The Original of Laura: Journeying inside Nabokov's Mind

The Original of Laura belongs on the coffee table more than it belongs on the bookshelf. Vladimir Nabokov's posthumously published "novel" reproduces the 138 index cards of a novel he was working on at the time of his death. The pages of this Knopf production consist of card stock, with perforations surrounding each index card to boot. Typeset text of Nabokov’s words accompanies each index card, like the descriptions of paintings accompanying a coffee table collection of Van Goghs. This package feels nice and heavy in your hand. Flipping the pages reveals interesting tidbits about Nabokov’s thought process. He numbered his index cards in an elaborate system, identifying first the chapter, and then the number within that chapter. He also misspelled many things, whether because he couldn’t be bothered to spell things correctly or because he was unsure of the correct spellings.

Flipping through the pages, however, does not provide a comfortable reading experience. The reader is solving a mystery, both trying to piece together a narrative that makes sense from Nabokov’s index cards, while trying to figure out whether or not he intended the readers to read it that way. As far as I can tell, the story is about a woman named Flora, who has a book written about her by a former lover called “My Laura.” The real Flora is married to an older professor, Philip Wild, who tries to figuratively make his body disappear, and thus, to die. Nabokov’s index cards tell both the story of Flora and the story of Laura, occasionally confusing the reader about which is which.

Moments of gorgeous prose about the female body or about what it feels like to cut off to remove one’s toes are pleasurable, but are not enough to go by to judge the quality of Nabokov’s novel.

The unfinished-ness of The Original of Laura raises the whole question of whether or not incomplete manuscripts should even be published. As Sam Anderson points out in New York Magazine, Nabokov was a perfectionist—he even wanted the original Lolita to be burned—who would not have been pleased by the prospect of strangers reading his scribbles. At the same time, The Original of Laura probably contributes to Nabokov’s reputation as a brilliant thinker who could piece together intricate plots by shuffling index cards. This fan, at least, is grateful for the opportunity to experience a Nabokov work in progress.

Journey through American Art at the Met

Today I went to the Met for the first time in a year. My boyfriend, his parents and I braved the holiday crowds to see two exhibits, which taken together, provide examples of social commentary through art throughout American history. In addition, they provide a good example of how social commentary has also changed form through the years.

"American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765-1915," is a heavily curated show that traces American figure painting for two centuries. The exhibit features all the American greats from Copley to Homer to Sargent. Since so many of the featured pictures are already iconic (Morisot's Little Girl in a Blue Dress, Homer's Snap the Whip), it's helpful for the curation to cast a new light on these paintings by accompanying each picture with ample texual description. I probably spent more time reading than I did looking at the images in this exhibit. The text maps American painting closely to American history. Paintings from the early 19th Century, for example, commented on the idea of rural versus urban America. One painting shows a woman choosing between a country suitor and a city suitor; another visualizes the campaign slogan "Tippacanoe and Tyler Too," favoring the western Harrison to the refined van Buren. The late 19th Century, on the other hand, featured Americans experiencing the glamours of Europe at a time when Americans were becoming more worldly. Each room of the exhibit highlights a particular era. Going through all the rooms in order evoked the sense of walking through an American History textbook, minus any of the awful memorization.

"Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans" is an exhibit commemorating the 50th anniversary of Robert Frank's photography book, The Americans. In the 1950s, the Swiss Frank drove across the US taking over 700 rolls of film along the way. He condensed his pictures to an 83 image book called "The Americans." While it was viewed as subversive --even anti-American--at the time, it's been rehabilitated since. This exhibit displays all 83 photos in order, along with some explanation about the themes that Frank was trying to illuminate. Some of the most memorable photos include a black nurse holding a white baby, and a diner bar full of working men on a lunch break looking skeptically at the camera. At first glance, the value of these pictures seem to lie in their ability to capture a bygone time. After all, the picture are all black and white and features such mechanisms as drive throughs and jukeboxes. Frank's social commentary is the second most noticeable thing. He grouped his pictures carefully to comment on America's racial segregation, consumerism, and hard-working spirit. One series of pictures uses the titles "Parade" and "Founding Fathers" ironically. They depict several forlorn people looking out of a window with a flag on the building and a group of men looking on at the betting track in derbies -- not exactly a typical parade or typical founding fathers. Indeed, Frank's is social commentary by arrangement. His grouping abilities sometimes surpass his photographic abilities.

