Exhuming Malthus

Here we go again.

Slate has a good article on the forever-interest in the ideas of 18th century economist Thomas Malthus, particularly in the realm of fiction, specifically with regard to Jonathan Franzen's Freedom. To describe Malthus' central idea on one foot: human population grows exponentially, while natural resources grow arithmetically. The former will eventually outstrip the latter, leading to a population bomb that will detonate and obliterate us all.

No matter how many times Malthus is refuted, his ideas linger. Ultimately, Malthusians of all stripes are defined by their suspicion, if not hatred, for civilization. Malthus was in the news recently, thanks to the Neo-Malthusian nut who took hostages at the Discovery Channel earlier this month. His inspiration? A novel: My Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn.

It almost makes you miss the influence of Karl Marx.

Let's Talk About *Freedom*

I've just started reading Jonathan Franzen's Freedom, a book I planned on hating but am actually kind of enjoying. I've disdained Franzen (yes, my negative opinion of him has been that intense) since the whole Oprah flap back at the beginning of the last decade. I wasn't put off by some great offense against Her Highness of Daytime, but by Franzen's apparent smugness and snobbishness toward the economic gift horse that is the Oprah Book Club, by his attitude that he and his work (The Corrections) were too good for the sudden popularity that followed from Oprah's stamp of approval, that the vulgar "O" printed on the book's cover immediately tarnished its contents by marking it as "female fiction." Didn't he want people to read his goddamn book?

Anyway, it wasn't just spite that motivated me to pick up Freedom. It's too long a book to be read for the sole (and self-indulgent) purpose of further stoking some anger within me. No, I wanted to understand and be part of a conversation about an "important" literary work within the culture. I place quotes around the word important not to be snarky or contrarian, but to underscore the fact that Freedom's import is that it has prompted discussion in the first place, without me having to evaluate how important a literary work it is. It's not often that a work of fiction is discussed so ubiquitously, with angles of debate so multifaceted.

First there's the issue of the book's literary merit. Freedom has been overwhelmingly embraced by critics, with a few poison pens written in gleeful dissent. Then there's the reaction to the book's critical reception, which has become a debate about the nature of literary criticism and what it means to be a Great American Novel. Add to the mix questions of what happened to the popular "middlebrow" novel, why most people no longer read fiction, and whether a woman writer of literary fiction could ever grace the cover of Time, as Franzen did a few weeks ago, and you've got yourself some robust cultural discourse.

The last bit, of the media's attitude toward women literary writers, immediately cuts off any mention of J.K. Rowling, she being the clichéd 800 pound, and multi-billion dollar, gorilla. Of course, the modifier "literary" in front of "fiction" is central to all of this. When in recent memory have people, like real reg'lar people, many of whom are also the erudite consumers of the NYT's Notable Books list, clamored about and discussed a work of fiction? In the last ten years, it's only been in the context of young adult and genre fiction: Harry Potter, Twilight, and Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy exhaust the list.

And so, we talk about Freedom. While that's a very good thing on the surface, what about Franzen has established him as the literary topic of discussion? It's not merit alone. There have been a number of great, and for the most part popular, contemporary works that did not make the same splash, books like The Road, The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Netherland, Tree of Smoke, and Middlesex, among many others. Perhaps it's because few other authors mix Franzen's prodigious ambition and ability with broad social commentary. While I almost completely disagree with Franzen's evaluation of America and Americans, there's no doubt that Freedom is the work of a writer in full control of his powers, one who is emphatically Making a Statement. Freedom's sweeping 23-page first chapter is proof enough of this.

Whatever the answer, the great debate over Freedom shows the reports of the novel's death within American culture are at least slightly exaggerated. And the townsfolk rejoice, however halfheartedly.

The Death and Life of the Great American Bookstore

I once worked at a flagship book "superstore" here in D.C. (and at a lesser location in South Florida, which is, not coincidentally, scheduled to close in a month-and-a-half). For nine years, I witnessed firsthand the once-nascent problems that are now bankrupting the two major bricks-and-mortar book chains, Borders and Barnes and Noble. Borders has been on the ropes for years, and Barnes and Noble, the nation's largest book chain, is now up for sale. Neither could prevent the rise of the internet, the primary cause of their fall. Still, there are four ancillary causes, listed below, that have accelerated the superstores' demise.

