Book Review: A Short History of Nearly Everything

Back in the 1980s, Time Magazine determined—I’m not sure how—that the most owned but least read book in American households was Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time. I wonder how Hawking felt about this: that while he was, by all scientific literature measures, a wildly successful author, he probably ran into a number of people who praised him for a work they had never cracked. Who truly understood anything about the history of the universe, save what might have been gleaned from a Nova documentary on PBS?

Just from the title alone, A Short History of Nearly Everything begs to give Hawking a run for his money in the least-read competition, except for the fact that the author is Bill Bryson, one of the most humorous, readable, everyman-friendly writers of non=fiction ever to grace retail shelves. And while the title itself would set any merely mortal author up for fantastic failure, with Bryson you know that he will succeed—not by covering literally everything but by spinning just enough strands of webby prose via historical anecdotes and well-chosen interview subjects to let you make the connections to whatever part of the universe you want to fit into the puzzle that is our universe.

The book should come with a warning to the family of the reader, however: they need to prepare to be subjected to many bits of jaw-dropping and sometimes devastating information that will come from the quavering lips of the reader, who must share this information as a way of processing the miracle—and more importantly the fragility—of our existence in this universe. In other words, not only are the odds ridiculously infinitesimal that humankind exists in this universe at all, but the ease with which we could be extinguished from that same existence is … well, discomforting, to say the least. After reading the chapter discussing how disturbingly small the meteorite that would end civilization would have to be, and how little warning we would get for said meteor, and how little could truly be done to stop it (hint: the movie Armageddon isn’t terribly, um, realistic), I found myself lying in bed at night, staring at my ceiling, thinking: it could all end … right … now! Fortunately, Bryson also makes sure we understand what a small role we self-centered humans really play in this universe, so I don’t feel nearly as bad since we won’t really be missed anyway….

Come to A Short History of Nearly Everything for Bryson’s irrepressibly warm and droll prose, and you’ll find you’ll find the science lessons sneaking up on you. Before you know it, you’ll be ready to hold your own at that surprise dinner date with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Book Review: Last Night at the Lobster (Stewart O'Nan)

Perhaps it’s my own memories of my first job as a bus boy at a seafood restaurant in southern California. Or perhaps it was my two summers managing a kitchen at a summer camp. Whatever it is, I find stories centered around restaurant jobs endlessly fascinating. Don’t let your lack of membership in that quirky “club” repel you: Stewart O’Nan’s Last Night at the Lobster has wider appeal in its everyman hero, Manny, dedicated to his managerial responsibilities at a Red Lobster branch even though the corporation is shutting it down. Whether it’s for pride or because nothing else is really going right in his life, he wants this one last night to be a success. Naturally, he’s the only one who seems to care: the rest of his staff are focused entirely on getting their paychecks, goofing off, and just getting out of the kitchen before the oncoming snowstorm makes it impossible to traverse the New Britain, Connecticut, streets.

O’Nan thanks many people from a real Red Lobster at the end of this book, and it’s clear that they taught him well the Ways of the Lobster. His penchant for detail about every aspect of the job is part of what makes this story so fun. What makes it heartbreaking is Manny’s emotional balancing act as he tries to find how to stay in love with his pregnant girlfriend but how to confirm that he still holds some attraction for one of his waitresses. In the end, Manny walks away from the Red Lobster with something resembling a kind of triumph, though it’s hard not to feel this is a tragedy: The only thing in front of him as he trudges through the snow on his way home is a future at the next circle in Hell, Olive Garden

This is a perfect small book that feels bigger than its thickness, which speaks to O’Nan’s talent for concentrating characters and plot. The challenge of holding your attention—I mean, it’s a friggin’ restaurant, how much could happen?—is so strong that you end up not being able to put the book down just because a busload of senior citizens is pouring through the front door.

It's getting more real.

Saturday was the Chicago-area kickoff party for National Novel Writing Month. It was bizarre for me — mainly because this introvert actually attended an event where I knew not a single soul. It turned out to be a pretty cool event, if only to get the opportunity to check out the Uptown Writers Space, which I've wanted to do for some time.

I quickly gravitated toward other NaNoWriMo virgins like myself . . . or perhaps most of the people there were newbies, I'm not sure. We immediately talked about how we discovered NaNoWriMo, how difficult we thought it was going to be, how much prep (if any) we had done. I was pretty shocked to discover that, of the five people in our little chat circle, I was by far the most "prepared." Three of the others had no clue what they would be writing come midnight 11/1. One had a vague idea — basically a title — and a setting. And that was it.

I put "prepared" in quotes above because I'm not sure that it's wise to be too prepared for NaNoWriMo. By actually having some character studies and a vague plot outline, I wonder if I'm already narrowing my options, painting myself into a corner, and preparing to go blank when things don't seem to be going the way I expected. There should be no surprise that this is a metaphor for issues in my life (especially my creative life), where I have always struggled with the idea of improvising when things go pear-shaped from how I had planned it. Maybe this will be my great battle in November.

