Words and Rules by Steven Pinker

Source of book: I own this. 

It would not be an exaggeration to say that Steven Pinker’s book, The Better Angels of our Nature, is one of the top five most influential books I have read. I recommend it to everyone, particularly those who want to understand just how far the human race has come in reducing violence. (Although a recent resurgence in authoritarianism and xenophobia from toxic males like Trump, Bolsonaro, and Putin is not helping things.) That book really clarifies how violence can and is being reduced by specific ideas, many stemming from the Enlightenment. 

Words and Rules is a VERY different sort of book. For one thing, rather than being in the pop sociology sort of field, it is directly related to Pinker’s original job, as a research psychologist. For another thing, this book is seriously nerdy, detail oriented, and of a more specialized appeal. Which is to say that I found it fascinating, but not everyone will. 

Pinker sets out to make a case for a specific model for how our brains process language, based in significant part on how we use regular and irregular verbs (and to a lesser degree, regular and irregular nouns.) I’ll give a thoroughly oversimplified version of the theory, but Pinker literally spends over 300 pages (including extensive footnotes and sources) supporting his argument. Part of the supporting evidence is research that Pinker himself did with colleagues over the years, which means that he is able to describe in detail the way the experiments worked, and how they controlled for specific factors. 

Here is the very basic idea behind the theory. Humans use two basic tools for language. The first is a list of words - that is, sounds that correspond to ideas. However, we do not merely learn and memorize words. In fact, these “words” are better described as “roots,” or pieces of words that have the core meaning of words in our language. We then use the second tool to assemble them: rules. The rule processing occurs at multiple levels. For example, we use syntax and grammar to assemble our words into sentences with meaning. We obviously do not memorize every possible sentence and what it means, but use rules to put meanings together into coherent ideas. 

Pinker takes it further, however, and argues that we do not memorize all of our words, but assemble many of them according to rules. For example, we do not think of “slice” and “sliced” and “slicing” as separate words, but as the root “slice” joined to the standard “regular” suffixes to indicate verb tense. 

This works really well for “regular” verbs, but breaks down for “irregular” verbs. We do not say “runned,” for example. These exceptions actually are the way that Pinker and others have tested the theory. There is no way to describe all of the various tests - that’s what the book is about. 

Pinker starts with some history, to explain where irregulars came from in the first place - usually they are the “fossils of the long dead rules” of an ancestor language. Language is transmitted down the generations by what is essentially a game of “telephone.” Distortions accumulate, changes are made, and each generation “reanalyzes” the grammatical and syntactical meaning of what it hears. 

All languages change through the centuries. We do not speak like Shakespeare (1564-1616), who did not speak like Chaucer (1343-1400), who did not speak like the author of Beowulf (around 750-800). As the changes take place, people feel the ground eroding under their feet and in every era have predicted the imminent demise of the language. Yet the twelve hundred years of changes since Beowulf have not left us grunting like Tarzan, and that is because language change is a game of Broken Telephone.

A generation of speakers uses their lexicon and grammar to produce sentences. The younger generation listens to the sentences and tries to infer the lexicon and grammar, the remarkable feat we call language acquisition.

This gets into the weeds pretty fast - again, something I personally found fascinating. Your mileage may vary. For us grammar nerds, it is fun to find out how and why we pluralize compound words. Why, for example, is it we sometimes put the plural on the first word and other times on the last? (You’ll have to read the book to find out - it’s….complicated. And also a great occasion for a reference to “I am the very model of a modern major general.” 

I learned a new word from this book, by the way: “muzzy.” It means almost, but not quite, the same thing as “fuzzy,” the way we use it in a figurative sense. It can be defined as “blurred or indistinct” - similar to “fuzzy,” - or as “unable to think clearly; confused.” Pinker uses it in both senses, to describe words that we tend to categorize as on the line. Do we use a regular or irregular form? Neither feels quite right. And there are a number of words in this category - typically unusual and archaic sorts. For example, I might feel comfortable using “smite-smote-smitten” because I read old books. But even I find “thrive-throve-thriven” a bit...muzzy. I am more likely to use a regular “thrived” here. That’s a word, by the way, which is in the process of converting from irregular to regular. 

I have to give Pinker credit for his creative use of other materials to illustrate his points. Comic strips get significant play, particularly ones involving children and language. In addition to his Gilbert and Sullivan reference above, I also appreciated his brief quote from Leo Rosten’s delightful books about the fictional H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N. (Those who have read the books will understand.) 

Perhaps even further into the ideas: Pinker discusses at length the two competing philosophical theories of the Mind, Rationalism and Empiricism. Again, a bit simplified, but in this context, rationalism claims the mind has inherent structures and works by rules, while empiricism claims the mind is a blank slate and works by associationism. One might say, “words versus rules.” Pinker describes a series of experiments by himself and by others (it’s a LOT of experimentation, believe me) using the past tense to essentially bring the two theories together in “single combat.” As one might expect from the earlier part of the book, both have elements of truth, but Rationalism wins overall. Humans have a striking ability to infer rules and use them to compensate for an inability to experience and remember every possible reality. 

