Shorter NoticesArthur King, The Cigarette Habit: A Scientific Cure (Doubleday, 1959) What Byron called "sublime tobacco" and what Spenser called "divine tobacco" is neither sublime nor divine these days—strange but true, I know. But point in fact, scientists are beginning to diagnose several unhealthy side-effects that can come from smoking the stuff. So you're probably asking yourself, "Is it time for me to cut back?" Happily, hot from the presses there's The Cigarette Habit, which might be of some aid. Arthur King opens his volume sensationally: "Is there such a person as a 'cigarette addict'? Or a nicotinic? Or a tobaccomaniac? That is, are there some people who become addicted to cigarettes in somewhat the same manner as certain persons become addicted to alcohol or narcotics? I think there are." By 'addict' the author, who is a clinical psychologist at Columbia, doesn't mean "the tragically ill narcotic user, the shaking money-on-his-back dope fiend, or the mysteriously neurotic individual who leads a secret life with morphine, cocaine, or hasish." And don't get him wrong—smoking is not all bad. In his capacity as a doctor, he recommends tobacco in moderation. The net balance for moderate smokers (those who "consistently smoke less than a pack of cigarettes a day") is still positive, in terms of "pleasure, relaxation, and sociability." "I still believe," he continues, "that tobacco smoking, including cigarette smoking, is a boon, not a threat, to human life and society." Who's an addict, then? The tobaccomaniac is the unfortunate individual who, "through no fault of his own," has fallen prey to the depredations of Virginia Broadleaf or Turkish Canaster. He's a fellow who smokes "twenty to thirty cigarettes every day, year round." As it turns out, quitting smoking is not as simple as, say, giving up spirituous liquors; but Dr. King has cooked up an ambitious program—"Project Q." Step one: pick a "Q-Day," the day you'll renounce tobacco forever, and stick to it. In the run-up, stop smoking your favorite brand of cigarettes; another variety will have to tide you over. Also, stop smoking that pre-breakfast cigarette—frequently cited as "the one you just can't do without." Make up a list of reasons you want to quit. Finally, and most importantly, train your mind to think: "YOU SIMPLY DON'T WANT TO SMOKE. IT IS MORE PLEASURABLE TO SAY NO TO A CIGARETTE!" Thoroughly prepare yourself and Q-Day will be a breeze. When it rolls around, you just won't smoke anymore. If your Will is strong enough, you can deny yourself even a single slow satisfying drag of that sweet, smooth tobacco. Of course, Will also comes bottled in pharmaceutical form, and Dr. King recommends obtaining "from any reliable druggist" caffeine tablets to stand in for the stimulant that nicotine would otherwise provide, and also phenobarbital pills to counteract the jitters and other unpleasant side-effects of withdrawal. "Don't drive or operate heavy machinery," he advises, but, "go ahead and drink moderately." And before you can say Jackie Robinson, you'll be done with cigarettes for good,—and you'll feel like a million bucks, too. The Cigarette Habit vividly illustrates the prevalence of tobacco products in our society. Dr. King includes testimonials by turns sensuous ("I don't know, there's something about the way you get a great cloud of satisfying smoke out of a cigarette that makes all the difference"), charming ("I extinguished my thirty-fifth cigarette of the day, half smoked, and promptly lit another"), and Presidential ("Well, I don't know if I'll ever smoke again or not, but I'll tell you one thing for sure: I'll never quit again!"). Those last words, it must be said, are Eisenhower's. —Joseph Rago
To New York Times reporter John Leland, "Hip is a process in cyclical rhythm, like a menstrual cycle, rather than an event, like a male ejaculation." Heed Leland's words here and batten down with a few Midols before embarking, for this will be a bumpy ride. In Hip: The History, Leland takes us through four hundred years of 'hip' history and prehistory, finally landing in contemporary Williamsburg. Leland had a solid, well-organized, and factual argument laid out in the beginning. Unfortunately, this goes to shambles before chapter three. The first few chapters were more than promising; Leland defined the six "convergences of hip" and even threw in some indisputable etymology and pertinent (sometimes painful) historical background. Organization-wise, everything was going smoothly. He'd filled us in on colonial history; addressed the Jazz Age and Harlem Renaissance without incident; even regaled the reader with tales of PT Barnum. But then something happened: the Leland who called hip a "convenient excuse for fuckups" and a "self-serving release from white liberal guilt" in the intro disappeared, devolving from historian into a gutter-minded poet. For some inexplicable reason, Leland thought it wise to temper the latter half of the book with an all-encompassing porn metaphor. Surfacing several times, the money-shot Leland describes is truly