Birthday Books 2016

For the past several years, I have posted about the books I got as Christmas presents. This year, since my lovely wife found a number of interesting books for me, I figured I would do a birthday post as well.

1. Collected Poems of W. H. Auden
   
   

I previously borrowed a copy from the library and read a play and some early poems. You can read that review here. I greatly enjoyed Auden, and hoped to get a copy of my own. My wife obviously knows me well, as she found a lovely hardback edition.

2.     Within the Plantation Household: Black & White Women of the Old South by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese

This was a random used book find by my wife. I wasn’t particularly familiar with this work, but did a little research. While some of the conclusions are considered a bit dated, it was an important work in examining (from primary sources) the lives of women in the Antebellum South. In particular, Fox-Genovese is credited with exploding the myth that Southern women leaned abolitionist, instead showing how dependent Southern women were on forced labor to maintain their idealized lifestyles. This promises to be an interesting one.

3. The Private Dining Room by Ogden Nash

I realized when my wife gave me this that it has been far too long since I read any Ogden Nash. His brilliant and wicked sense of humor never gets old. (See, for example, this one with a Christmas theme.) Stand by for a review of this one as my next poetry selection.

4. 100 Classic Hikes in Oregon and Eastern Oregon

These are from my in-laws, who got them for me after learning that the kids and I plan to visit eastern Oregon next August, to see (we hope) the solar eclipse. As with the National Parks books they got me a couple of years ago, these look fantastic, with plenty of ideas that I will, no doubt, use.

As usual, check back from time to time, as I plan to link the reviews as a read them.

Winter Words by Thomas Hardy

Source of book: I own this

I’ve had kind of mixed feelings about Hardy ever since I read Jude the Obscure a decade or so ago. Yeah, I know, perhaps not the best place to start, but I owned it already, and it was controversial, so why not jump in and see? Well, the controversy part was easy enough, with its frank (for its time) sexuality and non-conventional family. Likewise, it wasn’t hard to see both the digs at academia (inaccessible to those lacking wealth or status) and the church (more concerned with enforcing sexual mores than with true morality.) In fact, both of these ideas seem every bit as relevant today as then. After all, our own modern time sees higher education becoming ever more expensive, and the most politically powerful church organizations calling for policies that would harm those who break the sexual rules. (Jude’s family starving because he couldn’t get work or housing? That sure sounds relevant these days.)

No, what actually bothered me most about Jude the Obscure was that it is the most misogynistic book I recall reading. I don’t mean “mere” sexism, but bitter, bitter hatred of women.

It turns out that there is a reason for this.

Hardy’s mother - like the father of Elizabeth Barrett Browning - made clear to her children that they were never to marry, but were to remain as “bachelor siblings” and live together for life. When Hardy did marry Emma Lavinia Gifford at age 30, he was made to know his mother’s displeasure.

The marriage with Emma started off happy, but became increasingly estranged. The last 20 years of her life, they lived on separate floors of their house, and rarely saw each other. It isn’t clear entirely what happened. The two of them made sure their correspondence was destroyed, and much of what survived of Emma’s was later burned by Thomas after her death. There are some hints, however. Hardy was a difficult man, to say the least. Emotional and high strung, he seems to have taken Emma for granted. On her part, she seems to have married for more platonic reasons, and resented her life from early on. They never had children, which may have contributed as well. Further, Hardy himself appears to have suffered from bouts of depression, and Emma is believed to have had mental health issues of her own.

Whatever the underlying causes, it appears that, like Sue in Jude, Emma retreated into religion when she hit middle age, and cut Hardy off from sexual contact. Needless to say, Hardy’s tendency to put the autobiographical details of his failing marriage into his novels didn’t exactly thrill Emma.

Odd to say, after her death, Hardy seems to have felt terrible about it all, and tried to deify her in his later poems.

All this to say that Hardy’s experiences in a failed marriage led him to believe that women, particularly middle-aged women, were out to take advantage of men, and wield their sexuality as a weapon.

I did later read Under the Greenwood Tree, which is from the earlier, more optimistic period of his works. But I’m not sure I ever recovered from the trauma of Jude.

So, with that lengthy introduction, let me proceed. 

***

 

Winter Words is Hardy’s last collection of poetry. They were generally written in the 1920s, after the horror that was World War I changed England forever. The last of the collection was dictated on his deathbed - his intention to release the collection on his next birthday had failed. Considering he started putting it together at age 87, he didn’t do too badly.