Throughout the book, we move from the specific to the general. We start with how regular and irregular verb forms work and how they came to be, and end up with a broad theory as to the workings of the human brain regarding not just language, but many areas of knowledge. Pinker notes that it is often these curiosities about specific phenomena which lead to greater scientific knowledge. 

In science the pursuit of idle curiosity often pays off in deeper understanding. People’s inquisitiveness about flied out, talismans, sabertooths, still lifes, outputted, rat-infested, and other unexpected forms has enhanced our understanding of regularity and irregularity and provided an entirely new kind of evidence in favor of the words-and-rules theory.

While it would take far too long to detail all of the scope of this book, I do want to mention some of the ways in which Pinker explores the reaches of the theory. First, while, for obvious reasons, English is the language he uses most; he also gradually expands his view back along the language tree. Starting with related languages like German and Dutch, he ends up showing that, while languages differ greatly in words and syntax, they all have regular and irregular words (although not always verbs), and function using a words and rules system. In other words, it isn’t just how English works: this is how human brains work regarding language. We memorize words, but also process using rules, thus saving memory and vastly simplifying the language assembly process. 

Pinker also looks at children, and how they learn language. After all, we adult grammar snobs can discuss tenses and regularity in an academic sense, but ALL of us learned most of this intuitively before we even started school. It is actually amazing what kids learn and how fast and early they learn it. A five year old may not know all the nuances or be able to articulate the rules, but listen to one sometime: it is astonishing how fluently they navigate tenses as well as the distinction between regular and irregular even at that age. 

Finally, Pinker examines some fascinating case studies of people who have either suffered brain damage or who have developmental issues that affect one, but not both, of the systems. For example, patients who have suffered strokes and have one form or another of aphasia. Some lose the ability to remember words, but can assemble grammatical sentences. Others remember words, but cannot process the syntax correctly. As Pinker’s theory would predict, loss of the “rules” means a person struggles to correctly use regular verb tenses, while loss of “words” means they tend to use regular verb tenses on irregular verbs. Ditto for certain developmental issues which do not affect general intelligence. This chapter was quite fascinating. 

This book isn’t for everyone, but for those who love language, find science fascinating, and wish to learn more about the human psyche, it is worth a try. I read it a bit at a time, because it can overwhelm with detail. It is, however, thoroughly footnoted, with sources thoroughly cited. Pinker has a solid reputation in his field, and has published a couple of far more technical books on the same topic as Words and Rules, which is aimed at the layperson. While, for obvious reasons, there is no such thing as a One True Theory™ which explains everything, Pinker makes a good case for his view of things - and it does do a pretty good job of explaining what we observe. 

Elephants on Acid and Other Bizarre Experiments by Alex Boese

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

At the end of the year, things get a bit crazy, between music and events and stress and whatever. So I often pick a light book or two for my late December read. Something I can pick up and put down as needed without losing the thread. 

 

 This year, I went with Elephants on Acid and Other Bizarre Experiments, which was recommended by a musician friend. It fit the bill. It is breezy, written in a san serif font, with headings in magenta. It gives basic details of a variety of weird experiments, which, as the author notes, often tell us more about the researchers than their subjects.

One, of course, is the title experiment. What does happen if you give an elephant LSD? Well, at a high dose, it kills the elephant, which is not a good result, to say the least. Perhaps they should have started with a low dose.

While this experiment seems more sadistic and sad, many of the experiments are in the humorous category, such as the utter failure of dogs to go for help like Lassie. The topics range from experiments in reanimating corpses to mating behaviors to poop to animal behavior, to experiments involving the soul. (See Mary Roach…)

There is a little reference to XKCD in the introduction, which sets the tone, and reminds me of just how fun What If? was.

Here are a few of my favorite bits in the book.

First is the bit on the Baby Mozart phenomenon. It turned out to be devilishly difficult to duplicate the results. (It seems that you can’t get smarter just by ingesting background noise - you have to practice. As any professional musician could have told you.) Anyway, this line cracked me up:

Many researchers reported a failure to replicate the results of the 1993 study. In response, the UC Irvine team clarified that Mozart’s music did not appear to have an effect on all forms of IQ, but rather on spatial-temporal IQ, the kind that applied to paper folding and cutting tasks. In other words, millions of parents were unwittingly priming their children to become master scrapbookers.

Another amusing experiment involved the question of whether men prefer women who play hard to get or not. Well, the answer turned out to be not that surprising to introverted guys like me. Turns out, men actually don’t tend to prefer women who play hard to get. They like women who are selectively hard to get. That is, women who are cold to other people and warm to them. This shouldn’t be a surprise. For the most part, we prefer that there by mutual desire for us, and not indiscriminate attention to everyone. I want my wife to be in to me, and not in to other men. And I suspect she feels the same.