poetic—and horrific. Leland writes, "Even in a money shot, what matters is the unseen pleasure, not the fluid flying across the screen. The fluid, like drug habits of hipsters and wannabes, or the righteous threads of the terminally cool, is just the shimmer that gets the suckers to pay their admission, and the mess that somebody else had to clean up." By mid-book we've arrived at a world of fantasy, a world where Leland devotes entire chapters to Bugs Bunny, spends pages attacking Walt Disney, and makes ludicrous metaphors about Tupac, Biggie and Kurt Cobain. While Leland's book is impeccable factually, he does some things stylistically that are a bit disconcerting. Leland's metaphors are endlessly entertaining, but when we move from hip being something that "allows birth without a womb" to something that "circulate(s) at the end of a carrot" to "the frisson of the bullet or blue note still in the air, dangerous but remote" one can't keep their head from spinning. While the history of 'hip' is inherently difficult to define and organize, it is amazing how much better Leland does with this task in the first part of the book. Being treated to a two page spread on Dizzy Gillepsie, a detailed history of the modern drug trade, the annotated version of Billy the Kid's capture, and a titillating description of John Dillinger's member within the space of only a few pages, I find myself wondering whether Leland's been screened yet for adult attention deficit disorder. When all's said and done Leland has churned out an entertaining spread. It's more than adequate for bathroom reading and could even be snuck onto the plane. Just don't open it up and expect Tacitus—you're getting Disney on heroin. —Courtney J. Andree
RadiA, studiA, archipelagA. Upon reading Manifesta, or even after gazing upon its hip, hybrid cover attaching a newspaper-clipped A" to a red manifesto, one cannot help but shuffle vowels all over the English language! FeministAs Baumgardner and Richards set forth to define, criticize, rally, etc. third-wave feminism with their adventure off the pages of Ms. Magazine and Richards' Ask Amy online columns, where readers can find answers to such plaguing questions as "Are lesbian relationships on film designed solely for men's benefit?"(Under the "Media" category on Feminist.com) You may also recall this duo from last year's "Visionaries in Residence" program sponsored by the Center for Women and Gender. Expecting a fascinating look into feminism, as well as a few good one-liners for a Review article, fellow staffers and I were foiled when Center for Women and Gender operatives asked if there were any representatives from campus newspapers in the seminar. The feminist freak show would have to be moved to the pages of Manifesta. The chilling Prologue, "A Day without Feminism," begins by asking the question, "Is feminism dead?" To illustrate the horrors of a world without feminism, Baumgardner and Richards describe an entire day without feminism. They describe how "It is unlikely that women or their male partners know much about the clitoris and its role in orgasm unless someone happens to fumble upon it," and "Instead, the myth that vaginal orgasms from penile penetration are the only "mature" (according to Freud) climaxes prevails." In addition to the perpetuation of the preposterous penile penetration myth, "Lesbians are rarely 'out,' except in certain bars owned by organized crime (the only businessmen who recognize this untapped market)…" Or maybe they just enjoy the spectacle. Alas! A day without feminism! Getting over the fright of "A Day without Feminism," (curfew for women at 9 or 10 P.M. while "Guys get to stay out as late as they want[!]") one encounters the rest of the Manifesta which reads more like a history lesson in feminism than a manifesto. The actual "manifesta" appears more than halfway through the book when they set forth thirteen goals or policy positions for feminists, including support of the Equal Rights Amendment and domestic violence legislation. Despite rarely mentioning the extreme leftist feminists, Baumgardner and Richards manage to provide obscure feminist talking points regardless. One important element of feminism, for example, is loving other women's bodies, since, "Loving another woman and finding out the secrets of her body is one way of learning about yourself." Lesbianism also reduces sexual tension and competition, "turning our gaze toward one another rather than vying for male attention." Despite trying to shy away from the man-hater image, Baumgardner and Richards still seem to hold some sort of passive-aggressive hostility towards them, suggesting they get "easily-reversible" vasectomies because of their sexual irresponsibility. Somehow the feministAs hope to bring "everyday feminists," many of whom don't self-identify, as well as "emotionally retarded" men, into their feminist fold. Relying on the skills, stories, and activism of the individual, the authors hope to engage the young feminist into a renewed Third-Wave feminism with a Second-Wave passion. Baumgardner and Richards' own passion for the subject is clear in Manifesta, the same passion Review staffers and Center for Women and Gender regulars saw when they described sleeping on YMCA floors while touring back in the day. Passion for what, though? Vasectomies, lesbianism, and Gräfenberg Spots? —Kevin C. Hudak
