Friday, September 04, 2015

The Month That Was - August 2015

The heat of Florida was truly stifling. Yes, I know. It's Florida. In August. But come on, the temperature was 95 with a heat index of about 120. 90-90 days: over 90 temp with 90% humidity. Those are the days you really question that plan to retire to Florida. I have experienced those before but never a week of them in a row with no respite. It was unusual tropical weather, even for Florida.

Of course the bulk of my time was spent handling the arrangements and logistics and finances of my Mom's estate. Strangely (but, perhaps not) her funeral service was remarkably comforting. She had served in the Waves and as such received a military ceremony which was lovely and noble. Friends gather and shared fond memories and gratitude.

Short of being immortal, the best we can do is live long, die quickly, and be well remembered. And the best is what she deserved. I only hope I merit the same when my time is up.

And so I move inexorably back towards my ongoing life.

[Books] Book Look: Slouching Towards Kalamazoo
[TV] Halt and Catch Fire
[Cars] Deep Driverless

[Books] Book Look: Slouching Towards Kalamazoo

When I started writing I wanted to write book like Peter DeVries. DeVries is a satirical novelist from towards the end of the era when folks actually read mainstream fiction. He was active from the mid-40s through the mid-80s and wrote exquisite satires of suburban middle America. Now, I need to qualify that statement for the contemporary world.

You see kiddies, satire is something more than Jon Stewart making a mean joke about the latest target of social media shaming. That, in fact, is barely satire at all. Satire of any quality involves depth of vision, subtlety, and an appreciation of both the positive and negative of something. Otherwise it's just flippant snarkery.

For example, suppose I wanted to make fun of some strident aspects of Christianity as portrayed in The Scarlet Letter. Contemporary "humorists" would portray a caricatured Bible-thumping televangelist who's a secret pedophile. Wouldn't it be more interesting (and funnier) if I parodied the The Scarlet Letter by having the "A" become a line of successful t-shirts? What if I wanted to parody Yeats' Second Coming as a symbol of the coming apocalypse? Contemporary "humorists" wouldn't touch this because a) they think Yeats' Second Coming is a rap album and b) you probably couldn't do it in 140 characters. Wouldn't it be interesting to hint at the possibility that the rough beast is a precocious middle-class adolescent? You see how those parodies have layers? They seem to cut one way, but upon further review they really cut both. It's a little more complicated than slapping a Flying Spaghetti Monster magnet to your car.

That was some rant, eh? Can't you just picture my eyes rolling around and my arms flailing about and the froth at the corners of my mouth? The topic hits some hot buttons, to say the least. I love that DeVries understands satire and subtlety, and that I hate that most famous names don't, but think they do. I also love that DeVries has little interest in the fringes of society. He doesn't have the shallow arrogance that causes writers to look down from on detached high and use the disaffected in every form like a bludgeon to assault the supposed emptiness of normalcy. The characters of his books aren't sociopathic purveyors of hostility and sorrow. If you are a broadly well-socialized individual of middle-class stock, he's looking at you. You may be surprised to find there is dramatic conflict in your life, when pop culture has made it clear to you that it's hollow and pointless and you'll die unfulfilled.

DeVries reward for his grace and insight? He was fairly popular in his day, including successful stage adaptations, but slipped out of print in the 90s and his work is just now trickling back on to Amazon. Sic transit even a little bit of gloria.

I have to find my way out of this rant, don't I? OK, let's talk about Slouching Towards Kalamazoo specifically. The story is of one Tony Thrasher, son of a Pastor, who at the age of fifteen impregnates his high school literature teacher. There begins a tale that takes us through essential questions of responsibility, not the least of which is the difference between taking responsibility and feeling responsible. What follows includes the teacher compelling the teenager to somehow acquire a drug from the local pharmacy, without implicating her, that will induce miscarriage; the various attempts fail. The Pastor's wife finds herself attracted to a local dermatologist, an outspoken atheist, which results in a public debate that turns Pastor into atheist and Dermatologist into evangelist. The teenager's parents invite the teacher to stay with them after she is kicked out of her rooms when she begins "showing", ignorant that their son is the father. An off hand comment from the teenager sets the Scarlet "A" t-shirt plot into motion and sends the teacher off to live with her grandfather in Kalamazoo. The teenager follows (in a slouch), gaining summer employment from the teacher's grandfather -- a real character who spends his days recounting his romantic adventures -- where, though dedicated to helping with "his child", he falls for another girl.

And so on. Each scene is set up for laughs and gets them. The characters are all flawed humans who try to be as strong as needed. None are set above the others. All sides get their hypocrisy exposed and their egos punctured. Always laughed with, never laughed at. And that is how you do satire.

There are a couple of shortcomings. The teenager is failing in school because he spends his time reading the classics of philosophy and poetry rather than learning the dry facts taught in school. I know of no such teenagers, short of the ones in Wes Anderson films. And the ending is a bit of a let down. But the wit and the word play and the elegant prose never lose steam.

Should you read Slouching Towards Kalamazoo? Yes, but you won't. It won't hold your attention. There is no violence to counter, no oppression to overcome, no victorious righteousness. It's just a laugh at the oddness of life, a thing that is easier to dismiss than to appreciate. Your loss.