A personal anecdote on this topic. I waited over a year after I met my wife to ask her out. Some of that was circumstance - I was in my last year of law school and just bought a house with my brother, so I had a lot on my plate. But also, I wanted to see if she was in to me first. Fortunately, she sensed this, and encouraged me. This was likewise the way it went in our courtship. She half-jokingly proposed to me months before I proposed to her, and she has never left me in doubt of what she wanted. That worked well for us. So, at least in some cases, the stereotype of the evasive female and the conquering male is more of a culturally driven myth than reality. So women, don’t be afraid to ask a guy out…

Another one which fascinated me - and was something I had never read about before - was the behavior of a certain species of ant. Many ants have specific strategies for keeping their nests dry. This one, in addition to blocking entrances with their heads, has the second layer of defense wherein ants drink up any water which comes in, then go out and pee it outside. Communal peeing, so to speak.

I also want to mention a study (a series, actually) that I am quite familiar with, but should be mentioned regularly. Experimenters found that people will do unspeakably cruel things to their fellow humans if they are ordered to do so by a trusted authority. A shockingly low number of people are resistant to this. It goes without saying that this is of relevance for how totalitarian systems of all kinds come into being and remain in power. It also goes a long way to explain why Evangelicalism seems to be in a competition with itself to see how cruel they can been to refugees, the working poor, and anyone else their political “authorities” tell them to hate. I suspect that it is in part because they have spent the last several decades purging those whose compassion might cause them to question theological - and political - orthodoxy. As one of the researchers glumly concluded in a 60 Minutes interview:

I would say on the basis of having observed a thousand people in the experiment and having my own intuition shaped and formed by these experiments, that if a system of death camps were set up in the United States of the sort we had seen in Nazi Germany, one would be able to find sufficient personnel for those camps in any medium sized American town.

Heck, we already have the children in cages. I’d say, based on my experiences of the last two years, and what I have heard even the “good” people say, I think you could staff the death camps from a handful of churches in any town in America.

Also depressing was the study involving a weird doomsday cult in the 1950s. Failure of their apocalyptic predictions didn’t change their minds. It only made them believe harder, and become more distrustful and hostile to outsiders. Also all too relevant to the politics of our time.

That’s kind of a bleak note to end on - fortunately the book goes from there to the ability of cockroaches to survive a nuclear holocaust. (There was a great Mythbusters episode on this one a few years back.) While roaches fare better than mammals, the best turned out to be a parasitoid wasp. Which begs the question of what it would live on, of course.

Despite a few depressing moments, the book was fun, light, and the sort of thing one reads when tired and wanting to decompress.

The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

Source of book: I own this.

I came rather late in life to Henry James: my first experience was in my mid thirties. This is probably just as well, as the teenaged me might have gotten the wrong impression.

James writes tragedies, for the most part. If there is one thing he writes best, it would be dysfunctional or failed relationships. I am hard pressed to think of anything of his that I have read that contained a truly great marriage - and the functional ones that do exist are usually at the extreme margins of the plot and do not even function as a foil to the bad relationships.

I have wondered if this is related to the fact that James never had a romantic relationship, and indeed seemed to avoid close relationships in general. This, combined with his brilliancy in observing and writing about the unhappiness of others, gives his writing a generally tragic air. 

The Portrait of a Lady is a devastating tragedy written when James was at the peak of his powers. As with many of his novels and novellas, he focuses on a female protagonist; and, as in other tales, his protagonist is young, naive, and in over her head in a sea of more sophisticated and Machiavellian sharks.

Isabel Archer is a young American woman, whose parents have died, leaving her with neither fortune nor prospects. Her elder sisters have done alright, marrying respectably although not brilliantly, and have settled into ordinary lives. Isabel is the prettiest, and has the most striking personality. In the wake of her father’s death, Isabel’s aunt (who is married to a rich American financier who lives in England), takes an interest in her, and whisks her off to Europe to expand her horizons. In fairly short order, she has managed to turn down two marriage proposals: one from Lord Warburton, a rather decent - and fantastically wealthy - English lord; and from her longtime acquaintance, Caspar Goodwood, a rising American businessman, whose “Americanness,” for lack of a better term, is amusingly caricatured by James. Oh, and her sickly cousin Ralph is also in love with her, but he knows he will die young and has no chance anyway.

Soon afterward, Isabel’s rich uncle dies, and, at the insistence of Ralph (his only child), leaves Isabel a sizeable legacy. This proves to be her undoing. Madam Merle, a friend of Isabel’s aunt, an American expat with a mysterious and lurid past of some sort, takes Isabel in hand. She introduces Isabel to Gilbert Osmond, another American expat, a widow with a daughter, who is somehow connected to her. Gilbert has impeccable taste, can charm anyone, and lacks money. What a perfect match, right? Isabel is too naive to see Gilbert for the narcissist and egoist that he is, or to realize that she is being manipulated by Madam Merle - and that Merle has an uncomfortably close connection with Gilbert. For his part, Gilbert believes he can change Isabel to fit his tastes, and clamp down on her irrepressible originality and independence.

