt-free, sugar-free, gluten-free, Paleo, juicing, cleansing - these offer false promises built on myth and superstition, covered over with a layer of scientific rhetoric.

 

Oh, and the whole “ancient people knew better” thing? It turns out that they….ate what was available. Much like we do now. 

 

Levinovitz also tackles the worst of the side effects from superstitious thinking about health. While eating different diets is usually pretty harmless, relatively speaking, the distrust of modern medicine is lethal. 

 

Particularly when it comes to vaccines and other public health measures. As we are seeing before our eyes as RFK Jr. and Trump dismantle the systems that actually do keep us healthy. 

 

No real harm will come to people who avoid salt and high-fructose corn syrup because they are “unnatural.” But it’s not so funny when people avoid unnatural vaccines. Unfortunately, fear of modern medicine is a direct consequence of belief in common dietary myths. 

 

This too goes back hundreds of years, all too often mixed with racist ideas such as the “noble savage.” 

 

This is why it’s so important to unmask nutrition myths. The paranoid false logic that motivates them seeps into other parts of our culture, poisoning whatever it touches. 

 

This is where I will draw the connection between the appeal of the “mythical paradise of the past” in creating the demand for nasty authoritarian cults like those of Gothard, and nastier fascist regimes like the Trump Regime. 

 

This way of thinking, that single toxins cause all ills - think the elimination of music by black people in Fundamentalist white subcultures, or Trump’s obsession with “contamination” by brown-skinned people - or that single solutions cure everything - Gothard’s laughably horrible “basic principles” or Trump’s "tariffs cure everything” approach. 

 

This is the issue Christ talked about, saying that what goes into a man doesn’t make him good our bad. It’s what comes out. 

 

And what comes out of this paranoid false logic is shitty fruit. 

 

Dietary myths and superstitions are turning people into latter-day food crusaders, not unlike the European crusaders who hunted invented infidels in order to give their own lives meaning - and, in the case of their leaders, make a few bucks in the process. 

 

Fill in the appropriate religious and political charlatans here as well. And the way people use their pursuit of imaginary invented enemies in order to give their own lives meaning. And allow grifters like Gothard and Trump to make bank. 

 

I will end with a few comments on the last part - the made-up diet hoax. One thing that is very true in it is that it seems that people can eat all kinds of stuff and still be healthier than Americans. As the old joke goes, maybe what makes you sick is speaking English. 

 

All meat? Inuit. No meat? Ancient Chinese monks. Salt free? Indigenous groups in Brazil. Tons of salt? Japanese. 

 

As I will discuss in a footnote to this post, maybe this suggests that food isn’t really the problem - it is other cultural and political issues that make Americans less healthy than other first world citizens.

 

And a final thought from his “rebuttal” to his own hoax:

 

Restrictive diet rules make it impossible to eat like a normal human being in our culture. That loss is more of a problem than the imagined horrors of supposed toxic foods. Eat what allows you to connect with other people. 

 

I think the best thing about this book is that it avoids the trap of trying to rebut all the pseudoscientific nonsense. Yes, that is needed, and can be helpful for the kinds of people who care about facts. 

 

But ultimately, the Gluten Lie and all the other related lies are not driven by a mistake in fact, but by superstition and irrational beliefs. 

 

Recognizing each of these scams as just another in a millennia-old human vulnerability to horseshit is the first step to seeing them clearly and choosing rational behavior over fear and superstition. 

 

***

 

What Diet Nonsense has in common with other Nonsense:

 

I alluded to this above, but wanted to flesh it out a bit. Remember the elements of the diet superstition:

1.      The mythical past was better. 

2.      Modernity is killing us

3.      There is one formula for health - either subtract or add One True Thing or formula

 

You can see this in other scams as well. 

 

Take the Fundamentalist religion scam. 

 

The core belief is that the past was better. Specifically, that humans were wiser, godlier, better back in the day, and that it has all gone to hell since. Modern ideas are evil and must be rejected. And fixing it involves formulas involving subtracting poisons and adding miracle foods. 

 

This is a natural human tendency, by the way. Frank Kermode’s excellent book, The Sense of an Ending examines why - I recommend it. 

 

But look at some specifics here. Humans were “godlier” back in the day. In what way? Well, in the ways they were different from moderns. 

 

Unsurprisingly, this means that Fundies have decided that it was better when women were subordinate - indeed, when they were the property of men. And also that it was better when racial minorities knew their place in society - that’s what the anti-DEI is all about. 

 

Never mind, of course, that this is a lot of picking and choosing about when the golden age was. As with diet bullshit, logical consistency is not necessary. It’s a superstition, not an intellectual position. 

 

Likewise, there is always a focus on eliminating “toxins.” And these “toxins” are always modern. So, for many Fundies, including my mom, this meant eliminating modern music. Gothard taught this, but he stole the idea from earlier moral panics about black people and their music. 

 

Modern books are poison too - particularly things like Harry Potter and The Hunger Games - books that contain far too much that challenges the preferred hierarchies of Fundies. 

 

Television, movies, dancing - take your pick - it all comes down to contaminants that must be purged, just like gluten or salt. 

 

There is the flip side as well: the One True Cure for Everything scam. All we need is to return to submission. If the woman just submits, all marital problems go away, right? That is literally the teaching. 

