Pursuing a Life of Science

Transcendent Kingdom 

by Yaa Gyasi

“...We humans are reckless with our bodies, reckless with our lives, for no other reason than that we want to know what would happen, what it might feel like to brush up against death, to run right up to the edge of our lives, which is, in some ways, to live fully.”   ― Yaa Gyasi, Transcendent Kingdom

This novel, the author's second, is a thoughtful, yet often emotional narrative of the life of a young black woman, named Gifty, who is of Ghanaian descent. She is a sixth-year PhD student in neuroscience at Stanford University School of Medicine, where she studies reward-seeking behavior in mice as well as the neural circuits of depression and addiction.

She is dealing with issues involving family, religion, and science as she grows up to become a intelligent scientist. Her brother, Nana, was a gifted high school athlete who died of a heroin overdose after becoming addicted to OxyContin due to an ankle injury. From the opening pages of the novel we learn about her mother who has many issues with living and has taken up residence in her bed. While her father has abandoned the family and returned to Ghana. He said to them "I'm going home to visit my brother . . . and then he never came back."

Gifty is determined to find a scientific explanation for the suffering she witnesses all around her. Even as she turns to the hard sciences to solve the mystery of her family's death, she finds herself yearning for her childhood faith and grappling with the evangelical church in which she was raised, whose promise of salvation remains as enticing as it is elusive. At one point in her pursuit of science she thinks, "What's the point?" and it became a refrain for her.

I was impressed with the non-linear timeline of the first person narrative as the transition from the present to the past was never confusing. In spite of the difficulties she faces, Gifty's journey through life becomes one of hope for the future.

The Birth of Modern Culture

Wittgenstein's Vienna 

by Allan Janik & Stephen Toulmin

"those who are ignorant of the context of ideas are . . . destined to misunderstand them. " - p 27.

Set in the hot bed of ideas at the end of the nineteenth century this book covers the man at the center of philosophic discussions, Ludwig Wittgenstein. But more than that this is a work of cultural history defining the meaning of the changes abounding from the preoccupations of a society undergoing profound changes. 

The arc of the books narrative takes the reader from Habsburg Vienna during the last days of empire through changes to language, culture, and philosophy. Leavened by references to art, music, and literature the book attempts to make a case for the intelligibility of these changes. 

One reads about the impact of the thought of Sigmund Freud; the music of Arnold Schonberg; and the art of Klimt, Kokoschka, and others. If you are interested in the roots of Robert Musil's early work or the impact of the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer you should read this book. It is a seminal work in the history of ideas.

Killing Words for Fun and Edification

When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It: 

The Parts of Speech, for Better And/Or Worse 

by Ben Yagoda

"The adverb is like the adjective only more so. . . . H. L. Mencken referred to it as "at best the stepchild of grammar.""  -  Ben Yagoda

For anyone who loves the English language or good writing or both this is a brief but essential book. With wry humor the author skewers the abusers of English while providing an important message for those who are able to calm down after each fit of laughter. 

In some ways this seems like a high-brow version of Richard Armour, but just not too high. The book covers parts of speech from Adj. to V. and seven others in between. With quips like this - "Every word, when a grammarian knows not what to make of it, he calls an adverb." - from the Roman Servius. Or there are examples of words that go rogue like prepositions that end up being adverbs or phrasal verbs. For what it's worth I enjoyed the ride and survived to, hopefully, use adjectives and other words with a bit more circumspection than I may have in the past.

Dreams of Assimilation

Interior Chinatown 

by Charles Yu

“Unofficially, we understood. There was a ceiling. Always had been, always would be. Even for him. Even for our hero, there were limits to the dream of assimilation, to how far any of you could make your way into the world of Black and White.”    ― Charles Yu, Interior Chinatown




I was drawn to Interior Chinatown because it was awarded the National Book Award and I wondered why it beat out Shuggie Bain, among others, for that award. . Only later did I realize I had previously read the author's earlier novel, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, a tongue in cheek romp about the dangers of time travel. In my reading of his new book I found that Interior Chinatown evokes George Saunders' amusing and emotional short stories and films like 'The Truman Show.

The protagonist of this unusual novel, Willis Wu, doesn't see himself as the hero of his own story: he's just another Generic Asian Man. He is occasionally cast as a Background Oriental Making a Weird Face or even as a Disgraced Son, but he is usually reduced to a prop. Every day, he leaves his cramped room in a Chinatown SRO and walks inside the Golden Palace restaurant, where the procedural cop show Black and White is under continual production. He has a small part here, too, but he aspires to be Kung Fu Guy, the most prestigious role available to anyone who looks like him. Why is that the case?

Willis finds himself thrust into a larger world than he's ever known after falling into the spotlight, learning not only the secret history of Chinatown, but also the history of the United States. In relaying this history the author uses a distinctive television screenplay structure. It isn't simply an amusing eccentricity; it also serves to emphasize how strongly Hollywood's rules affect everything in Willis's life, both on and off set. Every person is typecast into a specific position based on their appearance, and in order to be a star, Willis must never stop performing. He tames every aspect of himself to ensure that he's only ever presenting what's expected of Generic Asian Man on the outside. Only when he gets there does he find it's still the same—except now he has the added responsibility of preserving Chinatown's orientalist myth and the people who live there, further confirming their status as outsiders.

This novel is a satire and a commentary on the way we view others and ourselves. What is your identity and what one would you prefer to show to others? Or, perhaps you are comfortable in your own skin, whatever that may be.