This does not go well. Isabel doesn’t change, Gilbert ends up hating her. Even though he never does anything openly wrong, he essentially mentally abuses her. And, eventually, Isabel realizes that she has been duped.

As is typical with James, there are no really clear villains. Madam Merle herself suffered a bad marriage, and has had to use her brains and charm to survive. She is genuinely taken by surprise when the marriage she has arranged goes bad. She thought Gilbert was better than that, and that he would like Isabel. Likewise (although I won’t reveal the plot twist entirely), her ulterior motive is hardly shameful.

Gilbert is a narcissist and egoist, but he deserves some sympathy too. By 19th Century standards, he isn’t a bad spouse. His mental abuse is the natural working out of the views of the time. He expected her to change herself to suit him - quite reasonable for an upper class man in the Victorian Era - and her refusal to cater to him would (and does) earn her condemnation. An additional source of friction here too is that the money is hers, not his. Had it been the other way around (as it is for Gilbert’s sister and her philandering husband the Count), he could have easily controlled her using money. But the shoe is on the other foot.

Likewise, the “heroes” are flawed. Isabel is a bit of a live wire, but she lacks an intellectual foundation to aid her judgment. She ignores the advice of her aunt and cousin, both of which are more observant than she. She likewise ignores her friend Henrietta (a female journalist who is, like Caspar, hilariously American.) While she pays an unfair price for her mistakes, she mostly has herself to blame.

In the case of Caspar, who is cast as the hero - he offers to save her near the end - it is easy to see why Isabel refuses him. He is an egoist in his own way, and too over eager to be charming rather than slightly creepy. Would she have been happy with him? Probably not. Or with Lord Warburton, who is thoroughly nice, but not Isabel’s type at all.

Perhaps the most fascinating character is that of Ralph, who unwittingly causes the tragedy, and ends up regretting it. Ralph is the cynical observer, except he really isn’t that cynical. He is, how does one even put it? Disinterested, perhaps? (Not uninterested, which is most certainly NOT a synonym.) Ralph has no dog in the race, other than curiosity to see what someone like Isabel might do with enough money to enable her to chart her own course without financial considerations limiting her choices.

It perhaps says something about James that he has his character make terrible choices. I was tempted for a moment to say that James is sexist - his female characters rarely have good judgment. Except that his male characters are no better. They just tend not to pay for their mistakes the same way the women do. And that has little to do with James and everything to do with how late Victorian society functioned. If anything, the men tend to be indecisive and weak at all the wrong moments. It also occurs to me that Catherine from Washington Square is a fantastically strong and admirable character who pays for her virtues, not her mistakes.

One of the two best things about The Portrait of a Lady is the psychological portraits of the characters. The title itself is a clue to that: this book is a portrait of Isabel - a deep look at her psyche, her strengths, weaknesses, hopes, dreams, and emotions. And James is fantastic at the art of showing these rather than stating them. But there is more than that. We are given insights into many of the characters as we go along. Ralph, Henrietta, Mrs. Touchett, Madam Merle, Gilbert, Lord Warburton, Edward Rosier, and Pansy in particular are given special treatment throughout the book. The one blank slate seems to be Caspar, who one wonders if he even has an inner life.

The other strength of this book is the writing. James’ isn’t the easiest writing to read quickly (although it is by no means unusual for his era), but it is fantastically well crafted. At multiple points in this long book (600+ pages), I went back and re-read a passage just for the amazing way it was written.

Here are a few of the best moments - ones I couldn’t resist writing down. First is the opening line:

Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.

James was an American by birth, who, like his characters, spent much of his life in Europe. Lines like this elicit his admiration for the Old World and its ceremonies. It also sets the stage beautifully for what is to follow. In this opening scene, when Isabel first meets her uncle, cousin, and Lord Warburton, much of what will occur later can be seen in the interactions of the characters.

This initial scene occurs at the beginning, but the narrative is already in motion. Later, James circles back to introduce us to Isabel and exactly how she ended up in England. There are two lines in that chapter which are good in themselves, but also form a contrast with the final scenes in the book.

[T]his young lady had been seated alone with a book. To say that she had a book is to say that her solitude did not press upon her; for her love of knowledge had a fertilising quality and her imagination was strong.

And later:

Her reputation of reading a great deal hung about her like the cloudy envelope of a goddess in an epic; it was supposed to engender difficult questions, and to keep the conversation at a low temperature. The poor girl liked to be thought clever, but she hated to be thought bookish; she used to read in secret, and, though her memory was excellent, to abstain from quotation.

As an aside here, take a look at the masterful use of semicolons in those two sentences. James’ sentences are written with such a beautiful awareness of how clauses and ideas relate.