What's most interesting about looking at Frank's pictures fifty years after he took them is to think how similar America is. If someone went around the country and tried to capture the same themes and images, they would be able to do it, nearly frame for frame. There is still plenty of despair, patriotism, and hope.

Three Terrific Short Story Collections

Short stories are what I turn to when trying to figure out how fiction works. Though short stories are often less rewarding than novels, they are often punchier and more revelatory when handled by the best writers. I've recently been on a short story binge, reading the selected stories of Raymond Carver, Alice Munro's latest collection, Too Much Happiness, and Maile Meloy's latest collection Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It. Short stories are seen by most fiction readers as novels in training wheels. Yet, the difficulty of selecting exactly the right words and sentences is felt more acutely in short stories than longer novels. It's thus helpful to read collections by the best authors to see exactly what they choose to reveal, and to what effect.
Reading these three authors in such a short time period illuminates the effects of different stylistic choices. Raymond Carver's stories typically describe a short time period and may not even have a beginning middle and end. His entire story may span the course of an afternoon or a day. One of his more well known stories, "What we talk about when we talk about love," centers around a conversation four people have during dinner. Over the course of dinner, they reveal their romantic histories, as well as their current attitudes towards love. The action takes place over conversation and sideways glances. In the end, we get a picture of four people's outlook on love at one very specific point in their lives. Carver doesn't choose to tell us much about his characters' histories or their futures; his scenes are merely snapshots of his characters' lives. Readers can make up the rest.

In contrast, Alice Munro's stories are almost like short novels. Her recent collection, Too Much Happiness, features many protagonists reflecting on their lives. Munro uses this perspective to tell an entire life's story in twenty pages. By doing this, she essentially distills a life to one aspect of it. This is necessary to fit everything in twenty pages, but also gives the reader a skewed sense of what is significant in a character's life. For example, the story "Fictions" begins as the story of a marriage between a woman, Joyce, and her husband. Her husband leaves her for a lumberjack-type woman. In the second half of the story, Joyce is a 65 year old married to her second husband. At a party, she meets a woman who is the daughter of the woman that Joyce's first husband left her for. The daughter is now a successful short story writer. Joyce picks up her book at the bookstore, and -- of course-- one of the short stories is about her. The story then unfolds as a series of Joyce's predictions about the short story and the author's subsequent ability to exceed these expectations. We see everything from Joyce's perspective, but through the short story, we see everything as a film reversal.

Finally, Maile Meloy's Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It tells beautifully constructed, yet more conventional stories than either Munro or Carver. In precise, twenty page stretches, Meloy shapes a beginning, middle and end. Most of her stories are set in the Northern Midwest/Plains states and evoke a sense of isolation. They range in theme from stories of growing up to stories of settling into marriage. Meloy's voice, however, reveals something new about each of these themes. Her story "Spy vs. Spy," for example, at first appears to be a typical story of sibling rivalry. Aaron and his younger brother, George, gather for a ski trip with Aaron's family and George's girlfriend. Over the course of the trip, we learn that Aaron is the responsible one who resents his brother's free-wheeling life. Of course, Aaron challenges George to a black diamond slope, falls, and gets in a fight with George. But Meloy peppers Aaron's thoughts with childhood memories that add dimension to the characters.

"If they'd had it out when they were younger, really whaled on eac other, then maybe it would be out of their systems...But George had always been younger, and Aaron too restrained to take advantage of his greater strength."

This come at exactly the moment when we're wondering why they hadn't fought before.

In all, these three collections made terrific holiday season reading, and will be remembered all year round.

Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Boring Movie

Two visually enjoyable films in this December's otherwise lacking line up are Avatar (December 18) and Sherlock Holmes (December 25). The bf and I trekked through the snowscape that was DC yesterday to a matinee showing of Avatar. It's basically everything the reviews say. Visually exciting, technically game-changing, but with an overtly anti-colonialist message and completely predictable plot. I really have little new to say about this beyond what Manohla Dargis and Dave Denby have already stated better. Avatar is ultimately memorable, though, the way that the first time you saw Star Wars or Jurassic Park was also memorable, simply for the thrill of seeing something so cool for the first time.