Hardy introduces the collection by noting that the critics considered his last one to be too pessimistic and gloomy. With his characteristic wit, he quips, “However, I did not suppose that the licensed tasters had wilfully misrepresented the book, and said nothing, knowing well that they could not have read it.”

The collection starts with a peculiar poem, “The New Dawn’s Business,” which expresses the feeling that Hardy has been ready to die for some time, but life keeps on.

The New Dawn’s Business

What are you doing outside my walls,

O Dawn of another day?

I have not called you over the edge

Of the heathy ledge,

So why do you come this way,

With your furtive footstep without sound here,

And your face so deedily gray?

‘I show a light for killing the man

Who lives not far from you,

And for bringing to birth the lady’s child,

Nigh domiciled,

And for earthing a corpse or two,

And for several other such odd jobs round here

That Time to-day must do.

‘But you he leaves alone (although,

As you have often said,

You are always ready to pay the debt

You don’t forget

You owe for board and bed):

The truth is, when men willing are found here

He takes those loth instead.’

Perhaps pessimistic. Perhaps just melancholy. Hardy has other moods, however. I liked this one:

Concerning His Old Home

MOOD I

I wish to see it never –

That dismal place

With cracks in its floor –

I would forget it ever!

MOOD II

To see it once, that sad

And memoried place –

Yes, just once more –

I should be faintly glad!

MOOD III

To see it often again –

That friendly place

With its green low door –

I’m willing anywhen!

MOOD IV

I’ll haunt it night and day –

That loveable place,

With its flowers’ rich store

That drives regret away!

Hardy’s poems are quite traditional in meter and form, and the level of craft is apparent. In the above, the internal lines of each stanza rhyme with each other throughout the entire poem, which I found to be an interesting way to tie the form together.

The craft is evident in many of the pictures Hardy paints as well. The first stanza of this one is memorable: the picture of the sky as a pot with a slightly askew lid.

Suspense

A clamminess hangs over all like a clout,

The fields are a water-colour washed out,

The sky at its rim leaves a chink of light,

Like the lid of a pot that will not close tight.

She is away by the groaning sea,

Strained at the heart, and waiting for me:

Between us our foe from a hid retreat

Is watching, to wither us if we meet. . . .

But it matters little, however we fare—

Whether we meet, or I get not there;

The sky will look the same thereupon,

And the wind and the sea go groaning on.

Another example of melancholy, rather than true pessimism.

One of the themes that runs through this collection is the loss of the naivete of the past. For Hardy, this means the loss of his religious beliefs, the loss of faith in mankind, and the devastation of the passage of time. Whether you agree with his assessment or not, these are some of the best poems in the collection. Here are a few that stood out.

I won’t quote all of “Drinking Song,” which recounts the gradual loss (as Hardy sees it) of the “God in the Gaps” of ancient times. The great thoughts of the past lose their mystery as science explains them. I don’t agree with Hardy on the philosophical point, perhaps because I never liked the God in the Gaps argument in the first place. But the poem itself has a humor about it. Sure, we have to adapt as we discover, but no need to despair. Thus, at the end, Hardy concludes that even without the great thoughts of the past, we can still do good in the world. The best stanza in my opinion is the one on Einstein. (Recall that Relativity was a new concept when the poem was written…)

And now comes Einstein with a notion —

Not yet quite clear

To many here —

That's there's no time, no space, no motion,

Nor rathe nor late,

Nor square nor straight,

But just a sort of bending-ocean.

Chorus

Fill full your cups: feel no distress;

'Tis only one great thought the less!

This loss of faith seems to be particularly lacerating to Hardy around Christmas. There are two poems with this theme, the first of which is one of Hardy’s better known late poems.

Yuletide in a Younger World

We believed in highdays then,

And could glimpse at night

On Christmas Eve

Imminent oncomings of radiant revel—

Doings of delight:—

Now we have no such sight.

We had eyes for phantoms then,

And at bridge or stile

On Christmas Eve

Clear beheld those countless ones who had crossed it

Cross again in file:—

Such has ceased longwhile!

We liked divination then,

And, as they homeward wound

On Christmas Eve,

We could read men's dreams within them spinning

Even as wheels spin round:—

Now we are blinker-bound.

We heard still small voices then,

And, in the dim serene

Of Christmas Eve,

Caught the far-time tones of fire-filled prophets

Long on earth unseen. . . .

—Can such ever have been?