This scene is revisited at various points throughout the book. The Touchett’s massive and impressive library, where Isabel spends hours during her initial visit pairs with her last visit, where she cannot bring herself to read. Her early love for reading is crushed by Gilbert’s disdain for books and imagination in general.

James is nothing if not perceptive when it comes to the hypocrisies of his - or any - age. In an early conversation between Mr. Touchett (the rich uncle) and Isabel, they discuss Lord Warburton, who is both fabulously rich and politically progressive - even radical. Mr. Touchett, the capitalist banker, doesn’t think much of this.

“Don’t you think they are sincere?” Isabel asked.

“Well, they are very conscientious,” Mr. Touchett allowed; “but it seems as if the took it out in theories, mostly. Their radical views are a kind of amusement; they have go to have some amusement, and they might have coarser tastes than that. You see they are very luxurious, and these progressive ideas are about their biggest luxury.”

What a delightfully cynical observation. And kind of true too, both about the British aristocracy in the twilight of the Victorian Era and in our own times. It’s easy to be progressive as long as your own status isn’t really threatened. On the other hand, I suppose that one of the reasons the British Empire faded without a bloody revolution is that the Bertie Woosters of the Edwardian Era were content to allow needed reform to happen, rather than double down on increasing inequality like some of our current American plutocrats.

Mr. Touchett is hardly the only cynic in his family, however. Ralph is rather delightful, and this exchange between he and Isabel about Henrietta is fantastically witty.

“Shall I love her, or shall I hate here?” asked Ralph, while they stood on the platform, before the advent of the train.

“Whichever you do will matter very little to her,” said Isabel. “She doesn’t care a straw what men think of her.”

“As a man I am bound to dislike her, then. She must be a kind of monster. Is she very ugly?”

“No, she is decidedly pretty.”

“A female interviewer -- a reporter in petticoats? I am very curious to see her,” Ralph declared.

“It is very easy to laugh at her, but it is not easy to be as brave as she.”

“I should think not; interviewing requires bravery. Do you suppose she will interview me?”

“Never in the world. She will not think you of enough importance.”

“You will see,” said Ralph. “She will send a description of us all, including Bunchie, to her newspaper.”

“I shall ask her not to,” Isabel answered.

“You think she is capable of it, then.”

“Perfectly.”

“And yet you have made her your bosom-friend?”

“I have not made her my bosom-friend; but I like her, in spite of her faults.”

“Ah, well,” said Ralph, “I am afraid I shall dislike her, in spite of her merits.”

That is an exchange worthy of Oscar Wilde.

Later, there is another one, this time about Henrietta’s ambiguous relationship with Mr. Bantling, a minor British aristocrat.

“She has made a conquest. He thinks here a brilliant woman. It may go far,” said Ralph.

Isabel was silent a moment.

“I call Henrietta a very brilliant woman; but I don’t think it will go far,” she rejoined at last. “They would never really know each other. He has not the least idea what she really is, and she has no just comprehension of Mr. Bantling.”

“There is no more usual basis of matrimony than a mutual misunderstanding.”

What an outstanding line. For better or worse, Ralph is right. Henrietta and Bantling do eventually square it up -- although not for a number of years. But, alas, Isabel herself will marry on the basis of a mutual misunderstanding.

Not too long after this, Caspar Goodwood makes his first appearance, and attempts to convince Isabel to marry him. It does not go well. She turns him down, and he won’t let it go.

“What good do you expect to get by insisting?”

“The good of not losing you.”

“You have no right to talk about losing what is not yours. And even from your own point of view,” Isabel added, “you ought to know when to let one alone.”

I’ve met a few people like this in my law practice. The ones who feel they have some entitlement. (And, whether it comes through in this short excerpt, Caspar does feel he has a claim on her, if he can just assert it strongly enough.) However, Caspar does get one thing right about Isabel:

“Do you think I am so very easily pleased?” she asked suddenly, changing her tone.

“No I don’t; I shall try and console myself with that. But there are a certain number of very clever men in the world; if there were only one, it would be enough. You will be sure to take no one who is not?”

“I don’t need the aid of a clever man to teach me how to live,” said Isabel. “I can find it out for myself.”

Isabel speaks the truth -- but not the truth about her, and that is the problem. All it will take is a very clever man (aided by an even more clever woman), and she will marry to be “taught how to live.” Isabel is the one person who can’t see this about herself. Later, Mrs. Touchett has some misgivings about Isabel and Gilbert having met, but she consoles herself that Isabel refused Lord Warburton. I love this line about Mrs. Touchett’s view of marriage:

Mrs. Touchett easily remembered that the girl had refused an English peer; and that a young lady for whom Lord Warburton had not been up to the mark should content herself with an obscure American dilettante, a middle aged widower with an overgrown daughter and an income of nothing - this answered to nothing in Mrs. Touchett’s conception of success. She took, it will be observed, not the sentimental, but the political view of matrimony -- a view which has always had much to recommend it.