Sherlock Holmes is a different matter. What seemed to be a ribald historical/literary adaptation turned into James Bond of the 19th century. In other words, a thriller with a lot of improbable fighting sequences and technology. The only difference is that instead of pen-sized lock pickers, Sherlock Holmes features odorless fuels and invisible numbing agents. Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) also fights with his mind rather than his brawny Daniel Craig-like muscles. It’s pretty cool to see Holmes plan out his punches in his mind before he socks it to his opponents.

Sherlock Holmes also exemplifies the movie industry’s increasing reliance on CGI. Remember back in the day when historical films meant cool costumes (Pride and Prejudice, Marie Antoinette, Braveheart)? Now, historical films – especially those aimed at men – increasingly mean cool special effects (Troy, Kingdom of Heaven, 300). CGI is used well in Sherlock Holmes. The streets of London give off the right amount of gritty dampness. A half-built suspension bridge looms in several foreshadowing scenes before it’s featured in the final sequence.

Unfortunately, the special effects are the best parts of the movie. The story plot is a poor imitation of Dan Brown. Essentially, Lord Blackmore and his “secret society” (think, Freemasons), plot to take over England, the United States, and then the world. Holmes must stop him with his powerful deduction skills. Of course, we know that Holmes will be victorious, but we aren’t given the clues to follow along like we are in the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle short stories. Instead, there’s a reversal every five minutes to show explain otherwise inexplicable events. These get tiresome.

Holmes’ central problem is also supposed to be his lack of emotion. His practicality and logic get in the way of his feeling. So he can’t admit that he’s sad that Dr. Watson (Jude Law) is leaving him to get married, or that he has feelings for Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams). While Downey does a good job coming across as an eccentric genius, the script is too thin for him to explore any other feelings, leaving the movie as more of a CGI enhanced action flick than historical drama.

Wolf Hall: A New Approach to Historical Fiction

The conundrum that all historical fiction authors face is how to make a story exciting when the readers know what happens to the major characteristics historically. At first glance, Hilary Mantel's 530 page novel set in the court of Henry VIII as the king attempts to make an heir, faces an especially daunting task of creating something original. Readers interested in this story know about Henry VIII's successful quest to become head of the Church of England, annul his marriage to Katherine of Aragon, and marry Anne Boleyn. We also know that Thomas More is killed for being a heretic. Most importantly, we know that Thomas Cromwell somehow made all this happen as the King's right-hand man.

But Mantel draws on what we don't know to capture our attention. Namely, we don't know how the politics of the time allowed the son of a blacksmith to rise to become a king's secretary. Mantel sheds light on this subject by using a wholly original voice. She tells everything from Cromwell's perspective, but through selective third-person narration rather than first. While this strategy takes several pages to get used to, it contributes to a unique experience unlike any that I've encountered before in historical fiction. Instead of telling us what Cromwell feels in third person, instead of Cromwell narrating "I thought" such and such, Mantel uses Cromwell like a camera lens, exposing us only to what he can see at the moment. For example, early in the book, when the young Cromwell finds a refuge on a ship after escaping his abusive father, we get this line:

"He is surprised. Are there people in the world who are not cruel to their children? For the first time, the weight in his chest shifts a little; he thinks, there could be other places, better."

And so, the story seems to be narrated with one delightful observation to another. On writing bills for Henry VIII: "His bills are passed but there is always another bill. When you are writing laws you are testing words to find their utmost power." On asking a woman if she still has sex with her husband: "That's a conversation I shouldn't have had." On the sentencing of Thomas More and other heretics: "The fate of peoples is made like this, two men in small rooms...This is how the world changes: a counter pushed across a table, a pen stroke that alters the force of a phrase."

Luckily for us, Cromwell is a pretty astute camera lens. He always happens to be in the midst of the politicking and deal making, bringing us behind the scenes of Sixteenth Century kingdom management. If Mantel means to make any sweeping pronouncements, it's that humanity remains excruciatingly unchanged despite four hundred years of progress. On the one hand, man is ruled by reason and science over faith; petulant kings no longer order stake-burnings at their whim. On the other hand, people still scheme, still seek justifications from some higher being for all their actions. Above all, the powerful still need Cromwells to do their dirty work, while we continue to wonder which is more guilty.