[TV] Halt and Catch Fire

This is a fine show you should probably watch, but you don't for the same reason you don't read DeVries (above), because it's not outlandish enough. It's not about the edges of society, it's about the edges of individuals. It is set against the backdrop of the earlier days computer revolution -- let's hear it for punk rock and Commodore 64! -- in Austin, but despite the period-piece positioning, it's the drama within that counts.

The single best thing about Halt and Catch Fire is that it is personal. As I pointed out above we are not looking at a dark mirror into society's ills. We are not looking back twenty-five years and sneering at the backwards fools who were so insufficiently progressive. In less talented hands this turns into a lurid soap opera of cartoon corporate evil or another incessant lecture on the moral horrors of previous decades ala The Knick or Masters of Sex. The settings and events of Halt and Catch Fire are in the service of the characters, not the reverse. That alone puts it in the top 1%.

There are four main characters in Halt and Catch Fire all have the common trait of a capacity and passion for technological achievement. The difference comes in how that influences their personalities. There is Joe, a Steve Jobs-ian salesman with an almost sociopathic obsession with changing the world. Cameron, an over-the-top brilliant programmer who has no interest in doing anything if it is not in defiance of someone else. Gordon, a hardware genius, carries a low burning dissatisfaction in that he has never put together a grand and glorious romantic vision and fears that he remains an underappreciated nerd, though it is mostly his own self-image. Donna, the most complex character, is a synthesizer and personalizer, she alone sees the real human effect of technology and, as such, is the one really ahead of her time, but that ability also causes her to have the clearest perspective on the costs of the other's obsessions and with her own compromises to deal with them.

The first season carried a few good episodes and finished strong. This second season really stepped up the game as all the characters tried to break out of their modes, but with only partial success and whatever gains they made had enormous costs. Although it may not be at the level of a Mad Men, Halt and Catch Fire is a quality drama of humanity, so naturally its renewal for a third season is dubious. Given the state of TV it would be a big loss. But let's face it, the best way to get a loyal following is to target a demographic and use your drama to make them feel just and righteous in their beliefs (see Aaron Sorkin).

The first season could get bogged down early, but this second season has kept things clipping along. Vibrant scenes at a showstring '80s gaming startup are a delight. The plotting of how the four characters are kept interacting is quite clever and involves early attempts at tech concepts like time-sharing and viruses and social apps. Humor is peppered in at appropriate times and in appropriate quantity. Just flat out good quality drama.

I made the comparison to Mad Men and suggested you can think of Halt and Catch Fire as a lesser version of that. That raises the question of why I think it is lesser, and I'm not sure I can pinpoint it. Honestly, it could be Lee Pace as Joe. I've never really warmed to his brand of intensity and his sales pitches seem too slimy to me, versus the chilling sauve of a Don Draper. Beyond that I don't know. It's possible that the characters are not quite as complex or fleshed out, but I can't really say why I think that other than that I don't feel as connected to them as the Sterling Cooper crowd.. It could also be the sense that all these folks are going to sort themselves out and have happy endings eventually, which was not the case with Mad Men, lends it a more prosaic sense, but again I don't know why I think that. All this leaves the door open to the possibility that you won't find it lesser at all.

Do the world a favor and binge it. Maybe we can get a third season out of AMC that way. You'll be entertained and I'll be grateful.

[Cars] Deep Driverless

It's interesting how people are thinking ever more deeply about the meaning and consequences of driverless cars. Here is a trio of the more in-depth articles if you want to dig in: Ways to Think About Cars and Roadmap for a World Without Drivers and Driverless Cars Too Safe.

The issues being raised are pointed. First there is a question of what a driverless car needs to be. The glib question is, Does a driverless car need windshield wipers? For that matter does it need windows? Maybe all that's required is a comfy chair and wi-fi.

A more interesting question is will we own them? If Uber is pointing the way, maybe not. We'll just order one up as needed. I'm sure that will work in cities, where there are high concentrations of people and it make economic sense to maintain a fleet large enough to promptly service everyone who orders one. Not so much in rural areas, and not so much for impulsive folks, who may decide on a whim to run an errand. I would bet in any situation where you had to wait more than five minutes for a car you there would be a certain drive for personal ownership.

Perhaps the most interesting question is the one about cars being too safe. This highlights one aspect of driving that is often overlooked. Though it seems like a mechanical activity, it is actually highly social and quite subtle. It generally requires you to know what laws it's OK to push beyond and by how much and in what circumstances. There are challenges of courtesy and cooperation. If I am running late and I need to push beyond the law to make my flight, I am required to evaluate the risks and costs of various levels of speeding, and have a sense for how far I can impose my needs on other drivers without inciting road rage. It will be very interesting to see how we do when we aren't allowed to cheat, or perhaps more scary, when we mix drivers and driverless so only some can cheat. This is the sort of circumstance that is going to feed snarky internet commentary into the next century.

All these questions will be overcome eventually, but perhaps not for long time and not without some false starts and a good deal of conflict. Delivery vehicles, including 18 wheelers, on the other hand, should be about ready to go. None of these issues applies to them. With people out of the picture things become simple. There is no one to look out the windows. They can be perfectly scheduled so there is no one to order one up on a whim and no one to be impatient to arrive. I expect to see this in my lifetime. The only thing that can stop it is the Teamsters.