I am, shall we say, not of Mrs. Touchett’s opinion. However, I will grant one thing: there is much to be said for marrying someone in one’s general income class. Much less gold digging -- and that goes both directions. But that is probably the attorney in me talking. (Also, how good is that last sentence? Delaying “political” until the end of the clause is perfection.)

There is another witty exchange on the general topic of materialism later on. Edward Rosier, the star-crossed would-be suitor of Gilbert’s daughter Pansy, tries to enlist Madame Merle’s assistance. Edward isn’t the sharpest tool, but he is rather earnest.

Rosier’s eyes wandered, lingeringly, around the room again.

“You have some very good things.”

“Yes, but I hate them.”

“Do you want to get rid of them?” the young man asked quickly.

“No, it’s good to have something to hate; one works it off.”

“I love my things,” said Rosier, as he sat there smiling.

I did snicker when I read that one.

Notwithstanding all this sparkling wit, the story turns darker and darker as it progresses. A particularly devastating moment is when Isabel comes to terms with the fact that her husband hates her.

She remembered perfectly the first sign he had given of it -- it had been like the bell that was to ring up the curtain upon the real drama of their life. He said to her one day that she had too many ideas, and that she must get rid of them. He had told her that already, before their marriage; but then she had not noticed it; it came back to her only afterwards.

And then later:

The real offense, as she ultimately perceived, was her having a mind of her own at all. Her mind was to be his -- attached to his own like a small garden-plot to a deer-park. He would rake the soil gently and water her flowers; he would weed the beds and gather an occasional nosegay. It would be a pretty piece of property for a proprietor already far-reaching. He didn’t wish her to be stupid. On the contrary, it was because she was clever that she had pleased him. But he expected her intelligence to operate altogether in his favour, and so far from desiring her mind to be a blank, he had flattered himself that it would be richly receptive. He had expected his wife to feel with him, and for him, to enter into his opinions, his ambitions, his preferences; and Isabel was obliged to confess that this was no very unwarrantable demand on the part of a husband. But there were certain things she could never take in.

James here betrays the values of his time -- and pushes back on them. Indeed, it really was considered a reasonable demand that a woman “submit” to her husband in all things including her very ideas. In fact, this is precisely what is expected within the Christian Patriarchy circles my wife and I spent time in. At least in theory. And there were more than a few narcissists who, like Gilbert Osmond, came to hate their wives for having their own minds. Isabel may concede this in theory, but not in practice. And I can say for certain that my wife would never tolerate it. Likewise, I would never expect it. I love that she has a sharp mind - and a sharp tongue on occasion. I have no wish to have it any other way.

Sadly, Isabel really has no one with whom she can be honest. Except for Henrietta.

“Yes, I am miserable,” she said, very gently. She hated to hear herself say it; she tried to say it as judicially as possible.

“What does he do to you?” Henrietta asked, frowning as if she were inquiring into the operations of a quack doctor.

“He does nothing. But he doesn’t like me.”

“He’s very difficult!” cried Miss Stackpole. “Why don’t you leave him?”

“I can’t change that way,” Isabel said.

“Why not, I should like to know? You won’t confess that you have made a mistake. You are too proud.”

“I don’t know whether I am too proud. But I can’t publish my mistake. I don’t think that’s decent. I would much rather die.”

“You won’t think so always,” said Henrietta.

“I don’t know what great unhappiness might bring me to; but it seems to me that I shall always be ashamed. One must accept one’s deeds. I married him before all the world; I was perfectly free; it was impossible to do anything more deliberate. One can’t change that way,” Isabel repeated.

There is something particularly devastating about this passage. Isabel, obviously, would lose if she left. Probably her fortune, which would now be Gilbert’s - the laws were unfavorable to women. But also her “respectability,” for whatever that was worth. Caspar would take her. He offered as much. I have seen other people (male and female these days) stay in doomed relationships for years - decades even - because of this misplaced sense of pride. It would be better if more people were willing to admit a mistake - and to grant grace to others who have left failed marriages too.

There is one more amazingly perceptive line from this terrible relationship. Gilbert, naturally, loathes Henrietta. But, because his life consists of showing contempt for the world while craving its approval, he wishes to do the socially proper thing.

Isabel presently saw that Osmond would have liked her to urge a little the cause of her friend, insist a little upon his receiving her, so that he might appear to suffer for good manners’ sake. Her immediate acceptance of his objections put him too much in the wrong -- it being in effect one of the disadvantages of expressing contempt, that you cannot enjoy at the same time the credit of expressing sympathy.

At the end, Ralph finally succumbs to his illness. As he is dying, Caspar and Henrietta agree to take him back to England. Soon afterward, Isabel is told the end is near, and she decides to defy her husband’s wishes, and go see him one last time. The book ends without telling us what the fallout will be. It is implied that she is going back to Gilbert, but it is far from clear if he will take her back or not. If he does, he will presumably punish her forever for her disobedience. But, as one of the above exchanges indicates, she herself wonders if enough suffering will make her leave. Yes, she’d lose her fortune. (Laws were not favorable to women…) Caspar would take her -- he offered. But would she take him? It seems unlikely. So we are left to wonder.