Superstores have become for-profit public libraries.

Borders and Barnes and Noble superstores are inviting places that encourage customers to browse for hours without purchasing anything. Welcoming customer service, plush leather comfy chairs, plenty of tabletop space, premium coffee shops, community events like book groups and open mic nights, and regular national events featuring famous authors and musicians, the very amenities that were meant to make these stores "destinations," turned for-profit businesses into open access public goods.

Here's an excerpt from a recent article in the NYT, on the closing of a Manhattan Barnes and Noble:

Ms. Kelly said she visited the store at least twice a week, usually heading upstairs to read magazines and to pick up a sandwich and cup of Starbucks coffee.

“They’re getting business out of me, I suppose,” she said. “Even though I’m sitting there reading magazines for free.”

When I worked for my former employer, patrons like Ms. Kelly were our regulars. Like my co-workers, I knew most of these regulars by name, and would affably chat with them daily. They were dedicated, yes, but hardly our bread and butter. More perpetual browsers than customers, they would spend hours camped out in the aisles with piles of books and periodicals. In return, they would spend a meager average ticket of around $2.00 a day. It would take at least 5-10 labor hours after closing to clean up after the campers, not to mention the time spent during operating hours dedicated to reshelving their messes -- time spent away from providing excellent customer service and actually selling books.

So, bookstores became libraries. It wasn't uncommon for parents to come to the information desk with school assignments and we, the over-educated booksellers, were responsible for locating their needed materials (this would often involve a good deal of book sleuthing usually reserved for a Master of Library Science). Later, we'd inevitability find the same teetering towers of books in a corner, left unpurchased. Older college students were more self-sufficient, yet the result was the same. They would come in and use our product to complete their homework, with their only purchase being a refillable mug of coffee ($1.75).

During the heyday of hard-copy book and multimedia buying, the customers who came in with the sole purpose of purchasing merchandise were able to subsidize the campers, the needy parents, and the college students. Nowadays, post-Kindle and iTunes, this business model is no longer tenable. The high overhead of a Borders or Barnes and Noble superstore cannot be covered by the sales of tall lattes and blueberry scones.

The superstore's massive footprint is an albatross.

Borders pioneered the superstore model in the mid-1990s. Before then, most bookstores were found in malls, and were the size of the European History section of your local superstore. Stand-alone stores like classic Barnes and Noble locations were larger, and included cafes (which conspicuously did not allow-in unpaid merchandise). However, their focus remained on books and the common "sidelines" found in most bookstores (e.g., calendars, book lights, and inexpensive tchotchkes). Borders changed everything. A typical Borders superstore had a book department that could easily swallow an entire Barnes and Noble. It, too, had a cafe (which conspicuously allowed-in unpaid merchandise), and, unlike the Barnes and Noble of the time, had a gigantic multimedia department. (Barnes and Noble followed suit, but their superstores were conservative by comparison. They basically beefed up their book sections, made their stores vertical, and added marginal multimedia sections.) The sheer size of a superstore, and the diversity and quantity of its merchandise, called for large back room areas for receiving and plenty of office space for administration. This meant that even lower volume stores took up a lot of space, which resulted in hefty rents and high payroll costs.

Again, all well and good during flush times. However, the very nature of the industry changed permanently in the early 2000s, thanks to Amazon and iTunes. The multimedia section in an average Borders store used to be about 2/3 the size of the book section. Today, most Borders stores no longer even carry catalog music; their "music sections" are merely two "browser" fixtures of new releases. The highest volume stores continue to carry a limited number of catalog titles (about the same as a Best Buy's backlist), but it's a far cry from the days when jazz and classical alone took up rows and rows of fixtures. Now that the demand for hard-copy music has dwindled, superstores are left with more floor space than they can use. Those former multimedia sections now look like graveyards, filled with the tombstones of empty retail fixtures. A depressing sight for customers and employees alike.

Deep discounting further undercuts the superstore's profitability.

