Foreign Dispatches

Breyer on Proust

As I've been traveling recently, I decided to make use of some of the dead time that accompanies the process by re-reading the Montcrieff-Kilmartin translation of "Swann's Way", the first volume of Marcel Proust's magnum opus. It's been nearly 2 decades since I first made my way through the work, and yet I am pleased to be able to report finding the experience just as delightful as I did the first time around. It is not just Proust's uncanny insight into the foibles, eccentricities and self-deceptions of humanity that gives pleasure, but also his sheer gift for comedy: contrary to the image many seem to have of "In Search of Lost Time", the books are both easy to read and outright hilarious in many places.

Given Proust's status as "Most Unread Literary Giant" of the 20th century, it is always a pleasant surprise to find that there are others out there who've gone past the intimidation factor to find out for themselves precisely why Proust is as deserving of the acclamation he receives. As it turns out, one such person is Supreme Court justice Stephen Breyer, who gives a cogent explanation of how and why he came to love Proust in this NYRB article. It is good to see that the American Supreme Court has some powerful and perceptive minds on it, rather than being populated entirely by mediocrities with chips on their shoulders.

"Journalism", Daily Mail Style

I think any adult with half a brain* should know by now that the Daily Mail is hardly to be counted amongst the more objective or thorough news outlets in the English-speaking world. Indeed, this is one of the few periodicals whose Uncyclopedia entry gives a far more accurate idea of what the newspaper is really about than the corresponding Wikipedia article: fear-mongering, sensationalism and fanning the flames of nearly every prejudice under the sun. Still, you'd think the Daily Wail's "journalists" would adhere to a certain minimal level of conscientiousness when spinning their tripe, and that there'd at least be a kernel of truth to whatever outrageous claim they may choose to present to their audience. Unfortunately, any such assumption would be wrong, as this German-language article illustrates [excerpts translated below.] Apparently putting fictitious words in a researcher's mouth is not a problem where the Daily Heil is concerned, especially when it presents an opportunity to indulge one of the primary fascinations of its bigoted readership - Adolf Hitler.

Who's Afraid of Mohammed?

Yale University Press, that's who.

It’s not all that surprising that Yale University Press would be wary of reprinting notoriously controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in a forthcoming book. After all, when the 12 caricatures were first published by a Danish newspaper a few years ago and reprinted by other European publications, Muslims all over the world angrily protested, calling the images — which included one in which Muhammad wore a turban in the shape of a bomb — blasphemous. In the Middle East and Africa some rioted, burning and vandalizing embassies; others demanded a boycott of Danish goods; a few nations recalled their ambassadors from Denmark. In the end at least 200 people were killed.

So Yale University and Yale University Press consulted two dozen authorities, including diplomats and experts on Islam and counterterrorism, and the recommendation was unanimous: The book, “The Cartoons That Shook the World,” should not include the 12 Danish drawings that originally appeared in September 2005 (emphasis added).

String Theory for Dummies

Alright, I exaggerate somewhat, but "String theory for bright undergraduates and other mere mortals" doesn't quite have the same headline appeal. While browsing through Foyle's bookstore yesterday, I happened upon a most fascinating book, namely Barton Zwiebach's "A First Course in String Theory": what makes this book particularly interesting is that it purports to give a serious introduction to string theory without requiring the prior knowledge of quantum field theory and general relativity which is normally expected of those looking for something more substantive than a Brian Greene-style popularization. Written by a string theory partisan (who else would bother to write such a textbook?), it's probably not the best source to consult for a highly critical examination of the assumptions underlying the whole string theory approach, but if you're not intimidated by a little mathematics and are looking for a starting point to understand what it's really all about (reading "The Elegant Universe" does not qualify), Zwiebach's book seems to be the way to go.

PS: For interesting comments on the book and undergraduate courses which seem to have been built around it, see the responses to this post by Peter Woit.

Google Print Disappoints

I was suddenly struck with the brainwave to use Google Print's newly available archive to dig up some of the urtexts for the worst of the early 20th century's mad and bad ideas, and so I thought to look up a few names I was sure would have to be in any book collection of even slight historical worth, but so far I've had next to no luck finding a single item of interest. Restricting the date for results to 1500-1923 and running queries on such notorious authors as Sir Halford Mackinder, Karl Haushofer, Alfred Thayer Mahan, Lothrop Stoddard and even Houston Stewart Chamberlain dredges up not one original work by any of these authors who collectively contributed so much to making the period between 1914 and 1945 the bloodiest three decades in all of human history.

This abysmal result indicates to me that Google Print's priorities are seriously f***ed up, and it tells me that Google seems far more concerned with using short excerpts from currently copyrighted works to pimp for publishers than it is in all that rhetoric about making the world's store of knowledge easily available online; but if Google's desire is to simply tout material which must be bought, why bother with Google Print as an intermediary when the very same service is already available on Amazon.com, where all it takes is a single additional click to get the item I want to buy? What a pointless exercise Google's effort is proving thus far - UPenn's Online Books Page is almost certainly still a much better resource for anyone who wants to read interesting works in the original rather than waste time looking at single-page teasers containing references to them.