As a final thought, here is the exchange with Caspar when he realizes she is miserable, even if she won’t admit it.

“But I do ask one sole satisfaction -- that you tell me -- that you tell me -----”

“That I tell you what?”

“Whether I may pity you.”

“Should you like that?” Isabel asked, trying to smile again.

“To pity you? Most assuredly! That at least would be doing something. I would give my life to it.”

She raised her fan to her face, which it covered, all except her eyes. They rested a moment on his.

“Don’t give your life to it; but give a thought to it every now and then.”

This actually would have been a great way to end the book. There are another 80 pages to go, and the ending as it is is okay, even if it is a cliffhanger. But, man, what a great final line that one would have been.

I rather love Henry James, and this is one of his finest works. While I noted at the outset that I thought his writing might have been wasted on the teenage me, I also wonder if books like this might be good reading for teens in general, at an age when they are likely to become enamored of charming narcissists like Osmond, or fall prey to the machinations of more sophisticated manipulators like Madame Merle.

Henry James had a brother, William James, considered one of the most influential psychologists - and philosophers - of all time. Henry shared his brother’s keen insights into the working of the human mind, and it is arguable which one has had the most profound influence. Given the power of stories, I lean toward Henry. Not everyone will take a philosophy course. But anyone can appreciate the insight demonstrated in novels like this. It is a difficult task indeed to read The Portrait of a Lady, and not come away deeply moved and troubled by its truths.  

***

Other Henry James works I have read and reviewed:

Eight Novellas and Short Stories (Includes Daisy Miller and The Turn of the Screw)

Washington Square

The Bostonians

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

Source of book: I own this.

Some friends of ours invited my wife and me to join their book club, appropriately entitled the Literary Lush Book Club. Because food and adult beverages are also important to the experience. I previously read (but was unable to attend for) The Master and Margarita, and finally participated in the meeting for The Island of Dr. Moreau. While my music and camping schedule interfere with perfect attendance, I do hope to at least read most of the books this year. In general, they tend to pick books that I would not necessarily have read on my own. The Goldfinch is a good example of that.

The Goldfinch won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2014. Honestly, I have always thought of the Pulitzer as something for journalism and non-fiction, and, while those categories are important, there are also prizes for fiction, poetry, drama, and music.

The basic setup of the book is this: 13 year old Theo is visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art, when a terrorist bomb explodes, killing his mother among others. A dying old man hands him a ring, and points to a small painting, The Goldfinch by Carel Fabritius, which Theo puts in his backpack before finding his way out of the building through the rubble. From there, Theo lives briefly with a friend’s family, before his deadbeat dad and new girlfriend whisk him away to Vegas, where is is basically left to his own devices - and those of his new friend Boris, a Ukrainian immigrant who has traveled the world. The two boys get high and into trouble, unsurprisingly. Later, Theo’s dad gets drunk and dies in a car accident, and Theo finds his way back to New York, where he is raised by the business partner of the old man who gave him the ring. I’ll stop there, because there are plenty of crazy plot twists and developments that I would hate to give away.

 The Goldfinch by Frabritius. A pupil of Rembrandt, Fabritius was killed in the Explosion of Delft, when a gunpowder magazine blew, destroying most of the city - and most of Fabritius' paintings as well. A sad loss of artist and art.

In some ways, the book is a coming-of-age story with Theo as the protagonist. But in others, it is a tale of the painting itself. When the book ends, there are a number of questions involving Theo which are left unresolved, while the painting experiences a full resolution.

I would also describe the book as a bit of a modern day Dickens story, in the vein of Oliver Twist and David Copperfield. In fact, the first half of the book is chock full of “easter eggs” that Dickens fans such as myself can discover. My wife pointed out the parallels between Pippa and Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop, although Pippa might also be compared to Emily in David Copperfield. There are also a number of references to Harry Potter, leading my wife to note that it looks like there is a generational divide there: from Gen Y onward, Potter will be similar to Shakespeare or Greek Mythology in that it will be a constant source of literary references that the reader will be expected to know. Which means I really need to read the Harry Potter books, apparently.

(I was 20 when the first Harry Potter book came out, so I was too old to read them at the intended age. By the time my kids were old enough, my wife read the books to them, so I just never ended up reading them. That is in addition to the fact that they were considered evil by the Fundie subculture my family was in, so I might have missed them back then. Even now, I think my kids’ love for the books freaks my mom out. Sigh.)

I do have to mention one more allusion which I thought was a nice touch. In order to return the ring, Theo has to find a certain address, and ring a green doorbell. I cannot but conclude that Tartt has given a nod to O Henry, and his delightful tale of adventure and coincidence, “The Green Door,” where a random advertisement leads to unexpected happenings. (That story is one of my favorites by O Henry - and I have read them all.)

