Wednesday book meme thing, extremely large values of Wednesday edition

[missroserose]

What I just finished reading

Nothing this week, alas. Coming off the tail end of a couple of extremely busy weeks. However, I have today after my class and all of tomorrow blocked off...reading time, here I come!

What I'm currently reading

The Secret History of Wonder Woman, by Jill Lepore. I was surprised to realize I'm actually nearly done with this book—the footnotes are so extensive that they take up a good fifty-plus pages in the end. Lepore's clearly done her research her, conducting interviews with currently-living members of the Marston-Holloway-Byrne family and going through what had to be mountains of personal papers to construct her biographical narrative, as well as placing Wonder Woman's creation firmly within the context of the time, showing the links between her stories and the art and rhetoric of the suffragist and New Woman movements. I kind of feel for Marston; after decades as an incredibly-smart polymath with little to show career-wise for his efforts (his self-aggrandizing personality made him a bad fit for academia, and neither his scholarly or fiction writing earned him any real acclaim, in likely part due to an intolerance for the criticism required to become good at something), he has a wildly successful pop culture character preaching his feminist values—and whom other writers are practically champing at the bit to turn into a secretary, a helpless damsel, or a sex object. Which becomes something of a problem when he contracts polio and can't keep up with the punishing daily-newspaper-strip publication pace.

I'm really enjoying Lepore's ability to avoid either lionizing or minimizing Marston's personality; given his role in feminist history, it had to have been tempting to hold him up as an ideal ally figure, or else magnify the problematic aspects of his philosophy (he believed strongly in the angelic nature of women, for instance, and his personal life didn't always match up with his principles—the family story has it that when he took up with Byrne, he told Holloway that either Byrne could come to live with them or he'd divorce her. Not precisely the sort of feminist poly hero I'd envisioned). She manages to do neither, and her biography feels much the richer for its complex portrayals of complicated people.

The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons: The History of the Human Brain as Revealed by True Stories of Trauma, Madness, and Recovery

I swear, at this point I kind of want to write a nonfiction book titled This Is Getting Ridiculous: Why the Long-Form Two-Part Colon-Separated Comma-Listing Nonfiction Title Is Unnecessary, Overused, and Distracting. :P Gripes about the title aside, this is another of Kean's enjoyable popular science books. Possibly my favorite point discussed so far is the way our brain operates along two entirely separate tracks—one logical and one emotional. This is hardly new information to anyone who's ever, say, fallen in love, but it turns out the systems are physically separated in the brain as well. And in case you've ever thought your decision-making processes would be better off without your emotions, take the case of Elliot: a responsible accountant and loving husband who, after a traumatic injury to his prefrontal cortex, completely lost the ability to make decisions. Even "where do you want to go for dinner tonight" was a multi-step process involving carefully weighing the respective restaurants' merits and drawbacks, driving by each of them to see how busy they were, etc...and even after that he was still stumped—without any kind of emotional attachment he couldn't say "I feel like Chinese tonight". Similarly, his work suffered due to his inability to prioritize tasks—he'd get caught up filing (and re-filing) paperwork and let his actual work slide. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he proceeded to make a series of (what we would call) completely boneheaded life moves; after (perhaps inevitably) his wife divorced him and he lost his job, he married a call girl and put most of his savings into a shady investment scheme, both of which turned out about how you'd expect.

What was most fascinating was that, if you proposed these situations to him as a hypothetical, he would absolutely agree that, say, marrying a prostitute you've known for a month is a Bad Idea and probably won't turn out well; but without that emotional urgency in his brain going "Hey! Don't do this! It's a bad plan!", to him it was all pretty much the same. (I find some interesting parallels to talking to someone in the grip of what poly people call New Relationship Energy, that notoriously strong and illogical sense that Your New Person Is The Best Ever; anyone who's tried to explain to a friend in a not-great relationship why their new relationship is not-great knows precisely this reaction of "oh yeah, I see what you mean, that's not great", completely divorced from any sense of "oh hey, my relationship that I'm in right now is Not Great!". Oh, chemistry.) Still, his new temperament did have one bit advantage: he might have been completely impaired with regards to decision making, but at least none of the crappy outcomes of his decisions ever bothered him much.

What I plan to read next

Um. Definitely trying to get back to Yoga Sequencing this week. And...well...we'll see!

Comments

[ivy]

Re: Wonder Woman, I've just got up to the part where she becomes a syndicated strip. Oh no, polio! (I was pretty pissed off about the secretary of the Justice League thing; WTF.) I really wonder about Olive and Holloway's relationship with each other and how they thought about all this; other than that one "MOTHER" photo, it hasn't been discussed that much in the parts I've read so far.

Why the Long-Form Two-Part Colon-Separated Comma-Listing Nonfiction Title Is Unnecessary, Overused, and Distracting

Hahaha! It is quite the formula, isn't it? I hadn't noticed until you pointed it out, but there must be a note on the desks of most nonfiction editors suggesting that they title books that way.