No bookshelf accoutrement has proven as able an aid to the faux intellectual as the alternative socio-political anthology. Burgeoning with various factoids and a range of sweeping pronouncements by esteemed academics and renowned windbags on the latest "burning" issues, volumes of these works have appeared in increasing number since 9/11, and they practically burst the discount aisle in the post-election fallout. Perhaps in the long scheme of history, the trend to such drivel-filled tomes is nothing new, but given the glut and apparent power of these books on the modern market, publishers seem to have gone all out to sex up the genre and make it more accessible to the general public. This drift makes it possible for even the most incompetent of dullards to drop those taxing periodicals and take in concise, ostensibly thoughtful opinions about the world that can be easily echoed around the water cooler. Examine a copy of Everything You Know Is Wrong, and one witnesses the result of this democratization of information. If nothing else, the shrewd will come to appreciate Everything You Know Is Wrong for its impressively gutsy title and the bold ink with which it is written—if only because there is little else to say for it. Ostensibly a motley amalgam of non-mainstream ideas, exposés and tell-alls, the entire production swirls around the perennially restated assumption that everything that spews from the established media is a vicious half-truth perpetrated to keep a mysterious coalition of monolithic corporations firmly ensconced on top of the little guy. Of course, leave it to Russ Kick and the rest of the editing staff at Disinformation! (they insist on the exclamation point) to continue the revolution they began with You Are Being Lied To. Kick, whose previous works include a 'taboo-shattering' collection of erotica, Hot off the Net, spared none of his talents on this fringe work—and therein lies one of the publication's main faults. In the struggle to bring these "censored" gems to the fore, Kick goes to extreme pains to make sure his audience will not shy away from the forbidden knowledge he has collected. Like an auteur director, Kick's use of the editorial scalpel in many pieces is uninhibited and obvious. Every article has been rearranged, altered and severely shortened to the point where little is left save a few catch phrases and what might be construed as a topic sentence. Some poor sod, for instance, is given only a page to tell the world that every police officer on his beat is a direct participant in a conspiracy involving an officially sanctioned drug coalition. This zeal for butchering prose, though perhaps justified given the "truth" being disseminated, is applied inconsistently. Author Mickey Z., for example, is granted so much space to denounce the consumption of animal flesh that he repeats his arguments several times before arriving at a conclusion. Kick didn't apply the editorial pen to his own articles either, so they occupy more space than those of any other writer. The articles are nothing special. There is little chance anything presented here will produce deep thoughts or even grant better insight into anything but the bare bones of a point of view. For the most part, this can be attributed to the paucity of actual content in most of these essays. Even the book's intended audience, those seeking the thrill of the forbidden and shocking fringes of modern culture, will feel unfulfilled by the end. With the exception of Mickey Z's amusing tirade against the villainous scourge of meat consumption, a perpetually depressed Nick Mamatas' exhortation to rid the world of the passé and imaginary concepts of good vs. evil, and Robert Sterling's triumphant celebration of Mo Qadaffi and the veritable utopia of modern Libya, the pieces fail to shock. Most articles revolve around some relatively mundane inequity in criminal justice or a list reasons to protest the next G-8 meeting. At a glance, this inch-thick collection might appear daunting to the casual reader whose attention and purse the publisher hopes to ensnare. In reality, every story is easy to understand, helpfully including black-and-white images of the various "truths" represented. To say the layout—whichis convoluted almost to the point of nausea—makes the essays completely unreadable is not wholly true, as the compilation's architects have condensed every essay into approximately four zestful sentences. Perhaps most distracting is Russ Kick's suggestion that his book reveals the obvious truth about the clamp that companies maintain all fringe media. Never mind that the book's publication relied upon more than a few such unquestionably vile organizations to reach the consumer (a fact Kick sheepishly admits to). The contradictions continue, as