Best of the Best of the Decade Lists

Now that I'm done with LSAT's, I'm trying to revel in non-law school bliss before I need to actually start applying.

In the meantime, the end of the year is always a robust list-making season. Lists of presents to ask for, lists of people to buy for, and lists of resolutions to aim for. Most fun are lists of the year's best media products. What makes this year ten times better is that it also marks the end of the Gregorian decade. I'm tempted to make a personal list of this decade's best, but considering I spent the bulk of the decade being an emo teenager, I am probably not a good source. Instead, I've taken the opportunity to discover all the things I missed while in my emo trance most of this past decade by looking at some publications' best of the decade lists. The top three (one each for books, films, and music) best best of the decade lists are as follows:

Books
The Times Online 100 Best Books of the Decade is a pretty uncontroversial list that's large enough to leave no one slighted. Personal favorites like Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell and The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud both made it. The list spans both non-fiction and fiction and recognizes influence over quality. The DaVinci Code, for instance, appears at number 10 with this explanation "A murder in the Louvre, and the clues are all hidden in the works of Leonardo. Some love it, some hate it (see our worst of the decade article), but you can’t deny that its mix of conspiracy, riddles and action dominated the decade." The most refreshing aspect of this list is its attention to British writers. Two items that got much less press on this side of the Atlantic that this list includes are Lorna Sage's Bad Blood and a collection of poetry, Rapture, by Carol Ann Duffy.

Films
My boyfriend introduced me to The Onion's AV Club several months ago, but it really established credibility in my mind with its month long "Best of the Decade" feature. The AV Club gives kudos in unconventional categories such as best comics, best comedy albums, and best tv episodes. The most helpful list by far is the Best films of the '00s. The list's trustworthiness is revealed in its strong picks included in the top 5: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, There will be Blood, No Country for Old Men, and Memento. The top 5 also includes something I hadn't seen: 25th Hour, which I now trust to add to my Netflix queue. The other 45 picks include many Asian films that I wasn't aware of. Also, don't take my word for it: David Plotz gives the list a shoutout on Slate's Political Gabfest.

Music
Music lists are of a different character than books or films. Music is more of a continuous experience; once you put something on your iPod or download it, it becomes part of your collection. Whereas you can always borrow a book or rent a movie and quickly return it. Music, on the other hand, reflects one's personal tastes more. That's why I find best music lists to be so gratuitous. They can only advise others who have the same taste as you or say what the influential things have been. NPR has taken the latter path with a wholly unsurprising list on All Things Considered. (Kelly Clarkson, Kanye, J-Z inevitably make that list). But I prefer lists that cater to my taste. Paste Magazine has a terrific one that seems targeted towards the aging hipster (40-65) demographic (i.e. perfect for me). It's very strong on mellow productions like Damien Rice's O, the Once Soundtrack, and Jens Lekman. It's also heavy on alt-country and introduced me to Drive By Truckers and inspired me to re-discover Ryan Adams. The story-telling focus on both these acts would have once bored a younger me, but make an older me really happy.

Little Magic in the Magicians

The dust jacket of Lev Grossman's latest novel, The Magicians, claims that it's an homage to The Chronicles of Narnia and the Harry Potter novels. Having not read a fantasy novel in a long time and having heard that this was supposed to be a fantasy novel for adults, I decided to give it a try. It wasn't like there were other books in the series that I'd then feel obligated to read, I figured.

It turns out that there's a reason fantasy novels are generally presented in a series.

Fantasy novels, as Michael Agger points out in a recent review of The Magicians, "are a bit like magic themselves." He writes, "To work, they require of readers a willingness to be fooled, to be gulled into a world of walking trees and talking lions." It requires many words to set up a believable situation where lions talk and trees walk. Harry Potter's adventures come with an entire history of Voldemort and an epic battle between good and evil. We feel like Harry's story is only a moment -- though a pivotal one -- in his world.

Grossman forgoes the set-up in his book. As a result, instead of creating a rich, albeit unbelievable world a la JK Rowling, Grossman compiles a series of disconnected fantastical elements to advance the plot along as his convenience. The book opens with the main character, Quentin, magically following a crumpled piece of paper to Brakebills, a magic school supposedly situated on the Hudson in New York state. He endures an examination, after which the Dean of the school explains that he's been admitted to magic school. This is easy to follow, but difficult to understand. Why is there a magic school? How long has magic been around? How many "magicians" are there? In targeting an adult audience, perhaps Grossman figured we'd have less tolerance of explication. But it's exactly because we're adults that it's more difficult for us to suspend disbelief.