Donna Tartt does write well, with many singularly beautiful and evocative descriptions. The book is quite long (962 pages in the paperback edition), but not long in the same way as, say, Tolstoy or Trollope. It does get a bit bogged down occasionally, particularly in the last 100 pages where it waxes philosophical. However, much of it flies by quickly, and few if any details are wasted. In fact, when I reached the end, I was surprised how many early details turned out to be important for either the plot or the character development. Tartt took her time with this book, and as a result, the book feels tightly written.

One of the choices that was interesting was the way that Tartt kept circling back to certain ideas and topics, which I believe to be tied to Theo’s PTSD and resulting obsession with his trauma. He keeps returning to the same thoughts, even as he wishes to move on, and thus Tartt brings us along with him in his spiraling inner life.

I think Tartt was really perceptive in her description of the various professionals tasked with making sure Theo is okay after the bombing. The vast majority of the adults seem rather clueless, and unfortunately, this is all too realistic. (One area I work in is in the Juvenile court system, on cases where children are removed from the custody of their parents due to abuse or neglect. There are lots of well meaning people, but all too often, the things done resemble, as Theo puts it, reading from the “checklist of Things to Say to Troubled Kids.”) What Theo needs more than anything (and that he gets from Hobie) is someone to talk normally with him, and just be a friend. I understand the need (and benefit) of professional help, and so on, but I think this is often an overlooked and underprovided need.

Looking back on my notes, I also jotted down an exchange between Boris (the Artful Dodger of the book) and Theo regarding Boris’ dad.

“He feels bad for leaving me so much alone. He knows is a holiday coming up, and he asked if I could stay at your house.”

“Well, you do all the time anyway.”

“He knows that. That’s why he thanked you. But - I hope you don’t mind - I gave him your wrong address.”

“Why?”

Because - I think maybe you don’t want him rolling up drunk at your house in the middle of the night.” 

Boris’ dad is just one of the picaresque underworldish characters that come into this book. There is a funny line about Horst, the stolen artwork dealer, who keeps chickens in his posh house in Miami - to shoot at. As Boris queries, “What kind of crazy thing is this for these people to keep chickens in Miami?” We might all ask that question.

Another line that made me smile was the term that Theo uses for his fiance Kitsey’s godmother, who swoops in to take over their wedding plans. “Wedding Obergruppenführer.” Yep, that was an official Nazi rank in the SS. And yes, it applies to certain sorts I am rather familiar with from my days playing weddings in a string quartet. (I still do occasionally, but less since having kids.)

There is also a fun scene in Amsterdam - although it could have taken place anywhere, honestly. Those of us who live in California certainly are aware of the little hole-in-the-wall hipster health food restaurant. One is spoofed here - although they really tend to self-parody.

“Food is so awful,” said Boris. “Sprouts and some hard old wheat toast. You would think hot girls go there, but is just old grey-haired women and fat.”

One final line caught my eye. Theo and Boris are having a bit of a philosophical discussion near the end, about the role of fate and/or providence in our lives, and the way seemingly bad things can have unexpected and unintended consequences, some of which are positive.

Theo counters Boris’ optimistic view:

“I believe this goes more to the idea of ‘relentless irony’ than ‘divine providence.’”

“Yes - but why give it a name? Can’t they both be the same thing?”

I’m kind of with Boris on this one.

The Goldfinch is an interesting book. It’s a compelling read, with an interesting story and good writing. It is a bit sordid in a way, with a lot of drug use, some language and violence, but an intentional minimum of sex. Theo pushes away intimacy of all kinds as part of his damaged psyche, and this is part of how the sexuality works. Things are always mentioned obliquely, whether it is his series of non-serious girlfriends as an adult, or what probably took place with Boris when they were teens. Like his trauma, Theo doesn’t want to go there or admit what he feels. But that is part of the point of this book. Theo is damaged, but you still root for him. He makes horrible decisions, but you still want it to come out okay. He will never be who you hope he could be, but he is still human and interesting.

I was not aware of this book before it was nominated as an option for our club, but I am glad I read it. It is definitely worth reading. As with many literary novels, be sure to stay with it for a while, as the slower first pages are there to set the stage. As one of our members memorably put it, he waits to decide if he is going to finish a book until he can see that it is transitioning from the first act to the second. By that point, one knows enough to evaluate whether the book will be worth finishing. I tend to agree with that. (With the caveat that a few “books” are so dreadfully written that you can discard them within a few pages just because of authorial incompetence. But most of those aren’t the sort I would be interested in in the first place.) Once it gets going, The Goldfinch is a combination of thoughtful literary fiction, and fast-paced adventure. Enjoy the action, but savor the lovely and evocative writing, and the thoughtful deeper ideas.

We discussed a lot more than this at book club, but that is a bit beyond the scope of this review. While long, this book did spark a very interesting series of discussions, and it was fun to see what everyone brought to the table.