Free Online Biology Textbooks

I'm currently pressed for time, so I won't be able to put out the follow-up to my previous post on the wilfully ignorant misinterpretation of research results in population genetics for a day or two, but in the meantime, might I recommend that the autodidacts among you take a look at the NCBI Bookshelf? There are a fair number of pretty decent books on there covering topics as varied as biochemistry, developmental biology, endocrinology and human molecular genetics.

For a solid grounding in what genetics is really about, I particularly recommend working through the Introduction to Genetic Analysis textbook by Griffiths, Miller et. al. from cover to cover: you'll find as you read through it that the way genes work and the way they're discussed by newspaper hacks and race-obsessed cranks have pretty much nothing to do with each other.

Shakespeare as Cryptographer?

Dan Brown, what have you done? The success of your execrable books has tempted all sorts of kooks and charlatans to test the waters with their own dubious notions, except they aren't even acknowledging they're writing fiction.

A code-breaking book which aims to change the image of William Shakespeare and reveal him as a subversive who embedded dangerous political messages in his work is to be published in Britain.

Far from being an ambitious entertainer who played down his Catholic roots under a repressive Elizabethan regime, Shakespeare took deliberate risks each time he took up his quill, according to Clare Asquith's new book Shadowplay. She argues that the plays and poems are a network of crossword puzzle-like clues to his strong Catholic beliefs and his fears for England's future. Aside from being the first to spot this daring Shakespearean code, Asquith also claims to be the first to have cracked it.

New Book Meme

Nobody passed this one on to me, but I've seen it floating around and feel like answering it, so there.

Number of books I own: About 8-900 (most currently in storage, unfortunately). This used to grow a lot more rapidly, but I'm much more of a re-reader than a pioneer nowadays.

Last book I bought: Riemann's Zeta Function, by Harold M. Edwards. The subject matter is fairly explanatory, I'd think ...

Last book I read: See preceding, and before that it was The Geometry of Schemes, by David Eisenbud. I actually do read books on subjects other than mathematics, I swear; this is a statistical anomaly! (Any "Numb3rs" viewers out there?)

Five books that mean a lot to me: I've answered this before, so this time I'll try for a totally different list.

1. Bertrand Russell, The History of Western Philosophy. A lot of it is either tendentious or simply outright wrong, but to a 12 year old, this book was a revelation.
2. Friedrich Nietzsche, Walter Kaufmann (trans.), The Portable Nietzsche. I picked this one up at the age of 17 in a bookstore on Tottenham Court Road. It led me to start thinking beyond good and evil as commonly understood, to a re-evaluation of all values, to the need to choose one's own reasons for being, rather than living by the words of some guru. After reading the real thing, Ayn Rand can't help but seem a pale imitation.
3. Walter Rudin, Principles of Mathematical Analysis. Another acquisition I made about the time I bought the preceding item. This book may be panned by some for being too "slick" and abstruse, but it was my first introduction to what real mathematics was all about; Dedekind cuts, field axioms, countable vs. uncountable sets, Cauchy sequences, differential forms, even a little measure theory.  To someone who's spent innumerable hours going through the typical calculus drill expected of high school students, it felt like being suddenly asked to man the controls of a fighter jet, scary as hell but exhilarating too.
4. Franz Kafka, The Trial. Although I like the story Metamorphosis a great deal, The Trial gave me a much more complete immersion into the claustrophobic and absurd universe of Kafka's imagination. The feeling imparted by the book that life was arbitrary and ridiculous was one I could and still do identify with to a large extent, which is why Nietzsche's message resonated all the more with me.
5. Rudiger Dornbusch, Macroeconomics. I actually read a much older edition of this book, and I don't recall Stanley Fisher as being a co-author of that one. At any rate, it inoculated me for life against all calls for protectionism, and thanks to it I arrived in college a die-hard free-trader who couldn't help but look on "anti-globalization" advocates as just a little brain-dead.

All right, that's my list all wrapped up. I guess it's at this point that I pass on the baton, so I nominate Frank McGahon, Radek, Dsquared and anyone else who's interested to give it a go.

New Acquisitions

While I usually pride myself on being able to resist the impulse to buy a book without having planned to do so beforehand, today I had to give in on two occasions.

Épater le Bourgeois

Ever heard of ballerina Toni Bentley? Well. neither had I before tonight, but she's got a new book out that is raising lots of eyebrows. Zoe Heller of the New York Times Book Review gushes

“THE SURRENDER is a brave book—although not because it tackles a ‘taboo’ or because it is frank. Its bravery lies rather in its earnest attempt to do justice to the transcendent dimension of a profane act.”

while the notable critic Leon Weseltier goes so far as to say

“I admired its lucidity, the tone is true and unsentimental, and it’s so natural—the explicitness is so completely unaffected.”

The subject matter? Well, let's just say that a lot of men will be delighted to learn that there are women out there who thoroughly enjoy living out a certain fantasy (though I doubt most will ever be willing to reciprocate, Lisa Palac's exhortations notwithstanding.) [Via Metafilter.]