Or perhaps Grossman was too busy making the novel's theme very obvious. In a nutshell, the novel is about the trials and tribulations of growing up. College, the real world, the fantastical magic world, is not really what it's cut out to be. There is no magical solution to life's problems. As if this weren't clear enough from Quentin's constant complaints that Brakebills did not fulfill his hopes of what he had expected it to be, one of the Deans gives a handy graduation speech to the students at the end of their time at Brakebills:

"I think you're magicians because you're unhappy...He feels the difference between what the world is and what he would make of it...Or what did you think that stuff in your chest was?"

This would be a fine lesson if it were geared towards teenagers. However, Lev Grossman's target audience will likely find it trite.

The one compelling component of the novel was guessing the extent to which Grossman is satirizing elite colleges and universities. As both a Harvard and Yale grad, Grossman was probably a nerdy kid who found himself admitted to a strange, elitist world when he entered college. Some of the challenges facing his students sound a lot like the problems one might imagine a teenager "burdened" with brilliance, or wealth might have. For example, when the Quentin graduates, he bemoans his post-graduation choices.

"It was considered chic to go undercover, to infiltrate governments and think tanks and NGOs...And on and on, and it all sounded completely, horribly plausible. any one of a thousand options promised -- basically guaranteed -- a rich, fulfilling, challenging future for him. So why did Quentin feel like he was looking around frantically for another way out?"

Poor Quentin. Magic can't solve all his problems. Unfortunately, this is a lesson most adults don't need a fantasy novel to confirm.

The Anthologist - Nicholson Baker

My negligence of this new blog only proves that I was undeserving of cindyhong.com. In the past few weeks I’ve been called away from the blog by my moving into a new apartment and by some LSAT shenanigans. Despite the lsat’s – (and a two day addiction to Top Law School forums) - I was able to read Nicholson Baker’s new book, The Anthologist.

This book is a work of fiction. But beyond that, it’s very hard to classify. Told from the perspective of a poet, Paul Chowder, The Anthologist contains background rather than a conventional plot. Paul is a known, but not star, poet who is anthologizing a book of poems, Only Rhymes. His failure to write his overdue introduction causes his long-time girlfriend, Roz, to leave him. Paul has no recourse but to write in his journal.

Readers are quickly treated to Paul’s stream-of-conscious thoughts, jumping from one topic to a tangentially related one. He writes like your ADD friend, only with more knowledge of poetry. In an especially introspective moment, he thinks, “God, I wish I was a canoe. Either that or some kind of tree tumor that could be made into a zebra bowl but isn’t because I’m still on the tree.”

As for the poetry, that is the real purpose of this book. It’s literary criticism for the layman, disguised as a novel. Paul seems to work out his thoughts just as an eccentric humanist might in real life. On the one hand, you get the feeling that Baker wanted to write a serious book on poetry, and—having trouble uniting his thoughts together in a coherent way—decided to transmit the disjointed bits through the voice of Paul Chowder. On the other hand, Paul’s voice is so earnest, so singular, that you feel like his ideas are truly original and worthy of your attention. Better yet, once you understand his points, you feel smarter too.

Paul’s key insights are that rhyme is good and that iambic pentameter is overrated. Instead, English poetry naturally consists of a four-beat rhythm where the last one is a rest. Paul entertainlingly opines:

“So the first thing about the history of rhyme . . . is that it’s all happened before. It’s all part of these huge rhymeorhythmic circles of exuberance and innovation and surfeit and decay and resurrectional primitivism and waxing sophistication and infill and overgrowth and too much and we can’t stand it and let’s stop and do something else.”

A mouthful, yes. But a provocative and illuminating one.

The Day That Lehman Died

This past week marked not only a September 11 anniversary, but also the one-year anniversary of Lehman Brothers’ collapse and the beginning of the subsequent fall out on Wall Street and across the US. It seemed like every news organization ran some kind of feature, including one by the New York Times “Where-are-they-now” feature that tried to humanize Lehman employees.