One of the best perks of working at a superstore was the employee discount, which used to run between 25% and 33%, depending on your full-time/part-time status. Even better, once or twice a year we were treated to "employee appreciation days" that gave us a whopping 40% off of most of the merchandise we sold. Employees readily took advantage of the munificent discount, and would often spend hundreds of dollars on a single purchase (usually on gifts, since this occurred in December).

Today, 40% off is the norm. I get weekly e-mail coupons from Borders, and I'm surprised when the discount is less than 40%. The harsh reality for superstores is that more and more hard-copy book and music consumers are shopping at Costco, Walmart, and Best Buy, chains that often price these items at a loss to drive traffic. With the aforementioned online juggernauts, Amazon and iTunes, added to the mix, superstores have had to slash their margins to a hair's breadth to remain competitive. Theoretically, Borders and Barnes and Noble could have "made it up in quantity," but the weak aggregate demand of the recession economy has only made matters worse for superstores.

The superstore suffers from a confusion of purpose.

I remember the nadir of my bookselling career. I was merchandising a table of "summer items" at the front of the store, the highest-valued real estate of any retail firm. Working from my planogram, I carefully arranged cans of meat rubs, sets of barbecue tongs, jars of four different barbecue sauces, and -- the afterthought of the table -- some books on grilling. One of the stacked glass jars of barbecue sauce fell to the floor and broke; its thick and pungent contents splattered wide on the carpet. I may be making too much of this, but, at the time, the sight of a puddle of barbecue sauce in front of fixtures displaying the bestselling works of McEwan, Chabon, and Atwood was a disheartening wake-up call. What exactly are we selling here?

A common joke among the employees of my store was that we were only weeks away from selling cigarettes and lottery tickets. It wasn't too far from the truth. During my tenure, we sold gardening spades, video games, t-shirts, manicure sets, sushi-making kits, wallets, Dean and Deluca spice racks, board games, hand creams, fake eyelashes, $200 Star Wars lightsabers, and the classics of the Western canon. One of these things is not like the others. Which of them belong in a bookstore?

Our buyers had an admirable goal in mind, to make our stores places for one-stop-shopping. Ultimately, most of the above-listed items ended up being marked down to $1.00, since they were almost always left unsold and were non-returnable to the distributor. In retrospect, this lack of focus, on the corporate level, of the business' identity led the chain down a number of blind alleyways. There are many retail stores that conveniently offer one-stop-shopping experiences, namely big box stores like Target and Walmart. I doubt barbecue sauce and fake eyelashes top the shopping list of the average booklover entering a Borders or Barnes and Noble store. That said, I'm not a professional book buyer. What do I know?

My guess is Borders will go out of business in the next year, and Barnes and Noble will eventually return to its original model of modestly-sized bookstores that cater to a small population of book consumers. Ironically, the clear winner here is the once-beleaguered independent bookstore, the scrappy underdog that never lost sight of what it was selling. After all, with eBooks on the rise, purists (like me) who stubbornly enjoy browsing non-digital bookshelves will need bookstores to patronize, super or otherwise.

UPDATE: From Bloomberg.com:

Borders Group Inc., the second- largest U.S. bookstore chain, will start selling items from Build-A-Bear Workshop Inc., relying less on books for sales as more people use electronic reading devices.

Most of Borders’ more than 500 stores will create sections next month dedicated to Build-a-Bear, the maker of kits kids can use to craft stuffed animals, Chief Executive Officer Michael Edwards said in an interview. The new areas also will feature books and DVDs tied to the brand.

Emphasis mine. The excerpt speaks for itself. (HT Kelsey Pince.)

10 Influential Books

A few days ago Tyler Cowen listed 10 books that influenced his view of the world, and kicked off a fascinating meme among bloggers. My list is below.

Like Cowen, I compiled from the gut. I read every entry, except for the last two, before I turned 21. Only one or two would go on a current list of favorite books, but their influence is undeniable.