Should I live as long as Hardy, I truly hope I never lose the ability to see the wonder. On the other hand, I suppose one can see why Hardy felt that way. World War I caused so many to recoil in horror at the hatred that mankind has for mankind. And I share Hardy’s frustration that all the centuries of Christian faith seem to have done little to nothing to prevent it.

Christmas: 1924

'Peace upon earth!' was said. We sing it,

And pay a million priests to bring it.

After two thousand years of mass

We've got as far as poison-gas.

A bitter little epitaph, although it misses the point that mankind has yet to find any creed, sacred or secular, that appears to be able to overpower the tribalist instinct.

Turning from that wretched taste, here is one that shows more good humor: his lament by an old newspaper. (Had he only seen the Digital Age…)

The Aged Newspaper Soliloquizes

Yes; yes; I am old. In me appears

The history of a hundred years;

Empires’, kings’, captives’, births and deaths,

Strange faiths, and fleeting shibboleths.

- Tragedy, comedy, throngs on my page

Beyond all mummed on any stage:

Cold hearts beat hot, hot hearts beat cold,

And I beat on. Yes; yes; I am old.

Two things I love about this one. The use of semicolons to slow the repeat of “yes.” It’s brilliant, and I’m not saying that just because I love semicolons. The other thing I adore is “fleeting shibboleths.” Every age has them, the litmus tests, the signs of belonging to a tribe - and the means of excluding outsiders. Just a great picture.

Another poem also uses tragedy and comedy in a creative way. This may be my favorite of the collection.

He Did Not Know Me

(Woman's Sorrow Song)

He said: " I do not know you;

You are not she who came

And made my heart grow tame?"

I laughed: " The same!"

Still said he: " I don't know you."

" But I am your Love!" laughed I:

" Yours — faithful ever — till I die,

And pulseless lie!"

Yet he said: " I don't know you."

Freakful, I went away,

And met pale Time, with " Pray,

What means his Nay?"

Said Time: " He does not know you

In your mask of Comedy."

" But," said I, " that I have chosen to be:

Tragedy he."

" True; hence he did not know you."

" But him I could recognize?"

" Yea. Tragedy is true guise,

Comedy lies."

Two contrasting poems also caught my eye on the way that age steals beauty. In the first, the narrator never catches the object of his love, but wonders if she would have faded to him. (Perhaps like Emma.)

A Countenance

Her laugh was not in the middle of her face quite,

As a gay laugh springs,

It was plain she was anxious about some things

I could not trace quite.

Her curls were like fir-cones — piled up, brown —

Or rather like tight-tied sheaves:

It seemed they could never be taken down. . . .

And her lips were too full, some might say:

I did not think so. Anyway,

The shadow her lower one would cast

Was green in hue whenever she passed

Bright sun on midsummer leaves.

Alas, I knew not much of her,

And lost all sight and touch of her!

If otherwise, should I have minded

The shy laugh not in the middle of her mouth quite,

And would my kisses have died of drouth quite

As love became unblinded?

But not for everyone does love lose its luster.

Faithful Wilson

" I say she's handsome, by all laws

Of beauty, if wife ever was!"

Wilson insists thus, though each day

The years fret Fanny towards decay.

" She was once beauteous as a jewel,"

Hint friends; " but Time, of course, is cruel."

Still Wilson does not quite feel how,

Once fair, she can be different now.

Anyone who has known a couple who has had true love for many years knows this to be true.

There are a lot of poems in this collection - over a hundred pages worth - and they span many other moods, genres, and forms. Hardy may or may not be your taste, but I found his poems to be better than I expected, with many having a psychological and philosophical depth that went well with the superb craftsmanship.

I’ll end with this one, another favorite, that might be seen as an argument between an extrovert and an introvert.

A Private Man on Public Men

When my contemporaries were driving

Their coach through Life with strain and striving,

And raking riches into heaps,

And ably pleading in the Courts

With smart rejoinders and retorts,

Or where the Senate nightly keeps

Its vigils, till their fames were fanned

By rumour's tongue throughout the land,

I lived in quiet, screened, unknown,

Pondering upon some stick or stone,

Or news of some rare book or bird

Latterly bought, or seen, or heard,

Not wishing ever to set eyes on

The surging crowd beyond the horizon,

Tasting years of moderate gladness

Mellowed by sundry days of sadness,

Shut from the noise of the world without,

Hearing but dimly its rush and rout,

Unenvying those amid its roar,

Little endowed, not wanting more.