In a different spirit, the BBC created a dark radio play, “The Day That Lehman Died.” You can listen to the whole thing here. The idea of radio plays usually conjures up Orson Welles and aliens for me. In the way that his dramatic reading of a fictional account convinced people that the earth was being invaded by Martians, the BBC play convinces listeners that the financial world is basically a vast conspiracy.

The one-hour play takes place over the September weekend last year that decided Lehman’s fate. It is supposed to take us inside the rooms where the decisions not to bail out Lehman and the decision for Bank of America to buy Merrill Lynch occurred. The leaders of major US banks are each played by a deep-voiced actor or another. The show is most successful in its role of mapping out what happened over that weekend to non-finance people like me who got tired of following the news last fall. For example, the show explained that the British government ultimately prevented Barclays from purchasing Lehman.

The show is less effective as drama since it doesn’t identify any good guys or bad guys, so there’s no one to sympathize with. Everyone is portrayed as a greedy, power-hungry, or conniving banker. But this also makes for some great comments that reflect the Wall Street culture: One nameless banker to another on Lehman: “Your CEO is a risk machine.” Bart McDade addressing a roomful of bankers: “Confidence…The entire banking system…the free market…the whole thing works because of confidence…The death of Lehman will destroy that confidence. There will be turmoil.”

Definitely good company on the way to work!

A Gate at the Stairs

In the eight years since the World Trade Center towers fell, writers have creatively — and sometimes profoundly — woven the event’s existence into their novels. Most of these are set in New York and often use the events of 9/11 to highlight one of two themes: the ridiculous wastefulness of the late nineties, or the isolation of the modern world. Two successful examples include The Emperor’s Children by Claire Messud and Netherland by Joseph O’Neill. Both are set in New York and use 9/11 as an event that immediately forces its characters to reflect and change.

In contrast, Lorrie Moore’s new novel, A Gate at the Stairs, opens a few months after September 11. Tassie Keltjin is a freshman at a liberal arts college in Troy, Wisconsin. She remarks that 9/11 was something that people occasionally talked about, but that the chatter was quickly replaced by the excitement of new classes and new ideas. This comment alerts the reader that this is going to be a novel that recognizes September 11th, without it being a 9/11 novel.

If any genre, A Gate at the Stairs belongs to the category of coming of age novels. Moore fits Tassie in the role of the naïve farm girl off to college perfectly without resorting to clichés. Though Tassie becomes a nanny in the first chapter of the novel, her nannying experience is neither a tell-all of harrowing parenting skills nor a sordid tale of an affair between nanny and husband. Instead, it’s a contemplative look at both recent liberal pretentions and timeless loss of innocence.

Tassie’s charge is an adopted, quarter African-American girl named Mary-Emma or “Emmie.” Her parents, Sarah Brink and Edward Thornwood, are white. Sarah owns an upscale restaurant that uses Tassie’s family’s local, organic potatoes; Edward is a cancer researcher. In other words, this is a model liberal couple, making the model, liberal move of adopting a “colored” child. Sarah even creates a support group for families with colored children. They sit around in her living room as Tassie watches the kids in the attic. They chat about identifiably liberal ideas. Moore lets these chatter wash over us like the way they wash over Tassie in sections like this:

“’Postracial is a white idea…’” This again. It had all begin to sound to be like a spiritually gated community of liberal chat.
‘A lot of ideas are white ideas.’
‘It’s like postfeminist or postmodern. The word post is put forward by people who have grown bored of the conversation…’
‘If you reject religion, you reject blackness.’
‘Black culture here is just southern culture moved north, that’s all.’”

Of course, these meetings don’t really accomplish anything. Through Tassie, we see the ridiculousness. “"This was the sort of snobbery I noticed even amongst the most compassionate Democrats,” she thinks at one point.

In a clever move, Moore ties together her message about the limits of liberalism and the pain of growing up when Tassie discovers Sarah and Edward’s real reason for adopting a child while in their mid-Forties. Tassie realizes that nothing she thought to be true is actually true. Even after this revelation, Moore still restrains herself by not overwriting Tassie’s character. She doesn’t become a different person over night, but just someone with newly gained perspective.