Here they are, in chronological order:

1. Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park: The book that made me love the novel. Before I read Jurassic Park, at the age of 12, the only books that interested me were comics. Jurassic Park was the novel that made me realize books could enrapture without the aid of images (fractals notwithstanding).
2. Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle: The book that made me an atheist. Before Cat's Cradle, the idea that god existed was immutable, self-evident. Vonnegut's apocalyptic parable was my first encounter with the notion that not only is religion ridiculous ("No damn cat, no damn cradle"), but that it's possible to think of it that way. Added bonus: Cat's Cradle was the first book that caused me to obsess over a single author. I went on to devour the entire Vonnegut oeuvre. For better or worse.
3. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice: The book that made me love a good sentence. I read Pride and Prejudice in the summer before my junior year of high school, for AP English. I initially dreaded reading it. It seemed stuffy and out of date. Austen's prose grabbed me from the novel's iconic opening line. It was the first time I enjoyed reading a novel for its craft, rather than its plot or theme.
   
4. Toni Morrison, Beloved: The book that made me a critical reader. Another entry in the high-school-required-reading category, this time twelfth grade. I was determined to conquer Morrison's seemingly impenetrable style. By the end I realized some books that require effort actually reward you for it.
5. Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged: The book that most made me who I am today. This is the most obvious entry. Rand's novel presented a world, and a point of view, that still shapes me to this day. I would never have studied economics without it. And I would still be a socialist.
6. Ayn Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal: The book that made me certain that capitalism isn't only better than its antipode, but the only moral system. Atlas Shrugged made me a capitalist, Capitalism made me a crusader.
   
7. Robert L. Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers: The book that made economics personal. By the time I read The Worldly Philosophers, I was already interested in economic theory. But Heilbroner's book was my first exposure to the ideas of individual economists. Though I disagree with Heilbroner's perspective (as I did at the time of reading it), his enthusiasm for economic ideas was infectious. It cemented my decision to study economics.
   
8. Ludwig von Mises, Socialism: The book that grounded my approach to thinking about economics. Until reading Mises, my opposition to socialism was based in morality. Socialism showed, in great depth, why the price system is central to applied economics. It showed that socialism is not just wrong, it's impossible in practice.
9. Peter Guralnick, Last Train to Memphis/Careless Love: The book(s) that made me a serious music fan. I had dismissed the music of Elvis, until I read Peter Guralnick's incredible two-part biography. That I'm now an Elvis fan is a happy consequence, but only a side note. Guralnick's bios showed that reading about music can be as rewarding as listening to it.
   
10. Bill Buford, Heat: The book that made me a foodie. I was a fat kid, so I've always loved eating. But I never appreciated food. Buford's account of working in the kitchen of Mario Batali's Babbo was the catalyst to my most expensive obsession: fine dining. Heat showed that food contains pleasures beyond being a terminus to hunger.
    

*The Road*

Cormac McCarthy's The Road is a quick read -- McCarthy's spare and lyrical prose, at times hypnotic, propels the reader forward, making the book an out-and-out page-turner, even when not much is happening -- but it's not an easy one.

The post-apocalyptic world of The Road is desolate, burned, and ash-strewn, devoid of any life, plant or animal, save a handful of pitiful, vagrant humans. Two figures, a father and a son, both unnamed, seek deliverance from their hopelessness by trekking the titular road with a shopping cart filled with all their worldly belongings. Their destination is the coast, where they hope to find some semblance of stability, a terminus to their wandering, and most importantly a reprieve from the world's perpetual winter, since the sun has been blotted out by "the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming the world."

Along the way, father and son scavenge for food in abandoned homes and grocery stores. These scenes, and there are many, underscore the desperation of their situation. They not only have to survive near-starvation, but also the cannibals (most surviving humans have turned to eating human flesh) that may inhabit every building they enter. Every time the father and son enter a building, you feel as if the two have ventured into a sinister fun house, where the opening of a door or the turning of a corner brings anxiety and dread.

McCarthy's central metaphor is the road our duo walk. It is a symbol of lifetime, the linear path we all move along. It is the potential bringer of salvation, or of marauding hordes who literally hope to devour us. But most of all, the road is a symbol of movement, of resilience, of forward motion even when it seems to be a fruitless endeavor.

