DILEMMAS

"When I was in school, I was a bad kid. Later, when I was invited to give a talk at the school, I wasn't sure if I should tell the kids that they should study hard, or that it is okay to be a rebel. I wasn't sure what advice to give the kids. Studying hard doesn't guarantee you will become a respectable person. Even if you're a bad kid...there are people like me who change. I thought that would be a good lesson to teach. But if I said that bad kids can succeed later on like I did all the kids would start misbehaving, which would be a problem. Always doing what you are told doesn't mean you'll succeed in life."

From Jiro Dreams of Sushi

WHY WHITE TEETH IS A TERRIBLE BOOK

Harrowing times call for a retreat into solitude and fiction. This October I've only managed to read Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, which was a laborious read for the most part, probably due to the fact that mentally I was in a state of constant distraction. It was only upon coming to the end of the novel that I came to fully appreciate it. A story of commitment and sacrifice, and the lost concept of taking pride in your job – I highly recommend the book.

I also read Zadie Smith's White Teeth.

I don't know if you've read White Teeth and if you did, my condolences. Unless you enjoyed it, then we have nothing in common in regards to taste, and perhaps intelligence.

I started reading White Teeth with high hopes (first mistake, never allow awards and high praise from other individuals or literary organizations to determine how you feel about something before you've even tried it yourself), but as the story stretched on for what seemed like an eternity the painful truth began to sink in. The characters and issues "examined" in the novel became ridiculous and annoying. Her language convoluted and overblown. Smith's agenda against organized religion and tradition was dogmatic and typical of new atheists of this day, not to mention irresponsible in what it tried to portray through the pompously superior stance those of pseudo-intellectual backgrounds thrive on. What makes this even more cringe-worthy is the fact that she wrote the novel at the age of 22 (or 23...or let's just say when she was in her final year at Cambridge). That already sets off the alarm bells. (Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein when she was nineteen, but those were different times, one could argue).

Why did I read a book written by someone lacking life experience and wisdom, who wrote a book nearly 500 pages long about issues as complex as culture, identity, religion, immigration, family, racism, science, all kneaded together until reduced to a white, pasty blob of nothing, I berated myself. Furthermore, I've come to conclude that books of unnecessary cruel length (Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay is another) (see also Dave Eggers' The Circle, a terrible novel) showcases the author's self absorbtion. Yes, apart from White Teeth being written through a narrow scope of naivete masked by ornate, flaunting sentence structure, it was like reading the rants and estimations of a twenty something hipster so far up their own ass, so in love with the sound of their own voice, commanding an audience of gullible readers who know next to nothing about what it's like being a minority or person of color in a major white-dominated setting. And Smith does nothing to accurately illustrate the reality of race issues in her country.

The whitewashing of the story is embarrassing even for fiction, which is why people love it and applaud the illusion successfully masquerading as reality. There is no violence, hate, or discrimination that exists in England, by Smith's fictional account, except for in the Iqbal family, a Bengali Muslim family so dysfunctional and morally bankrupt due to their own faults and weaknesses. While I did find humor throughout the novel, the caricatures presented as people were the worst element of the story. All of the parents are useless, irresponsible pushovers who have no idea how to raise their kids. Perhaps there is a point to that, in reflecting the good for nothing parents of today's society who neglect to instill any inkling of respect, manners or principles in their equally good for nothing offspring. And that's also my point - that such a pathethic upbringing is not a shared experience of all western or westernized Muslims. Yet Smith uses one family to generalize the idea that Muslims yearn to be white, western, and have no problem assimiliating or surrendering in British society.

To conclude, White Teeth is one of the worst books I've ever read, and I can't recommend against it enough. It is too weak and shortsighted in its juvenile efforts at tackling intricate problems of society and individual human struggles.

*To Smith's credit, she has since acknowledged that White Teeth was an embarrassing work from her younger years (she is now 39).

WORK ETHIC

Every so often I find myself in a predicament, and more often than not it is the fault of others. I was editing a grad school friends' paper the other night only to find while checking their sources that they're blatant plagiarists. Inevitably, this resulted in my taking them down several pegs in regards to respectability.