NRE is a drug. It totally is. We just don't treat it as if the person is on a dopamine binge.

[missroserose]

I've been a little saddened by how relatively little there is in Secret History on the relationship of Holloway and Byrne, but (in fairness) that seems to have been in part due to the author not wanting to make assertions she had no evidence for. I'm surprised there wasn't more in their respective journals...given the somewhat contentious beginnings of their relationship, I feel like there had to have been some Feelings involved. Still, given that they were by all accounts inseparable after Marston's death, clearly they found some measure of intimacy and love (which is good—I have a hard time imagining raising a family together with somebody you don't like!).

Oh, I've always thought of NRE as a drug. I just was tickled to discover there's a distinct brain structure that accounts for its effects. It makes sense! If all of your emotional cycles are being taken up with "wheeeeee i'm in LOVE!", you're definitely not going to have much left over for caution, haha. But it's so disconcerting to speak to someone in that state whose logical reasoning faculties remain intact!

[cyrano]

I can't help but imagine how hellish it would be, being trapped in Elliot's condition--I spend enough of my life not caring about decisions made because the effort of going through sorting variables and determining outcomes is overwhelming and tiring without having it be a permanent setting. But then, as you point out, if it were a permanent setting then I wouldn't be horrified by it.

NRE is a drug, and some people are addicted to it. They just bounce from relationship to relationship, squeezing each one until it runs dry.

[lilysea]

Thank you for the book reviews! ^_^

I swear, at this point I kind of want to write a nonfiction book titled This Is Getting Ridiculous: Why the Long-Form Two-Part Colon-Separated Comma-Listing Nonfiction Title Is Unnecessary, Overused, and Distracting. :P

Proving that humans have diverse tastes, I love this title format!

[missroserose]

Hey, to each their own! I don't have anything against it in particular—sometimes its quite eye-catching!—but as with any fashion, there are a lot of overwrought and confusing examples.

[asakiyume]

I so agree with you about nonfiction book titles! That only started like ten or fifteen years ago--before then titles were... just short and sweet. WHAT HAPPENED and when will it change back

I feel so awful thinking about people like that poor guy, though. Rotten luck.

Glad the Lepore book continues strong!

[missroserose]

Like every fashion, once the number of overwrought-and-confusing examples hits a certain point, people will get fed up and it'll change back. :) It's frustrating, because (like every fashion) there are a number of quite good examples too, but when it becomes a hard-and-fast rule everyone strains to fit into it stops being eye-catching and starts being annoying.

I have such mixed feelings about that dude! Like, yeah, that is the worst luck...but at the same time, none of it bothers him, so my empathy seems misplaced? Still, it completely fascinates me how (for all our vaunting of logical thought) we're basically impotent without emotions to guide and warn us.

I'm almost done with the Lepore book, I'm looking forward to discussing it in April! You're still welcome if you want to jump in. :)

[asakiyume]

Yeah, I have to say I'm confused by the labels of logic and emotion, because I don't see, at all, how logic would lead a person to make the decisions he did. If it's logically a risky idea to put your money in a dodgy deal, then how come he does? If logic and evidence show that it's not smart to marry a call girl, why does he? So to me it seems like the emotional disconnect is a red herring--it really sounds like his logic is screwed up somehow.

I guess one thing about the long titles of nonfiction books--it allows for a certain sort of creativity?

And thanks for the offer re: Lepore, but I'm afraid my level of commitment only rises to enjoying your thoughts on the book--but those I do enjoy, a lot.

[missroserose]

My reading was that his bad decision-making was tied to the inevitable result of logic without emotion—i.e. it became so paralyzing for him to make decisions because he was trying to consciously weigh every single possible variable—so he just defaulted to "Sure, why not" in most situations; whatever it was, he knew he wasn't going to feel bad about it, so why not? I'd have to re-listen to the chapter to be certain, though.

That's totally fine too. :) I like hearing your thoughts on my thoughts, haha.

[asakiyume]

I guess that makes sense re: logic and emotion if the only force behind logic is emotion, if the only reason we rate, say, painful death as a worse outcome than a long healthy life is because of (for example) emotions of fear about death and pleasant feelings regarding long life. But in fact we've enshrined some of this stuff as just rules, with the emotions pretty much removed--or rather, we do still have emotions connected to this stuff, but decisions can be made by--for example--a machine, given the rules. A machine would be able to see that the risky deal was a bad idea, if it had rules about saving money, stable income, etc. to draw on. If all things are equal for the guy, then I don't see why his brain didn't default to these sets of rules we have to make a decision. Clearly he didn't, though! ... But then, if it's completely random, it seems like he'd have an equal chance of making good decisions, so... why the tendency to make bad ones? Or did he sometimes make good ones?

[missroserose]

These are excellent questions! Now I have to look up his case to find out more. :)