Fluke: The Math and Myth of Coincidence by Joseph Mazur

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

I first borrowed my dad’s copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy when I was, well, pretty young. I didn’t ask permission, and was a slight bit shocked at some of the language (which means I must have been young indeed…) but I was very much hooked.

I mention this because, as all fans will know, a key plot point in the book is the “Infinite Improbability Drive” at the heart of the spaceship, The Heart of Gold. As Douglas Adams explains, “finite improbability” drives had been invented long before, so that tricks like removing a woman’s clothing by random chance had been done for centuries. But it was the ability to do things that were not merely improbable - and with known probabilities - but things for which one could not even calculate the many variables, that made the ship so useful. 

Joseph Mazur, a math professor and author, attempts to put the realm of probability into perspective for the layperson. His attempt is partially successful, which is impressive given the vast scope of such an undertaking, and the difficulty in making it useful for those of us without the ability to do higher math and upper level research. (And by that, I mean beyond algebra and statistics - about my comfort level.) To do this, he limits his topic significantly, and focuses on a few specific scenarios that are likely to be relevant to real life and to the stories of remarkable coincidence that make up our folklore.

To start with, Mazur quotes the dictionary definition of “coincidence,” which most of us probably have not actually thought about.

“A surprising concurrence of events or circumstances appropriate to one another or having significance in relation to one another but between which there is no apparent causal connection.”

As the author points out, several of the elements of a true coincidence are often missed when discussing seemingly chance occurrences.

First, it is important to note that these are events which have some significance in relation to each other. In other words, we don’t notice these occurrences unless they have some significance or connection. In practical terms, then, “coincidences” in the colloquial sense happen all the time, all around us, but they are not noticed because they do not trigger a response in us.

As a practical example of this, chances are you and I have both seen the same person in different circumstances. Had that happened with a friend or someone who stood out, we would call it a remarkable coincidence. Instead, because the person had no personal meaning to us, we never noticed.

The second is the phrase “apparent causal connection.” Let me pause for a moment to appreciate the use of “causal,” one of my favorite words from law school. The point the author makes with this is that many things which seem to be mere coincidences actually have causes that make them much more likely.

For instance, if I were to tell you that I would have a case in front of the same judge that presided over Michael Jackson’s estate, you might (if you knew nothing about me) find it to be a striking coincidence. After all, what are the odds that two people would have a case in the same courtroom at about the same time?

Well, for two specific random people, perhaps it would be rare (although, as Mazur points out, on a population basis, it would be inevitable.) But I am not a random person. I am a California attorney, and I take cases that are heard in the Probate division. Furthermore, while I don’t do much in Los Angeles County, I live just one County over, so I do have cases there. So the chances that a person like me might have this “coincidence” are actually higher than one might think. Because there are many causes for the “coincidence”: I am an attorney in the area who practices Probate.

This also leads to another point that Mazur makes. While the odds of a particular occurrence happening to any one individual (like you…), over large populations, the odds of a particular thing happening increase greatly.

The example that Mazur uses is of a woman who won the lottery four times in 18 years. What are the odds of that? Well, the odds of her winning the lottery that many times in that time frame are indeed astronomically low. So don’t bet your life’s savings expecting to do the same.

However, in 18 years, given the total number of lotteries and players, it is actually highly likely that someone would win this many times. It is even more likely, too, given human behavior - and economics. She almost certainly played more once she won the first time. She had motive, and money to spend…

The best part about this section of the book is the math. Okay, at least in my opinion. Mazur makes the basics fairly easy to understand, at least if you can do algebra. (I love algebra, for what that is worth, even though I never took calculus.) Once you have the basics down, you can figure out probabilities. Then, when you start adding those probabilities together, the likelihood of “rare” occurrences starts to approach a value of one.

This is essentially what powers The Heart of Gold. If you can take improbable events, and stretch the time and number event horizons to infinity, the likelihood (in theory) becomes one, and the event occurs.

Let me also note with approval his use of both coin flips and dice rolls to illustrate the concepts. My brother invented a version of “fantasy” baseball (more or less) based on dice probability - back when he was in grade school. While it could have used some refining, he wasn’t too far off in correlating the odds of specific batting outcomes with the odds of rolling certain numbers with a pair of dice.

The book starts with ten stories of “coincidence” that are then analyzed. Some turn out to be indeed unusual, while others turn out to be highly probable, for the reasons above, and only have significance because the persons involved noticed - and told their stories.

There are some other interesting chapters in the second half of the book, which I thought I should mention.