Let me be more specific with what I take issue with. When you copy and paste a whole block of sentences from a source, and make no effort to revise those sentences at the very least to say it differently, you are a tool. 

I become conflicted in such situations and soon find myself asking existentialist questions. Plagiarizing is unethical to me as it's stealing someone else's work/words, but these are my close friends and they can't write a paper for shit anyway, so do I let this go and never bring it up?

Do I refuse to edit a plagiarized paper and risk feeling bad if those friends never ask for help again down the line? Maybe we weren't meant to be friends to begin with? If they are ambitious and are putting themselves through grad school to garner the respect of others, but make no effort to write their own papers and still get far in life, is that proof that there is no God?

I don't mean to be so severe, but that is who I am.

I am also optimistic. I am optimistic despite life being long and cold and arduous and the journey really just a solitary walk.

I READ A BOOK AND WENT TO NEW YORK CITY

Salem St, Boston

I'm just finishing Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven. Besides being a fan of his previous works, I think it's commendable that he took the initiative to write about shocking Mormon fundamentalism that occurs in America's own backyard shortly after September 11, 2001, not to detract from the tragedy of that moment in time, but to draw attention to dangerous religious extremism that goes largely disregarded from American criticism that eagerly and arrogantly directs itself instead at foreign ways of life.

The hypocrisy of humans never ceases to both amaze and disgust me, and the book is convoluted with such disturbing aspects of polygamy, incest, rape, inbreeding and entitlement that I must admit I felt inclined to vomit. Add to that the delusional religious fanatics the world over who think they're having direct conversations with God and are his self-proclaimed prophets and you have yourself a book that masterfully encapsulates the dreariness that is human existence, in the same sense that his book, Into Thin Air reveals human cruelty and self-centeredness.

Spent my birthday in New York City. Little brother was also there for a bike expo taking place in Queens.

I was really just the clueless person who walked around looking at bicycles pretending to be intrigued.

WORST BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD

Is The Circle by Dave Eggers the worst book I have read this summer?

Yes.

It's a disappointment, to say the least. Because I'm a big Eggers fan, ever since first reading his memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius in my late teens. And then my brother giving me his copy of What Is the What to borrow, which blew my mind.

So while browsing the bookstore some weeks ago and seeing this newly released novel from last year, and the multitude of praise from every publication in existance, and shockingly, the much feared Michiko Kakutani, I willingly forked out the $15 to make a copy of it mine. Trust in Eggers, I thought. He's going off on the internet age of today, where people blindly allow technology to control their lives, diminish the value of privacy and intimacy and actually living and making experiences count. He's pointing out the problems of living through a screen, making all information available through social media in an eager, dangerous, naive, egocentric need to be seen and heard and acknowledged by everyone.

Trust in anyone who goes to great lengths to spell out the truth for the unthinking masses.

I'm on board with the subject of his latest novel. But the execution just seemed horribly wrong. For one thing, the story is 500 pages long. Due to a lot of excessive repitition and the superfluous explanation of just how impulsive and reckless the innovative minds that lead the sheep generation deeper into the abyss of a totalitarian society, the story becomes dull yet hyperbolic.

The characters are unappealing, especially the naive, submissive female protagonist (but of course), Mae, who is such an idiot I kept thinking after some time, "Come on, dude...Really?" But perhaps that's what Eggers was trying to convey anyway, that having one's life revolve around the internet and social media day in and day out makes one into a monotonous robot-like machine. Add to the fact that the dialogue was implausible and grating, I just had to relent and finally allowed myself to lose interest somewhere in the middle. After 300 pages I just started skipping paragraphs and pages impatiently, something which I very rarely do when reading, determined still to see how it all ends for naive, hopeless Mae. 

I think it was Stephen King who once wrote in his bit on writing advice, that some writers, however talented they are, can't write realistic dialogue for shit.

And it was Douglas Adams who opined that a book doesn't have to be longer than it should. He pointed out with accuracy that American writers are in the habit of writing extremely long novels, when you can say something in less words. I too, agree. If I wanted to read something that was the length of a bible I'd just read the bible.

I'm still a Dave Eggers fan, but The Circle was pretty bad.