I wouldn't have been as prepared as I am if it weren't for the hour-and-a-half I spent on the El on Friday night when I headed downtown for a going-away party for a friend. (For those of you keeping score, that was two social events in a 24-hour period — a level of social involvement I don't believe I've achieved since college.) On the ride to and from downtown, with the accompaniment of 39 songs shuffling on my iPod, I got down sketches of my main character, his father, his love interest, her daughter, the daughter's best friend/unofficial guardian. I also got down on paper for the first time some of the many "moments" and scenes that have been flying inside my head.

Then, Sunday morning, when Zuzu got up insanely early, I settled her in front of Go, Diego, Go and I started outlining my plot. Half an hour later, I was petrified: while I have a beginning, middle, and end, ther are enormous gaps in between. You know, where the real stuff happens.

But Chris Baty assures me (via his book) that I don't need to worry about this. I need to let that fear go, trust that the magic will happen in the middle of the night. And I'm going to trust Baty — though I have to admit that this is sounding suspiciously like the "think method" espoused in Meredith Willson's The Music Man.

Am I the last one to realize this?

After getting over the initial stun-gun of Bush's new fervor to reach into space, return to the moon, and place some humans on Mars (which may not sound like such a bad idea to those New Englanders who suffered through the recent cold spell), I tried my hardest to summon up some excitement about the idea.

I assure you that when I was 10, I would have bathed all week in the waters of this idea. One of my favorite books and TV movies of the 70s was Stowaway to the Moon, a yarn about a young kid who stows away on an Apollo mission. Preposterous, I know -- but it certainly wasn't at the time!

Now I'm a stupid grown-up, and all I can think of is where else all that money devoted to this problem could be used. Which might be narrow-minded. There should be money for both the research resulting from space exploration and more earthbound social causes. But now? With the economy still in so much trouble, and hardly on a clear road to recovery?

And then it hit me: A big bump for NASA means major funds for G.W.'s home state of Texas. Well, it's a good thing that at least one other state will reap major benefits from this new space program. I mean, it's not like Bush has any perceived benefit from helping Florida too, right?

Oh. Wait a minute.

Do you like your market black?

I recently finished reading Eric Schlosser's Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market, and I'm a little disappointed in myself because, well, I had pretty much the same reaction that everyone else I know had to it: Nice read, but it ain't no Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal.

That first book was kind of transformational for me. I've been vegetarian now for three years, and I originally did it to make me eat a more healthy diet. But Fast Food Nation clarified for me some social reasons for my decision. And it isn't just a horrors-of-the-stockyard, modern-day The Jungle that one might expect; Schlosser really explores the economics of fast food, like the low-wage jobs or -- most compelling to me -- the screwed-up business of franchising restaurants. (I now try to avoid setting foot in any fast-food franchise, even for a baked potato or salad.) And he looks at the cultural effect of fast food, like the targeting of kids in marketing campaigns while completely ignoring any negative effects on their health.

Fast Food Nation, I think, was also the book primarily responsible for bringing to the world's attention the (already known but heavily underreported) fact that McDonald's french fries actually had beef byproducts added to them and they weren't as "vegetarian" as many had originally believed. For this exposé alone, the book was worth publishing. One in a series of comeuppances that Mickey D's has had to suffer through in the last few years. I'll supersize an order of that, with relish, please.

Reefer Madness did not inspire me quite the same way, though Schlosser can take the facts surrounding a non-fiction event and spin a story as well as any novelist I've read. And it's in the section that could easily have become the most titillating that he tells the most intriguing tale. The section is on pornography, and the story is that of Reuben Sturman, the indisputable former king of modern pornography, and his remarkable "run" from the law, capture, escape, recapture, and eventual demise. While Sturman was not nearly as evil as one Al Capone, his desire to not give the US government one cent of his income went way beyond obsessive and mad Capone look like a rank amateur at tax evasion.

Though he sometimes seems a little unsure, Schlosser is fairly certain that more government regulation is needed. I struggle with the idea of more regulation myself -- I want to see better things happen in our country, but I'm sufficiently cynical to doubt that grassroots movements can effect that change. I'm sure I should be even more cynical of government's ability to do this as well, but the way I look at it, as long as the current administration is going to expand government at an ever-dizzying pace, I can wish to see that expansion used for the common good rather than for the purpose of beating ploughshares into swords.

So I, who have never so much as held a joint to my lips, am in favor of legalizing marijuana, since, despite the cultural "tradition" of casting it as something evil, could not possibly be any more destructive than alcohol. And let's use the income from taxing weed to fund some kickass substance abuse programs.

Let's get some serious immigration reform -- not that pseudo-bill that Bush just pushed to us prior to his trip to Mexico. I worry for the future of California, a state near and dear to my heart, if we don't find a way to pay living wages -- and as FDR put it in 1933, "by living wages I mean more than a subsistence level -- I mean the wages of a decent living." We need to think about our relationship to those low-paying, "immigrant" jobs in a whole new way.

And let's get some backbone and toss the Comstock Law. It's a relic of the past, a joke, and it only seems to get exercised when some conservative mouthpiece way out of the mainstream decides (s)he needs some attention (s)he can't otherwise get and tries to justify a crackdown on free speech disguised as something for the good of "the family."

As for Schlosser, though my excitement about him was slightly dampened by this book, I'm betting his next book brings him back more to the center of a media maelstrom: He's writing about the American prison system.