Everything I Have Out From The Library Right Now

Part I

Wires and Watts: Understanding and Using Electricity

by Irwin Math

A few weeks ago, I took out all the kids' science books in the library. This one was by far the best. Irwin Math is a man I'd like to meet. He is tender and passionate: the dedication reads "To Ellen, who is my source of Power". He is fiercely nostalgic for a time when children were not alienated from the joys of labour:

"During the first half of the twentieth century American youngsters seemed never to be bored. They built clubhouses, model cars, airplanes, and electrical and electronic devices of all kinds. Many were reasonably adept at figuring out how things worked without the benefit of specific instructions.
"When one looks at the various playthings available to young people today, one is amazed by the incredible technical sophistication of the devices...The addition of a few C or D cells promises all sorts of entertainment. But something is missing. The user is relegated to the role of button-pusher or observer. There is not much to do in a creative sense and boredom quickly sets in."

In fact, doesn't this sound like a pretty cogent criticism of modern culture in general? Yes, it does.

More Wires and Watts

by Irwin Math

Irwin Math, I salute you. You saw children drifting into states of Barbie-induced ennui, and instead of bitching about it over a double latte with your hipster techie friends, you did something about it. And then, seven years later, you did something more. And this is it. You give the jaded children plans for a fire alarm, a weather station, an automatic camera trigger system and "ESP sensors". Is it your fault if many of the children are still alienated, still sinking into the zombifying morass of Pokemon and Gameboy? No, it's not. You have added something good to the world, aside from the two lucky and no doubt charming children that you and Ellen produced in the eighties. Irwin Math, you are a hero, and because of you I now sort of understand about electricity.

Yet another copy of Harper's

yeah, I know, I know....

Does anybody else out there except for me and my dear husband think that Mark Kingwell's just kind of, um, bullshitting? I hope so, because he wrote this thing about how shopping is so much more subversive in Europe, or something, and he dared to sully the name of dear Walter Benjamin with his incoherent bushwah, and if everybody else in the world really thinks he's smart and cool it would be like Night of the Living Dead or Invasion of the Pod People. Or Invasion of the Kingwell-Liking Pod Pundits. No offense.

Anyway, the good news is I think he's broken the creepy hold Harper's had on my brain. Whew, that's a relief.

Hypnosis for Change

by Josie Hadley and Carol Staudacher

I want the power to control men's minds. Or women's minds. Whatever. It doesn't matter; it's not a sex thing, it's a power thing. Anyway, I don't know how much this book will help, for two reasons:
1. All of the hypnotic suggestions they supply seem to be usable only for good.
2. I've been trying to read through some of the inductions - the "you are sleepy, your eyelids are getting heavy" parts - but I keep falling asleep. Seriously.

The Yellow Sofa

by Jose Maria Eca de Queiros

Haven't read it. Probably won't. Liked the title, liked the cover, liked the author's name. Liked the blurb. Liked the introductory note. Got distracted; such is life.

Chairman Mao Would Not Be Amused: Fiction from Today's China

edited by Howard Goldblatt

I just picked this up today; I couldn't resist. It's been bothering me lately that I know nothing about Chinese literature except what I've read in "Women of China" magazine - a publication that deserves an entry of its own - in fact, it deserves more, it deserves to be reproduced in its entirety for everyone to see and boggle at - oh, the pictures! The captions! The women outside the textile factory, beaming at one another, accompanied by the explanatory note: "How Pleasant It Is To Work Together At The Textile Factory!"*

In my previous incarnation as a teacher, I had a student who had been a big editor in Beijing. He had edited the Chinese editions of Langston Hughes and Stephen Leacock. He told me that he had edited the first translation of an American novel to be approved for publication in China. I had never heard of the author. Apparently it was an action/suspense kind of novel about a man who went to fight the Communists in Vietnam but was wounded and went back to America and had a nervous breakdown and eventually overthrew the U.S. government because he was so disgusted with capitalism. So I'm really, really curious to see what these short stories will be like. I just opened the book to a random page and there were people snacking on deep-fried dried persimmons. Hello! Now I crave Ka Po brand salted preserved plums. Ka Po is the best. Maybe I'll head down to Chinatown tomorrow. God, I'm such a revolting little orientalist! Maybe reading this will help.

*Please note that I have met many women of China, and none of them were any more like the women represented in this magazine than the average Canadian woman is like, say, Barbara Amiel. My boggling is not at them, but at the machinery that would see fit to produce a publication like this for a foreign market, presumably in the hopes of spreading the news of the ineluctable joys of Maoism to the West.