Stephen Jay Gould, the evolutionary biologist, has received a lot of attention over the past several years for his books and articles denying the existence of God.
I had heard of Gould and even read about ½ of one of his books, still in my modest science library which I bought this during my “you should learn more than physics” stage of life. Gould too is an atheist but says of science and religion – never the twain shall meet. Harris attempts to demonstrate, from the review unsuccessfully, that the facts about the well-being of conscious creatures can be derived from science, especially neuroscience.
The reference to Gould in the NYT Review of Books and the review of Harris' Moral Landscape gave me pause for thought. I thought do I really need to read either Harris or Gould?
I retrieved from my library - which admittedly consists of only a few selected books as most have been in storage for at least 10 years - a book by Pierre Bayard titled “How to Talk About Books You HaveN’T Read.” I noted the bookmark was inserted at page 48 whereas the book has about 150 pages; I obviously took the author to heart. Nonetheless, I recall enjoying the first few chapters.
The preface begins with:
“Born into a milieu where reading was rare, deriving little pleasure from the activity, and lacking in any case the time to devote myself to it, I have often found myself in the delicate situation of having to express my thoughts on books I haven’t read.
Because I teach literature at the university level, there is, in fact, no way to avoid commenting on books that most of time I haven’t even opened. It’s true that this also the case for the majority of my students, but if even one of them has read the text I’m discussing, there is a risk that at any moment my class will be disrupted and I will find myself humiliated.”
Would I be stretching the truth to say few of us want to be humiliated but most of us want to be interesting and well-read. At least to page 48, Bayard’s book is very amusing and I probably skimmed the chapter titles of the rest of the book Fortunately each chapter has a little key idiom beneath the chapter title, almost eliminating the need to read the text.
From a brief review of Bayard’s book:
“A must-read for anyone who cares about books.”
I feel I let the reviewer down, but not Bayard.
Book reviews are extremely useful, however, for a variety of reasons: (a) they can be interesting; (b) they serve the purpose of allowing one to talk knowledgably about a book without struggling through it; (c) if the review is bad you can avoid buying the book [after all, you have already paid for the Globe or the NYT Review of Books] and you can impress your acquaintances by telling them not to buy the book; (d) etc.
In the review of “The Moral Landscape”, I learned about Sam Harris’ 2 previous books on the same topic so no longer need to read them and also learned about Gould, so no longer need to read him either (saving at least $75 plus tax and much space in my already cluttered attic office). In fact the reviewer’s comments about the new book and the 2 previous ones are as follows:
“I found myself wishing for less of the polemic against religion, which recurs often and takes up one entire chapter — he has had two bites of that apple already, and will soon be reduced to gnawing at the core — and I wanted more of the illumination that comes from our increasing understanding of neuroscience.”
I think I will leave gnawing at the core to those with more time and reach American Science for information on neuroscience.
How is this for a page turner – “The Shadow Market – How a Group of Wealthy Nations and Powerful Investors Secretly Dominate the World”. A catchy title but a smidge too long; one wonders whether you need the rest of the book: From the review this week in the NYT:
“The trouble is the delivery. A sober book like “The Shadow Market” is never going to read like a Crichton potboiler, but it veers too far in the other direction, often sounding like a report for the Council on Foreign Relations. There is too much survey and not enough analysis.”
I think I will take a pass on this one, but good cocktail conversation depending on the crowd.
“Superbly written and eminently fascinating.”
One review which I dug up on a google search says:
"The New York Times book review says A Beautiful Mind "reads like a fine novel." Except, a fine novel doesn't have endnotes plaguing the entire text. Sylvia Nasar must be German. If not at the end of every sentence, at least at the end of every line of thought, there lies an endnote. (The Germans are famous for documenting everything to distraction; this is not a stereotype.) The book is ridiculously over-documented. (For example, Chapter 1 alone, which is only 15 pages long, has 63 endnotes!) This is terribly distracting for me as the reader, especially considering that hardly any of the notes actually elucidates anything; just documents, documents, documents, as if it were a college thesis."
You can imagine which review I preferred. If anyone cares to borrow A Beautiful Mind, please email me.
By the way, if you are not satisfied with the short, but sweet, reviews in the NYT, you can go for the more intellectual and far, far longer reviews in the New Yorker. Not sure if anything of interest emanates from west of the Rockies.
Enough of this – if have you read Bayard’s book, you will unlikely have gotten this far in my own too fully documented blog.
Back to serious stuff next time.
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