The Philosophy of W.V. Quine *** 1/2

I coveted this book for many years before I finally found a copy on the shelf at Moe's Books in Berkeley. I love the approach of The Library of Living Philosophers: each volume includes a short autobiography from its subject, a sample of his or her handwriting, a complete bibliography, and numerous critical papers from peers, each with a response from the guest of honor.

Overall the book fell short of my lofty expectations for it, primarily because of the uneven quality of the commissioned papers. Even Quine's responses were mostly devoid of his trademark wit. I didn't gain as much new insight into Quine's work as I would have liked. On the other hand, I was proud to feel that I understood Quine's point of view better than some of the professionals.

For more details about the philosophy contained in this book, see the Quine page on our Web site.

Shusaku Endo, Scandal ***

Scandal is a later novel by the author of Silence. An aging Christian novelist hears rumors that he spends his free time in the seedy districts of Tokyo, and that there's a portrait hanging in an establishment there. His curiosity leads him to track down the portrait and his apparent doppelgänger, and ultimately leads to him question his own nature.

The story is well constructed, and it tackles Christian themes from a unique angle. It implicitly compares the artistic idea of finding beauty in ugliness with the religious idea that every sin contains the seeds of salvation. The main character struggles with the idea that he, and perhaps everyone, has a dark side.

The writing is very stiff and awkward. It that Endo or is it the translation? Either way, it detracts significantly from my enjoyment of the book.

Gaito Gazdanov, The Spectre of Alexander Wolf ***

During the Russian civil war, a young man gets separated from his unit and kills a soldier in the remote forest. The killing haunts his life. Many years later, he reads a short story which recounts the killing from the victim's point of view. He sets out to find the writer of the story.

The plot of The Spectre of Alexander Wolf involves a short story, and I think the book would have been stronger as a short story itself. The setup and the narrative are good, but the characters' musings about fate and guilt are too repetitive and the romance is not totally relevant.

Simon Singh, The Code Book *****

The Code Book is a history of encryption, from the simplest ciphers (Caesar shift) to public key cryptography. It moves step by step, explaining how each innovation addresses a weakness of the earlier system then showing how codebreakers found new patterns that enable them to decipher the more sophisticated cipher. It places all of this work in context through historical episodes where codes and ciphers played a central role, such as the trial of Mary Queen of Scots and the breaking of the Enigma during World War II.

The book has exactly the right balance between narrative, technical detail, and puzzles. It was fun to read about a new coding strategy that seemed impossible to break, then see how creative cryptanalysts manage to figure it out. There's a chapter about deciphering hieroglyphics and lost languages, which links cryptography to linguistics. I even love the size and weight of the book, the font, and the illustrations.

Entertaining and informative.

John Casey, An American Romance *** 1/2

The attributes that make An American Romance great are inseparable from the ones that make it insufferable. The first two parts of the book do an amazing job of showing how two very different people fall in love because their differences fit exactly what the other person needs, and the whole book is filled with insights about personalities and interpersonal relationships. However, the prose is painfully overwritten in exactly the way you might expect from a writer who spent several years at the Iowa Writer's Workshop. Nearly every paragraph starts with a concrete description but ends with abstract twaddle. From a randomly selected page (103):

She said, "That summer when Henry was in the hospital, I went to music camp. You asked me if I was happy. I think I decided then that happiness was a passive, and, therefore, vulnerable state, so I started to prefer excitement..."

All of the characters, even the non-intellectual Mac, articulate this kind of generalization every time they think or speak. The generalizations are sometimes insightful and sometimes baffling, but the density of them is exhausting.

In its later parts, An American Romance portrays Iowa in a way that seems loving but condescending (cf. Anya's film project Iowa Girl).

I love An American Romance for Anya and Mac and the theater converted from a barn, but the over-educated tone finally defeats me.