Is it fruitless? By the end of the novel McCarthy implies no. The Road is a novel of survival, of the "carrying [of] the fire," by which McCarthy means the continuation of life, of humanity. At the center of the novel is the father's determination to give his son the only gift he can give him: a life, a future.

By The Road's final pages, the pathos McCarthy builds throughout the novel becomes palpable and heartbreaking. McCarthy leaves it to the reader to decide how humanity will fare. What remains unequivocal is his portrayal of the raging against the dying of the light, a fight humans have had to wage in the darkest moments of history, most recently in the totalitarian nightmares of the 20th century. But, as McCarthy shows, there is one fundamental choice: to succumb, or to move on down the road.

Book Roundup

The Lexicographer's Dilemma, by Jack Lynch

Lynch uses the Great Man trope -- John Dryden, Jonathan Swift, Samuel Johnson, Noah Webster, and even George Carlin, all figure prominently -- to sketch a narrative of the codification of "proper English" and show where the language has landed today. Yet it's ultimately a Hayekian story of emergent order, despite his insistence on the importance of a handful of individuals on the shaping of the language. I found the chapters on the battle between prescriptive versus descriptive dictionaries the most interesting, though a later chapter on "bad words" (from curses to slurs) was better than I expected. The book loses steam a bit when Lynch tries to explain where the language may be going. Still, a must for language mavens, but good even for a general audience.

The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger

A literary love story told by means of a clichéd sci-fi device. Niffenegger's airtight plotting of the twisty temporal shifts is brilliant. It's a warm, and heartbreaking, celebration of true love and its momentary and permanent loss. Unfortunately, the novel sags a bit in the middle, and only the time-traveling Henry is fully fleshed out. What keeps you going is Niffenegger's craft as a storyteller. And the ending is just brutal, and yet still immensely satisfying.

Eating the Dinosaur, by Chuck Klosterman

Chuck Klosterman is my favorite cultural critic, and the writer I hope to be when I grow up. This is not his best essay collection -- that would be either Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs or IV -- but here Klosterman makes things I hate, like football, seem interesting, even IMPORTANT. The best essays, one that juxtaposes David Koresh and Nirvana (not as ridiculous as it sounds), and another on the genius of ABBA (which I wholeheartedly agree with), are as good cultural criticism gets. Reading Klosterman just makes me intensely yearn for him to write a regular column for a magazine, or at least start a blog (which, sadly, he vehemently opposes).

The Road, by Cormac McCarthy

I've just started this one. Its monochromatic bleakness is suffocating. Thus far, its aesthetic merit, and my interest, begins and ends with McCarthy's prose, so spare and stylized, with his run-to-the-dictionary obscurities and his disdain for any punctuation apart from the period. It seems like a book I'll admire more than enjoy.

*Bel Canto*

I'm pleased to say that Ann Patchett's Bel Canto is not a romantic travelogue through Italy. Of course, there is no reason to think it would be. It was my mistake, and one of two happy instances of surprise the novel provided me. Perhaps my erroneous idea of the novel's subject is what kept me from picking it up until now, eight years after its release. Boy am I glad I did. The book is terrific, the best I've read since Joseph O'Neill's Netherland.

Bel Canto begins with a gala set in the mansion of the vice president of an unnamed South American country. The party is in honor of a wealthy Japanese businessman, who is only there to witness a private performance by the world's foremost soprano. But before the diva is able to finish her performance, the lights go out: terrorists have broken into the mansion, thus beginning a standoff that will last months.

The second surprise is that the book is not a thriller filled with failed escape attempts and one tense situation after another. No, Bel Canto is about life in purgatory, as the characters, hostage and terrorist alike, settle into their new home. Their only contact to the outside world is a Red Cross worker who is a conduit for negotiations, and a courier for necessities like food, newspapers, and most importantly, sheet music. Patchett's diva must sing, and it's through her that the book's theme of love -- of music, beauty, language, human bonds -- is realized.

I won't go into more detail about the story (which is not really a plot, in the strictest sense of the term), since it would ruin the remarkable tale that Patchett deftly unspools. I will mention the sentences, so lovely and elegant (a word that best describes the entire novel) that I can't pick out just one example for fear of slighting another. Bel Canto is to be read slowly to be fully enjoyed.

