Álvaro Enrigue, You Dreamed of Empires **** 1/2

You Dreamed of Empires is a historical novel about the day in 1519 when Hernán Cortés arrived at Tenochtitlán and met Moctezuma. It tells the story from the point of view of several characters both Spanish and Aztecan, each one of them unsure about whether things are going well or very, very badly. Moctezuma welcomed the Spaniards into the city: does he consider them honored guests or is he planning an ambush? Is he a brilliant strategist or is he losing his touch?

Enrigue has an entertaining writing style that mixes historical detail with modern-seeming characters. He loves to deploy Nahuatl words for their interesting sound. The story often has a hallucinatory feel, which is appropriate given Moctezuma's penchant for mushrooms.

I loved everything about the book until the later sections where postmodernist trickery starts to intrude. I wasn't entirely satisfied with the conclusion, which (spoiler alert) is an Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge-type situation except that all of subsequent history, up to an including my reading of the novel, is part of the reverie.

Andy Clark, The Experience Machine ** 1/2

The philosopher and cognitive scientist Andy Clark argues that our minds are best understood as generative prediction models and that our subjective experience derives from the interface between the models' predictions and the incoming sensory signal. We use our senses to validate our expectations, and use "prediction errors" (i.e. mismatch with actual sensory signal) to train our model to make better predictions.

I wholeheartedly agree that we impose our understanding of the world onto the raw sensory data, and that indeed there is no such thing as raw sensory data "untouched by our own expectations." I agree with most of Clark's conclusions, but I find his arguments and conceptualizations hand-wavy. I was particularly unconvinced by his explanation regarding "action as self-fulfilling prediction."

Clark (or his publisher) tries to present this theory as being revolutionary "For as long as we've studied human cognition, we've believed that our senses give us direct access to the world." Really? I don't think we've believed that since the 18th century. He himself cites earlier authorities that go back at least as far as the mid-19th century. Clark's thesis is just an au courant version of the long-standing tendency to understand the mind in terms of the latest technological advances, in this case generative AI modeling.

To me, the most intriguing innovation in Clark's conception is his treatment of conscious attention as comparable to modeling precision.

By increasing or decreasing these "precision-weightings," the impact of certain predictions or of certain bits of sensory evidence can be amplified or dampened. ... What we informally think of as "attention" is implemented in these systems by mechanisms that alter these precision-weightings.

Samantha Harvey, Orbital *** 1/2

Orbital describes a day in the life of six (fictional) astronauts on the International Space Station. They observe the Earth as they circle over it sixteen times—passing from night to day every ninety minutes or so—and ponder their place in the universe.

Many reviewers of the Booker Prize-winning Orbital describe it as "meditative," which turns out to mean that it is the literary equivalent of the music they play when you're getting a massage. It favors atmosphere over development, incorporates images of nature, and encourages contemplation. Like guided meditation, the book is structured around a recurring rhythm (breath, orbits) and makes connections between mundane activities and abstract cosmic questions. 

Dan Charnas, Dilla Time **** 1/2

Dilla Time is the third book I've read in as many months about musical artists whose work I am largely unfamiliar with (following Time's Echo and Cocaine and Rhinestones). The artist in this case is J Dilla, "the hip-hop producer who reinvented rhythm" as the subtitle has it. The great thing about all of these books is that they provide vivid accounts of the contexts in which the artists worked and musicological analysis of their innovations.

J Dilla's most influential innovation was the creation of a new lurching way of keeping time, more complex and "sloppier" than swing time. He used a variety of techniques on drum machine/sequencers to achieve rhythmic friction; in particular, he subtly shifted the timing of the various drum components (snare, kick drum, hi hat) so that some feel rushed while others feel slow. His production technique created an entire genre of hip-hop in the 1990s and early 2000s, comprising such artists as A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, D'Angelo, Erykah Badu, and The Roots.

Charnas does a nice job of explaining Dilla's approach and treating it as an important musical advance. He pays less attention to Dilla's unique way of handling harmony and melody, perhaps because it would take away from his main thesis. 

Charnas' previous book was about the business of hip-hop, so it's not surprising that he clearly navigates the maze of record labels, rights owners, and collaborations. After Dilla's death (at 32 from a rare blood disease) there was a battle over his estate, with different parties having legal authority, moral authority, and artistic authority over his legacy. Charnas presents the messy details even-handedly.

The book gave me enjoyable insights into musical artistry, the music business, the cultural milieu, and how they all impact each other. It reinforced my prejudice that hip-hop was the most innovative form of music over the turn of the century, with its artists exploring advanced techniques like jazz musicians do.

Kaveh Akbar, Martyr! ***

Martyr! is a hard book to describe. Its tone is that of an earnest novel of ideas, despite the exclamation point in the title implying comedy. Its main character is Cyrus Shams, a young Iranian American struggling to overcome addiction and make his life and/or his death matter. However, many chapters are written from other characters' points of view, especially those of his parents who both died apparently meaningless deaths. The plot is minimal, relies on a few coincidences, and seems almost beside the point. Fascinating thoughts appear at regular intervals, but they fail to add up to a clear conclusion.

When people think about traveling to the past, they do it with this wild sense of self-importance. Like, 'gosh, I better not step on that flower or my grandfather will never be born.' But in the present we mow our lawns and poison ants and skip parties and miss birthdays all the time. We never think about the effects of that stuff. Nobody thinks of now as the future past.

 

David Wallace, Philosophy of Physics ***

Philosophy of Physics is part of Oxford University Press' Very Short Introduction series. It identifies the metaphysical mysteries that arise when we try to understand modern physics, from relativity to quantum mechanics. What is the nature of space and time? How do we interpret probability? What the hell is happening with quantum mechanics?

I like to ponder these mind-benders from time to time. The unintelligibility of the undeniably successful mathematics must mean that our conceptual understanding has gone wrong somewhere, right? But where?

Wallace does a decent job of demonstrating the seeming paradoxes. However, I find the enigmas compelling enough that I want a longer introduction.

Earl Swift, Chesapeake Requiem *****

Chesapeake Requiem is an intimate portrait of the small crab-fishing community of Tangier Island, located in Chesapeake Bay. Their way of life is vanishing both literally and figuratively: every year the Bay washes away more of the island, and every generation loses more of its people to the mainland. The journalist Earl Swift lived on the island for a year. He describes the history of the island, both natural and cultural, the lifestyle of the residents, and the social questions raised by its not-so-slow erosion. 

I enjoyed the book for its detailed anthropological depiction of the day-to-day life and work of the islanders, and for the mostly subtle way it approached larger issues. Swift sticks closely to the lived experience of the people on the island, rarely making explicit the abstract ethical and political principles involved. For example, he explains how the watermen understand the causes of land loss rather than emphasizing their disbelief in climate change and sea-level rise. Ultimately, it doesn't matter what the causes are, what matters is the most effective way to combat the problem. The specifics of Tangier's situation are unique, but similar forces are at work undermining traditional communities around the world.

Swift's year on the island was 2016 to 2017, which means he was on hand when islanders voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump in his first election. Explicitly political discussions appear only in the final few chapters, but the sources of the residents' conservative views emerge clearly from their perspective on quotidian topics such as fishing licenses. 

The fundamental question at the heart of the story is how or whether to preserve the island and its community. How do we as a society decide what natural and social resources are worth saving? There are just over 400 people living on Tangier Island. Dropping enrollment at the school is as much a threat to their community as the shrinking land. Which is the more important reason to protect the island: the crab fishery or its position on the flyway for migrating birds?