 

But, just as goji berries won’t cure your cancer, female submission won’t fix domestic violence or philandering. 

 

Likewise, breaking the will of a child won’t cure family dysfunction - in fact, it creates it. 

 

There is no magic cure for everything. 

 

And how about politics? The core belief of MAGA - the way Trump sold his candidacy from the beginning - has always been that [white] America’s blood is being poisoned by modern toxins, the most obvious of which is the existence of people of color. 

 

This is explicit, in case you were intentionally not paying attention. 

 

Other toxins: people like me who do not agree with MAGA (I guess we are all liberals now if we don’t want ethnic cleansing?)

 

And the idea toxins that we need to purge by banning books and strong-arming academia and businesses into avoiding. Things like the belief that systemic injustice is real. (Hint: it is very real.) Believing that women are the equal of men. Believing that minorities are the equal of whites. Believing that rising economic inequality is a bad thing for society and needs to be fixed. Believing in science-based medicine. Or in science generally. 

 

Modern ideas all, and all considered poison by MAGA. 

 

If we could just go back in time to when things were right. When women and minorities knew their place, when we didn’t have to care about humans around the globe, and could just be selfish bastards in peace. 

 

Such a time never existed, of course, but that is beside the point. Superstition and political ideology have no need for facts or reality. 

 

You might have noted that a lot of “wellness” influencers started out more or less liberal, but broke hard for Trump. Why might that be?

 

Perhaps because the basic worldview is the same. 

 

***

 

Alternative Medicine scams distract us from the REAL things we could do to improve health.

 

The thing is, we know a number of things that would dramatically improve health, but as a society have chosen not to do them. 

 

I could write more about this, and may at some point, but here are a few of the big ones:

1.      Universal healthcare

 

Why is the US less healthy than other first world countries? This is the big one. Our health is unequally distributed. Poverty drives bad health. Some states have particularly terrible health access, and it shows in maternal and infant mortality, life expectancy, and other health measures.

 

If we were to do One True Thing to make health better, this would be it. If everyone had access to affordable healthcare, health would improve. 

 

When we look at other parts of the world, we can see that access to healthcare is directly linked to health. It isn’t diet - different parts of the world eat different things, and yet places with better access have better outcomes. 

2.      Eliminate poverty

 

This is related to the above, but is also an additional factor. Poverty affects everything including health. 

 

At the extreme, being homeless is terrible for health and leads to early death all too often. Homelessness is a failure of society, not an individual failure. It is not inevitable, and it is not necessary. It happens because we as a society fail - indeed refuse - to provide access to housing for all humans. This could be a whole post in itself, but suffice it to say that homelessness correlates directly to housing costs. If you cannot afford to be housed on disability payments, disabled people (including particularly the mentally ill and addicted) will end up on the streets. Places where housing is cheap have far fewer unhoused people. Go figure. 

3.      Living wages

 

This is an underrated factor in health. People who are not paid a living wage end up working multiple jobs and absurd hours to survive. 

 

If you are working 60 hour weeks, you will not really have time for exercise and home cooked meals. Instead, cheap junk food that is premade will fill the gap. 

 

If we want to improve the health of lower wage workers, we need to pay them enough to have the time do do healthy things. 

4.      Address “deaths of despair”

 

The US has a huge problem with these deaths: they include suicides and drug overdoses, but probably should also include deaths due to long-term addiction, and the slow suicide of personal neglect. 

 

These too are related to poverty, but they are also related to how callous and cruel our society is. Because we blame all bad outcomes on personal failings, to be poor is proof you are of low character. To get sick is proof you made poor choices. To become disabled means you weren’t careful or somehow offended a deity. To be mentally ill is proof you refused to just “get a grip.” To become addicted is a sin. And on and on.

 

So, once you start to fail - even if that failure is caused by society itself - society will pile on and blame you. Hence the despair. 

5.      Vaccines

 

There are promising vaccines being developed for everything from Malaria (probably the greatest killer of humans in history) to cancer. In particular, the mRNA technology that was a game-changer for Covid shows great promise in making targeted treatments. 

 

Naturally, RFK Jr. terminated research. So what cures do come will come from somewhere else, and may well not be available to Americans. It is beyond stupid, yet here we are. 

 

As I said, this is just an outline. So much more could be said. 

 

And we could take all that time, effort, and loads of money we throw at the Diet Scams, at worthless supplements, at expensive branded and exclusive foods, and use all that to actually address the issues that actually do affect health. 

 

***

 

One more thought:

 

Ultimately, while self-righteousness is certainly a motivation for fad diets, I think that the deepest root is a fear of mortality.

 

Americans are terrible about accepting the inevitability of death. And so we fall for those who promise that we can control our mortality. 

 

Except we can’t. The book mentions Jerome Irving Rodale, one of the most famous of the “wellness gurus” during the 1960s and 70s.

 

During the filming of The Dick Cavett Show, he claimed he had never been more healthy, and had decided to live to 100. 

 

After his segment was done and the next guest went on, Rodale died of a heart attack. 

 

So much for immortality. 

 

And he isn’t the only one to find that out. “Wellness” scams, including diet scams, are no guarantee of longevity, no guarantee of health, no guarantee of anything except a lighter pocketbook and an unhealthy approach to food. In many cases, they also cut you off from fellow humans.