In the end, Bel Canto is a novelization of Stockholm syndrome. Yes, the characters succumb to it, but it is the reader who is inexorably made to feel sympathy for the hapless devil that overtakes the opulent estate. By the novel's conclusion, the abrupt tragedy of the climax only underlines the beauty that takes place in the three hundred pages that precedes it. I was left wanting more, but I appreciated Patchett's restraint.

It's a remarkable book. I waited eight years to find this out, but, as the saying goes, better late than never.

Ayn Ascendant, Again

Ayn Rand, who never really went away, is having a landmark year in 2009. Sales of Atlas Shrugged have surged since the financial crisis. Some members of the Right, few of whom are actually Objectivists, have coined the term "Going Galt," a reference to the hero of the novel, as a shorthand for opposition to the leftward shift the Obama administration is taking the country. A film adaptation of Atlas Shrugged, long stuck in development hell, seems poised to become a television miniseries. And now, two major biographies of Rand, Jennifer Burns' Goddess of the Market and Anne Heller's Ayn Rand and the World She Made, have been published in the last three weeks. (See my review of Goddess of the Market here.)

This confluence of events has resulted in a flurry of articles and reviews by major publications like Time, Newsweek, and The New Republic. Burns recently spoke about Rand on The Daily Show (see below). The New York Times alone has devoted two reviews of these bios in a week (one by Janet Maslin, and a forthcoming front-page review in this Sunday's Book Review). Most of the reviews, while praising the quality of the bios, have been highly critical of Rand herself. Most notably, Jonathan Chait's review of the books for TNR was merely a springboard for a sneering diatribe against Rand. (It seemed unclear that he had ever read Rand's, or Burns' and Heller's, books.)

Is this recent resurgence of Rand good news for fans like me? A couple of weeks ago I had a heated discussion on this very topic, with a friend of mine who is also an Objectivist. He argued that the bios, and the media attention surrounding them, only further obfuscate Rand's ideas. He makes a good point. Burns and Heller, who have become admirers of Rand, misconstrue many of her ideas, and play up her tumultuous personal life. The reviews of their books cull them for their negative bits, and largely ignore the praise the authors have for Rand.

[A brief aside on this last point: Earlier today, I attended a discussion on Rand, featuring Jennifer Burns and Anne Heller, at the Cato Institute. Before the start of the talk, the aforementioned NYT Book Review piece was distributed to the audience. One of the review's many incorrect assertions popped out at me (and at a fellow audience member). The reviewer, Adam Kirsch, describes how Rand accepted a 7 cent-per-copy decrease in royalties, to ensure Galt's climatic 60-page philosophical speech in Atlas Shrugged remained completely intact:

That she agreed is a sign of the great contradiction that haunts her writing and especially her life. [...]

[W]hile Rand took to wearing a dollar-sign pin to advertise her love for capitalism, Heller makes clear that the author had no real affection for dollars themselves. Giving up her royalties to preserve her vision is something no genuine capitalist, and few popular novelists, would have done. It is the act of an intellectual, of someone who believes that ideas matter more than lucre.

The final question of the night was about this assertion. The audience member who also took umbrage asked Heller what she thought of it. How could the reviewer misunderstand Rand's ideas so? "Few critics understand Ayn Rand," she replied, to great applause. "It was an investment -- and it paid off." Indeed.]

I think this recent attention, however negatively skewed, is still a very good thing. Rand has been receiving negative reviews since the publication of her first novel. This has never affected her popularity, with some thanks to a few notable champions, but mostly due to popular word of mouth recommendations. But these books bring a serious study of Rand and her ideas, one thing Rand has always lacked. And, I know this will sound like apostasy to my fellow Objectivists, I think their mixed evaluation of Rand actually encourages further academic study. These books could never be described as fawning hagiographies by devotees. Nevertheless, they take Rand -- her ideas, her art, and her impact -- seriously. How can this be seen as a bad thing?

For Objectivism to have a real impact on the culture, it has to studied impartially. Inroads have already been made. But, I don't know how any fan could argue that ignoring Ayn Rand is better than giving her more attention, however mixed that attention is.