Unsurprisingly for a novel whose main focus is not 9/11, the sections most related to the terrorist attacks and the ensuing war are the least effective. Towards the end of the novel, Moore throws in some plot twists involving local recruiting and the Iraq War which only force Tassie to reconsider the life she knew more deeply. Though this last part is unnecessary, the book’s overall effect is powerful.

Oh, the Taxpayer March

Something seemed to be up when, on my run this morning, I passed many a smiling middle-aged person carrying "Hands off my Body," and "Don't Tread on me Signs." It wasn't until later when the bf and I went to The National Gallery of Art to go poster shopping that it became clear that the few people I had seen earlier were actually part of a much larger rally on The Mall.

The gathering, dubbed the "Taxpayer March," is supposed to be a conservative protest against Obama, health care, big government, and the like based on the left's own tactics. The clever slogans--"Bury Obamacare with Kennedy," ballsy t-shirts, and images of Obama with a Joker were definitely analogous to the loud signs, slogans, and Devil-horn Bush images of the Iraq War protests.

However, this protest looked like a meek imitation. Instead of lots of young people angrily storming the streets, there were many middle-aged people ambling down the road, occasionally stopping for a hot dog from a street vendor. From far away, the taxpaying marchers could have been mistaken for tourists; only their politically incorrect t-shirts gave them away.

But a few key differences between the this rally and the anti-war ones of the Bush era left me queasy. First, it struck me as odd that so many people looked the same in terms of age (hello AARP), accent (Southern), style (trucker), and--most obviously--race (white). I struggled to find one Asian or Hispanic protester. This demographic, coupled with the relatively small size of the protest, seemed to reflect the interests of a small group of people. Secondly, the protest was also ambiguous. With anti-war protests, you know that the goal is to end the war. Today, it was sometimes to end health care reform, sometimes to end taxes. Third, I saw lots of people wearing the same sort of gear, which struck me as very well organized. As in so well organized it might have been by a third, corporately-tied party.

Perhaps I was most unnerved by my own prejudices, by how different the protesters were from people I work and go to school with. But more than that, I am worried that this feeling of difference is what moves these protesters to rally in DC. They are from a demographic that's almost as far from President Obama as they can be, on the surface in terms of race and income. I worry that this separation now obscures deeper similarities: the hard-working background, the support of civil liberties, and--above all--the strong belief in The United State of America.

Feeling Like a Sell-Out

I moved to DC three weeks ago to work at a higher education consulting firm. Since then, my conversations with friends have gone like this:
Friend: Welcome to DC! How's work?
Me: Good, thanks.
Friend (half-kidding): Can't believe you're the one selling out!

There's a slight variation with strangers:
Stranger: So, what do you do?
Me: I work at a higher ed consulting firm down by Georgetown. What about you?
Stranger: The Hill/liberal non-profit/liberal news organization/grad school/public school teacher.
Me: (Thinks maybe next time I should change my answer to "I work in higher ed"). Oh, well, my work's a consulting firm for non-profits, and I tried for a long time to find a job in journalism first, but you know with the economy...here I am.

Yes; that is a touch of defensiveness in my tone.

Indeed, I looked for a job in DC after finishing my undergrad thesis in April precisely to put both my public policy degree and my bleeding heart to work. I had my eyes set on some federal internships and left-wing think tanks. But as it turned out, none of them responded as quickly as the corporation where I now work.

Though the work I do as a researcher is essentially the same one that I'd do at a think tank or in the government, it feels odd to be in DC for a job that can be done elsewhere. There's nothing uniquely DC about higher education--and my firm doesn't lobby either.

At the same time, it's still great to be here amongst tons of recent college grads with intellectual interests. We'll see if my defensiveness wears off after awhile.

Introduction (About Me)

Hello World/My small circle of friends,

My home on the internet, www.cindyhong.com unexpectedly disappeared this week so I have decided to start this other home here at Blogspot until I learn some better html skills and get another domain name.

As you might remember, the other blog was called "Freelance Intellectual," a name that the site designer came up with to mock/encourage me. I've decided to keep the name, but add a twist. Since I just moved to DC, what's better than Freelance in DC? (Freelance here works as more of a noun than an adjective, btw).

I will promise to post more frequently than with my last blog. The arrival of my new laptop should help this goal along. In the meantime, I'm going to develop an archive of any old posts I dig up.

Stay tuned...