The Books I Read in January 2020
It’s been awhile since I have written one of these articles. In the spirit of me having some explaining to do, I am writing about five books in this one article.
Overarching themes: theory meets action, communication, reciprocity, conflict, systems, problem-solving, natural resources, negotiation
The five books:
- Enchantment by Guy Kawasaki
- Planet of Slums by Mike Davis
- V. by Thomas Pynchon (check out the lovingly compiled wiki of the author’s work)
- The Velvet Underground and Nico by Joe Harvard (part of the 33 ⅓ series)
- Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon
Blow by Blow
I finished these books in the chronological order shown above. Technically, I had started the first two in December 2019. Admittedly, I started Planet of Slums first.
Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions (2011)
This was certainly the most enjoyable reading experience. It’s a nonfiction book written by a Silicon Valley veteran and VC Guy Kawasaki. He was instrumental in the early days of Apple and many other influential tech and Bay Area-based companies. I was not expecting something like this book to be written in such a forthright and demonstrably caring manner. Essentially, Kawasaki is guiding the reader through the process of how an entrepreneur or salesperson can hone their message and messaging process. He is adamant that the goal for this kind of, let’s say ‘delivery’ which is essentially a sales pitch, is not to sell your services/product/time to another person. He described instead as finding a way to meet them on their terms, finding common ground, looking within yourself to see clearly a reason to do what you do and choose the people to reach out to afterwards. Thinking of both parties as better off for having worked together, I believe is the theme of the enchantment process.
I have found what I read and learned in this book readily applicable to my daily life, even as someone who has to send emails for any number of reasons, related to: school, work and business, family, personal interest, etc. If you are looking for a book that will stimulate or promote new thinking about mission, marketing, craft or scientific thinking, I would highly recommend picking this book up.
Planet of Slums (2005)
Written by a renowned urbanist, economic and environmental thinker with a bit of a doomsday streak. He has written another book called Ecology of Fear which I highly recommend to anyone after or if they decide to read this one. Both are similar in the vain of uncovering some aspect of what is driving environmental and social collapse, as told from the perspective of an economic geographer in the late ’90s to mid ’00s. Both link capitalism’s tendencies towards extraction and aggressive expansion as early indicators and retrospective warning signs of the ecological incongruence that was to follow.
In Planet of Slums, the destruction is formulated through the lens of a city. Consequently, the externalities of urbanization and density are explored, in particular their negative aspects. Ecology of Fear frames the long-story of LA’s urbanization as one that critically lacked hindsight, which is inconvenient not just from a design perspective, but has had sustained and often cases drastic consequences for the Greater Los Angeles Area. One example is the widespread development of urban sprawl, which has direct negative externalities like more time and distance between people and indirect negative impact from overdeveloped land and deforestation from years previous.
Planet of Slums pays particular attention to the urbanization of cities in Africa, South and Southeast Asia. The biggest takeaway I got from this book is that there is graft at multiple levels of government and international aid which keep cities in certain countries or regions in a critical deficit of resources. Also explored are shady business practices which result in unofficial, unsafe or illegal employment.
V. (1963)
I had completed a major milestone in my young adult life by finally finishing Pynchon’s third novel, Gravity’s Rainbow, which is considered not only his magnum opus but among the most significant novels published after WWII. Up to this point, my curiosity into Thomas Pynchon’s literature and his conscious double-life as a famously reclusive novelist with a magnitude of influence and prestige that not only precedes him, but which serves as a converse to the relative obscurity he enjoys in the public sphere, has been entirely legitimated by Mr. T Pynchon himself remaining a private, individual American citizen. And to this day, can’t you believe it?
This book was written between February 1960 and September 1962, while Pynchon was employed as a technical writer at Boeing in Seattle, Washington (my hometown of all places! Wouldn’t you know…). Pynchon graduated from Cornell University in 1959 with a degree in English Literature, having previously studied engineering physics before enlisting in the U.S. Navy, then returning to Ithaca, NY to complete his studies. It seems, from reading about the history of this book and Pynchon’s early career, that this book was inspired in large part by the time he spent in New York City from about June of 1959 through the end of that year — an endless summer, oh…if there ever was one written.
If we are going to remember Pynchon for any one thing, though, let it be for publishing V. the year that Please Please Me came out.
The Velvet Underground and Nico — 33 ⅓ (2004)
This installment of the 33 ⅓ series was written by Joe Incagnoli aka Joe Harvard, a Boston native who was a seminal influence in establishing the punk and indie rock in that city. He also laid the foundation for many later influence groups, including one of my favorite rock bands, Dinosaur Jr. Here is a clip of them live on KEXP in 2012 playing one of their early songs. This happened to be in promotion of a tour in where I saw them (Terminal 5). Saw Little Dragon there as well, both great shows.
If you would instead call the above paragraph one run-on sentence, you can start to imagine the kind of influences that can be made in cultural and artistic communities. In the case of the Velvet Underground, this influence has been persistent, ever-apparent and insidious since the release of this album in 1967. It was originally a sort of social experiment concocted by Andy Warhol, with his Factory as a conduit or an outlet for them to perform and eventually record their songs.
There are many stories that branch and later interconnect as the brisk, yet comprehensively delivered saga of this album’s genesis unfolds. There are a lot of interesting things to bring up from this story, and I would say the one that has struck me the most is the contention between the ethic and aesthetic if the band as a bit off-the-cuff or defiant in how they chose to present themselves, record and deliver their music — disinterest is a prevailing them from their cumulative actions as a band at this time (initial stages) of their development. Also, the fight for creative control — Lou Reed was basically unschooled as a musician, but gifted as a songwriter and formally schooled in poetry and English literature, resulting in an approach and stage presentation as a self-stylized auteur who is self-consciously performing rock while enjoying it also.
Mason & Dixon (1997)
This is a complex book that is also: very long, stylized in 18th century English, structured after concepts from mathematics and astronomy. It tells the story of the storied, above-mentioned pair of English surveyors Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon. Two things are striking about this as a Pynchon novel, it is told in an uncharacteristically linear manner and the story is presented as a buddy comedy. The melancholy and foreboding, older Mason has to contend with the younger Dixon’s exploits, lack of restraint, and poor grasp of traditional astronomy and surveying.
The pair are tasked by the Royal Astronomical Society on a series of astronomy-related tasks in different parts of the world. First, the Cape of Good Hope to record the Transit of Venus, then to St. Helena on a mission that it seen later as mostly a lost cause, then later to America, where the reader spends most of the book. Here, they see America up close and it is brawling, unadulterated and many times shameful beginnings. Irony is consistent throughout, as one should expect with something by Pynchon. It is used to great effect here, making images of human cruelty and subordination just clear enough for the reader to feel an impression. Many times, characters comment on the needlessness of such actions while they are progressing.
Unlike other books by Pynchon, I left reading this feeling not just learned but a little different also. I feel like here, the author was able to use irony, and invert the crudeness of its expectations into something that also functions as an educational tool. Somehow, ‘softening’ these images or making them more tolerable leads to a new way of interpreting this history of African slavery as well as its legacy.