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*Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right* Review

To this day, Ayn Rand elicits many strong reactions, few of which are evenhanded. Her fans (I count myself as one) adore her; her enemies dismiss her, at best, or savage her, at worst. While there are exceptions that prove the rule, most who know enough to have an opinion come down on either side. Ayn Rand remains the polarizing intellectual figure of the last half-century.

Her ideas have been canonized, co-opted, obfuscated, openly misunderstood, and caricatured by friends and foes alike. Biographies of Rand have either been hagiographies or outright smear-pieces. Only in the last fifteen years have serious, though marginal, academic publications begun to study Rand's ideas. But now two major biographies, Anne Heller's Ayn Rand and the World She Made, and Jennifer Burns' Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right, have arrived to set the intellectual record straight and reassess Ayn Rand as serious thinker, free from the shackles of her admirers and detractors.

(I have only read Burns' work, since Heller's has not yet been released. A review of that book will follow.)

I'm happy to report that Goddess of the Market is an excellent intellectual biography of Ayn Rand. Burns briskly retells Rand's life, from her childhood in Soviet Russia, to her early adult life in Hollywood, her rise as a novelist and philosopher, and her place within "libertarian" thought today. (Rand never aligned herself with the libertarian movement. In fact, she referred to them as "hippies of the right." Still, the libertarian movement largely credits Rand as one of its founders.)

Burns spent eight years researching the book, and had unprecedented access to the Ayn Rand Archives (which Heller did not). And it shows. While she has an unfortunate penchant for taking Rand's ideas out of context, she still exhibits a impressive understanding of Objectivist thought. However, concerning Rand's personal life (which I think has little bearing on the validity of her philosophy), Burns sides with Rand's detractors more often than not, without explanation. This is the book's greatest flaw, especially since it is the first to have access to such a wide breadth of primary sources.

The highlight of Goddess of the Market is its description of Rand's middle-years, the time between the writing of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. This era found Rand a burgeoning political activist (first for Wendell Willkie, and later for Barry Goldwater), who was interacting with libertarian luminaries like Isabel Paterson, Rose Wilder Lane, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and Milton Friedman. Here Burns shows how they aided Rand in defining her philosophy, either by providing the perspective that Rand lacked (Paterson and Mises), or by providing touchstones for disagreement (Hayek and Friedman).

The latter half of the book focuses on Rand's post-Atlas Shrugged life, with emphasis on her doomed (professional and personal) relationship with Nathanial Branden. While this story has been told before, of particular interest is Burns' description of Rand's increasing influence on the ideas of the political right, which was both welcomed and harshly rejected. Her most important opponent was William F. Buckley, whose National Review provided the most scathing criticisms of Rand, more so than anyone on the Left. (Rand's current vogue among conservatives like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck is tenuous and superficial; they largely focus on a narrow understanding of some of her political philosophy, and simply ignore the bulk of her ideas, which are at odds with theirs.)

Though Rand's blithe disregard for her enemies fueled their vitriol, her ideas were sure to inflame both sides of the political spectrum on their own. She not only advocated capitalism, but bluntly stated that it was the only moral political system, something even the Right was hesitant to do. She was also an outspoken atheist, who abhorred the Right's increasing religiosity (this was the source of Buckley's dislike). And both sides bristled at Rand's idea that altruism is evil and selfishness is good.

To the chagrin of literary critics, college professors, and political commentators, Rand remains immensely popular. Her fame has only increased since her death in 1982. Indeed, her continued relevance could be described as populist, at least in the cultural sense. Her novels continue to thrive on word of mouth recommendations, an amazing feat for books that are at least 50 years old.

Rand's critics focus on her negativity, which was undoubtedly robust. She loathed most of modern culture, and at times was pessimistic about the future. But they miss what her fans embrace about Rand: her celebration of the individual, her fierce advocacy of freedom, her belief that the rational human mind is man's greatest asset.

Burns' book doesn't seek to bridge the differences between Ayn Rand's fans and enemies. Instead, it provides an intelligent assessment of her place within 20th century thought. Something she has been denied, until now.