Kick and others encourage fringe media to become mainstream but then attack them for no longer being fringe-y. Fox News is to be congratulated, Kick explains, for taking on the big networks and for expanding the power of alternative cable television, but he also excoriates the station for being too mainstream and for having politics that "don't jive." There were some good times to be had with my copy of Everything You Know Is Wrong. The selection of independent texts in the back is very thorough, reminding me of what other books I can use to whittle away my time. An appendix, meanwhile, features some interesting pictures, such as the team photo of the Lady Swastikas, a Canadian women's hockey team that played in the early twentieth century when North America was gripped by swastika fever. Now I have some interesting conversation points for cocktail parties and Trivial Pursuit. Thanks Disinformation!! —Alexander Z. Rogers
Few are better qualified to discuss the power of freedom over the tyrrany than those who fought for their own liberty. Natan Sharansky—a former Soviet dissident and later a member of the Israeli knesset—is among these qualified few. Faced with the longest of odds, Sharansky has remained throughout his life a democratic idealist and an optimist. Jailed by the Soviets in the 1970s on trumped-up charges of crimes against the state, he was later released at the insistence of President Ronald Reagan. Upon emigrating to Israel, fulfilling his lifelong dream, he grew distressed by the partisan divide in the Jewish state, a divide he found petty in the broader context of freedom combating tyranny. He consequently founded his own political party, one that ignored the petty bickering and worked for the broader cause of bringing oppressed Jews to freedom in Israel. With these experiences as a compelling backdrop, Sharansky explains his Case for Democracy. He decries as evil those states whose power is based on fear, those states that repress dissent; most of these countries are today in the Middle East. Removing these fear-based regimes, he says, would serve the higher moral purpose of improving lives—and may also be essential to American security. The Middle East's apparent hatred of the United States, Sharansky argues, is tied directly to the region's oppressive governments. American foreign policy has long supported mere "stability" in the region, so that for short-term convenience it props up tyrants like Saddam Hussein and religious fanatics like the Saudi royals. The Arab street's apparent spite towards America is based, then, on an inconsistent foreign policy that has for decades fought not for liberty but for the preservation of a morally bankrupt status quo. Even America's triumph—ending the Soviet domination of Europe and bringing about communism's collapse—stopped short of full success; the United States thought more of preserving stability in the collapsing Soviet bloc than of promoting democracy there. Sharansky says there is no reason save our own lack of will that keeps democracy from taking root in the Middle East. Dismissing charges that Islam may be incompatible with Western ideas of freedom, he says Muslims have proved themselves capable of living in freedom and democracy, as in pre-Intifada Israel, pre-Musharraf Pakistan and in modern Indonesia. His message is only more poignant in an era when terrorism—inspired by these oppressive regimes—threatens the world. Though it is sure to be dismissed as just another "neo-con" book that advocates viral democracy, The Case for Democracy makes a stirring moral argument for spreading democracy and overthrowing the world's evil regimes. The book, at the very least, helps explain America's post-9/11 foreign policy. —Nathaniel E. Ward
Michelle Malkin is redolent with silly vanity—the stinking, sweaty avarice of a woman who pretends the status of an Ann Coulter. Unfortunately, the claw to the top is a desperate and despicable one, and In Defense of Internment is a very good example of just how desperate and despicable it is. Malkin attempts to excuse the internment of Japanese during World War II and suggests that we now do the same with Arabs and Muslims. The resulting polemic is deeply fraudulent and packed with shoddy scholarship. It is an out-and-out publicity stunt, a look-at-me cannonball into the foul-smelling pool of media sensationalism, in the hopes that the resulting splash will be so spectacular that it will be impossible to avoid. But things that are beyond the pale—things like, you know, the brutal herding of hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children into concentration camps—are generally beyond the pale for a reason; and anyways, Malkin is at once so bloodless and transparent that she manages to be deeply embarrassing and also easily dismissed. I am pleased to note that public discussion and brisk sales, highly-anticipated with books provocative, have not materialized. People have shaken their heads sadly, pinched their noses, and looked away. —Joseph Rago |
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