First is one on DNA evidence in criminal trials. As a lawyer, this has been a fascinating topic, not least of which is because I entered law school not long after the O. J. Simpson trial. (As a former Los Angeles resident at the time, I also knew a good bit about the persons and places involved.)

Mazur points out what most of us attorneys know: DNA evidence is not a panacea, and its validity depends very strongly on the way it was processed and handled. Even if this is perfect, DNA evidence is either highly useful, or not particularly useful at all, and the specifics of when and why are poorly understood by legal professionals and law enforcement, to say nothing of the general population.

Just to give some highlights - which is what Mazur does - from a larger field. (I’ve done a bit of research on my own.) First, there is a non-trivial chance of a false positive or a false negative for DNA testing. Mazur points out, however, that the implications of one are different than the other. The chapter opens with Maimonides’ quote that it is better to let some guilty people go free than to have a single innocent executed. (That this is lost on many in our own age is all too true.)

But it gets worse. Mazur cites an independent investigation of the Houston PD crime lab, which found that 32% had major mishandling issues - and the investigators believed that intentional scientific fraud was the cause. (In other words, police workers manipulated results to get convictions.)

And then it gets even worse, at least from the scientific point of view. Fraud is horrible. But fraud can be fixed. Not so much for systemic problems. Let me see if I can summarize this in an understandable manner. Let’s say that we do DNA testing on a person who is already a suspect for legitimate reasons. (Like, say, motive, opportunity, lack of alibi, and so on.) The chances of a false positive for that person are pretty low. DNA might well be useful evidence here. (Although chance contamination is also a possibility, so it isn’t conclusive, just another piece in the puzzle.)

But what if, instead, there are no suspects, but law enforcement runs all their possible DNA samples to look for a match? Well, now we have a problem. Once you invoke the laws of large numbers, the chances of a false positive increase really fast. With enough “suspects,” it becomes almost certain that there will be a match - a false match.

As Mazur points out, this is particularly a problem in the United States. Believe it or not, while we have a mere 4.4 percent of the world population, we have nearly ¼ of the total prisoners. Let that sink in. Our incarceration rate is the highest in the civilized world. Higher than such hotbeds of “freedom” as Russia and Rwanda. And each of those prisoners has given a DNA sample to be checked. And then think about two more things: we disproportionately incarcerate African Americans; and the chances of a false positive increase with consanguinity or membership in an ethnic group. In other words, the system is set up to frame certain groups of people, and the laws of probability demonstrate the risk. The average jury will not hear this, as you might well imagine.

Just for contrast, DNA evidence does appear to be relatively reliable for one thing: exonerating suspects. The fact that there has been so much resistance from law enforcement to organizations who wish to re-evaluate old convictions is a bit disturbing to me as well.

This review has already run long, so let me mention just a few other things. First, I do think a weakness of the book is that it lacks focus. I think the author would have loved to have gone into depth in a few more areas, covered the math in detail, and made this a far longer book. Instead, he had to pick and choose, and the choices show. There are several of the stories he starts with that I would have loved to have examined in more detail, but space permitted only a cursory look at the ideas, rather than the actual math. Most readers might disagree, however, having glazed over after the one chapter dedicated to the math itself.

This is related to a vague dissatisfaction that I myself felt - and which has occurred to other reviewers. While this book can give some clarity about some aspects of chance, so much still boils down to a combination of hard math and the immense difficulty of teasing out the variables which affect chance. One is left with the feeling that, while things like lotteries are mathematically clear, much of what we experience in life defies easy analysis. The variables are just too many, and the math quickly becomes impossible.

The point of the math, though, is that some things may seem unlikely, but in fact are extremely likely. Others may remain more mysterious. And telling the difference is indeed important. What I might draw from this - and from the fact that variables are hard to determine - is that one needs to be careful not to ascribe to fate (or whatever supernatural being you prefer) what may well be chance. This doesn’t mean one cannot see the hand of God in things, but that one needs to be very careful. Yesterday’s coincidence may well turn out to be tomorrow’s foreseeable result.

Mazur clearly loves his topic, and has thought through the problems presented by coincidence more than most of us ever will.

The questions still remain for us to ponder: when we see something as a truly remarkable coincidence, is it truly mathematically rare? Or it is not so much the workings of an inscrutable fate as the inevitable result of known causes working with the laws of mathematics? For that matter, does it matter to us personally? And how should it shape our public policy? (Yes, the lawyer can’t leave that one out…)

It’s an interesting book. I recommend it, but urge readers to sit down and learn the math. It is the most essential part of the issue.