Pirate Economics

This week's New Yorker has an excellent review of GMU economist Pete Leeson's book The Invisible Hook. I haven't yet read the book, but Leeson spoke to Russ Roberts about the book on EconTalk earlier this summer. It was a thoroughly interesting (and entertaining) discussion.

From the review:

In Leeson’s opinion, there was a sound economic basis for all this democracy. Most businesses suffer from what economists call the “principal-agent problem”: the owner doesn’t work, and the workers, not being stakeholders, lack incentives; so a certain amount of surveillance and coercion is necessary to persuade Ishmael to hunt whales instead of spending all day in his hammock with Queequeg. Pirates, by contrast, having stolen the ships they sailed, were both principals and agents; they still needed a captain but, Leeson explains, “they didn’t require autocratic captains because there were no absentee owners to align the crew’s interests with.” The insight suggests more than Leeson seems to want it to—does inequity always entail political repression?—and late in the book he backtracks, cautioning that the pirate example “doesn’t mean democratic management makes sense for all firms,” only that management style should be adjusted to the underlying ownership structure. But a certain kind of reader is likely to ignore the hedging, and note that the pirates, two centuries before Lenin, had seized the means of production.

It's great to see Leeson getting so much good press. I knew him as the TA for my favorite economics course at Mason (under one of my favorite professors, another Pete.) The review mentions that Leeson has a tattoo of Supply and Demand on his bicep. It's true, I've seen it. And yes, it's totally badass.

On Pretention

BBC News reports on a UK poll, which reveals that two-thirds of the sample admitted to having lied about reading a classic novel "to impress someone." The most lied-about book: Orwell's 1984 (42%). Remarkably, the highly-accessible dystopian novel beat out War and Peace (31%) and Ulysses (25%).

I can't understand how a person can get away with this without being exposed as a phony. Are these people not being asked follow-up questions? Worse, lying about reading books one has no interest in only acknowledges and bolsters the influence that pretentious "taste-makers" wield in the world of the middle and upper brow.

What do people actually like to read?

Asked which authors they really enjoyed reading, more than six out of 10 (61%) chose Harry Potter author JK Rowling, nearly a third (32%) ticked legal thriller writer John Grisham.

More than a fifth (22%) chose Shopaholic author Sophie Kinsella.

I would guess that an intelligent person is more likely to lie in these circumstances, for fear of the dreaded raised eyebrow. In a way, this is the inverse of someone calling a popular or low brow favorite a "guilty pleasure." Chuck Klosterman wrote a brilliant critique of this trend for Esquire a while back:

In and of itself, the phrase "guilty pleasure" seems like a reasonable way to describe certain activities. For example, it is pleasurable to snort cocaine in public restrooms, and it always makes you feel guilty; as such, lavatory cocaine fits perfectly into this category. Drinking more than five glasses of gin before (or during) work generally qualifies as a guilty pleasure. So does having sex with people you barely know, having sex with people you actively hate, and/or having sex with people you barely know but whom your girlfriend used to live with during college (and will now consequently hate). These are all guilty pleasures in a technical sense. However, almost no one who uses the term "guilty pleasure" is referring to activities like these. People who use this term are usually talking about why they like Joan of Arcadia, or the music of Nelly, or Patrick Swayze's Road House. This troubles me for two reasons: Labeling things like Patrick Swayze movies a guilty pleasure implies that a) people should feel bad for liking things they sincerely enjoy, and b) if these same people were not somehow coerced into watching Road House every time it's on TBS, they'd probably be reading A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Both of these assumptions are wrong.

Klosterman is especially insightful in his analysis of the psychology of those who use the term "guilty pleasure":

[They] fail to realize is that the only people who believe in some kind of universal taste—a consensual demarcation between what's artistically good and what's artistically bad—are insecure, uncreative elitists who need to use somebody else's art to validate their own limited worldview. It never matters what you like; what matters is why you like it. (Emphases added.)

It also doesn't matter if you have no interest in reading a book some critic thinks you "need" to read. You can be an intelligent, well-rounded person and still like Jurassic Park. (The same is not true if you are a fan of its sequel, The Lost Word, however -- that book truly sucked.)