Invisible Rulers

With her book Invisible Rulers, Renee DiResta has effectively compiled much of what's wrong with society today in digestible form. The chief problem is the internet—particularly social media—which has run roughshod over reason, expertise, and the institutions that uphold them thanks to mobs of grassroots users and the influencers who steer them. Innuendos, rumors, urban legends, and wishful thinking can spread in a matter of minutes on social media. Fact-checked reality lags behind, as it requires some standard of rigor and mental effort. In sum, lies have a quick first step when pitted against fact. These lies, DiResta argues, culminate in “bespoke realities,” which have obliterated the “consensus reality” of the past—that is, the agreed-upon intersubjectivity that has allowed society to function in the pre-social media era. The concept of “bespoke realities” should be indispensable for popular discussions of social media going forward. DiResta also notes how phrases like “just asking questions” and “big if true,” often wielded by right-wingers and anti-vaxxers, can push complete nonsense into the mainstream. By the end of the book, DiResta is referring to the bespoke reality of the right wing as its “cinematic universe,” an eminently useful characterization of the constellation of untruths within which many American conservatives live. To her credit, DiResta keeps the discussion relatively apolitical, though she has no choice but to admit that the right indulges in far more instances of pushing non-factual narratives than does the left, especially when violence and intimidation is involved. Sadly, some of this violence and intimidation has been directed at DiResta herself on account of her studies of the internet, and she details these in the book's penultimate chapter.

Epochal though Invisible Rulers is, it still has some shortcomings. There are only a few mentions of epistemology over the course of the book, even though epistemic negligence is one of the major issues driving internet misinformation. Truth be told, the most toxic influencers are prone to religious-styled epistemologies, even if they are not expressly religious themselves. Influencers often deliver solutions that are all-consuming and spiritual in tone, and their devoted audience is seeking nothing less than deliverance. Being a part of this tide of likes and follows and reshares can shape reality, devotees believe, leading to material, moral, and spiritual rewards. It's lunacy. Relatedly, DiResta doesn't talk about the pervasiveness of rationalization among influencers and internet users, which provides a perpetual off-ramp for their irrational and uninformed behavior. 

And above and beyond all that, DiResta neglects to address the overall garbage culture of the USA. Yes, Americans spend too much time on the internet, but large sectors of the citizenry also spurn education on principle. Anti-intellectualism is on the rise. Intellectual indolence is the norm, and perhaps even a point of pride for some. Attention spans are infinitesimal. When people have no urge to read full paragraphs, how do we expect them not to venerate a platform such as X? Just as awful is the American hobbyhorse of distrusting authority seemingly by default. Uncovering esoteric knowledge (i.e. “what they're not telling you” in conspiracy-theory speak) is not only a preoccupation but a consumable product in itself. All told, many Americans feel they have a right to live in total, irresponsible fantasy—that is, a bespoke reality. While DiResta applies terminology to this, she might have considered why this kind of reality-sculpting is prevalent in America, rather than just attributing it to human nature.

Regardless of its reticence to dig deeper into epistemology and the decline of American culture, I give Invisible Rulers my highest recommendation. It's rare that even the thickest tome satisfactorily capsulizes a zeitgeist, but this one comes close to doing just that in a mere 400 pages. Thus, it's a must read for anyone who still cares about rationality, evidence, and sober analysis.

The Most Precious Substance on Earth

Shashi Bhat's The Most Precious Substance on Earth (McClelland & Stewart, 2021) is a picaresque coming-of-age novel that starts strongly. It chronicles the youth of a South Asian high school student from Halifax named Nina after she experiences a sexual assault. It then jumps ahead to her experience of graduate school in creative writing at Johns Hopkins (Bhat's alma mater), a section that is particularly well-crafted.

Here, Bhat's descriptions are at their most acute. Describing a graduate of the program and published author who still shows up at events, Bhat's narrator offers the following: “In profile, his hair is a tilde” (90). Then, when this famous ex-student encounters lower-ranking staff members, the narrator offers: “his eyes flit past them for someone more important to talk to” (90). In this way, Bhat encapsulates the privileged graduate student, and how it can feel to be around these sorts of people when you are not so privileged and well-connected.

With the subsequent chapters, which are less plot-driven and read more like vignettes from the narrator's life, the observations continue, but they become less insightful and more embittered. While these sorts of observations are at first familiar in literary and Seinfeld-ian terms, as the book lurches along they feel like more of a crutch. Soon, it seems as if inadequacy is the narrator's singular approach to the world. Consider some of the following examples:

After graduate school, Nina gets a job teaching high school, and in order to develop professionally, she records herself teaching. She reacts as follows “...as soon as I saw my ogre face, and my Humpty Dumpty Body, and the stretch marks on my upper arms, and my shoulders rounded like those of a cartoon vulture, I turned the video off” (155-156). The level of self-loathing is almost parodic. Later, while giving an extemporaneous speech at a Toastmasters meeting, Nina verbalizes the following to the group: “'I'm trying to remember high school Physics. But all I remember is failing'” (158). By the later stages of the book, depressive sledgehammers like these swing freely on virtually every page—sometimes there are several in short succession. And so, as the book crawls on, this style of observation makes the experience seem like you are reading not so much a novel but rather a book-length defense mechanism. Bhat's narrator manages to become self-deprecating beyond tolerable literary levels, to the point of being self-eviscerating.

This is most salient in her explorations of relationships. Of a boyfriend Nina is seeing but apparently not really into, she notes that “He is frustratingly good at sex” (199). Later, with respect to dating, she claims that “coffee dates might as well be job interviews—except you must marry the interviewer and have sex with him for the rest of your life” (224). Your present reviewer will be the first to criticize the innumerable faults of marriage, but this quip makes for a depressingly narrow vision of that institution. These sorts of wisecracks become less witty and more depressing as the book continues. At one point, Nina goes on a date with a doctor who is somewhat eager to get physical down by Halifax's waterfront. In the aftermath, she says “For weeks after, I search The Coast for news of murders” (226).

At times, it seems like it's not all doom and gloom for Nina. Soon enough, she meets a guy she describes as “the kindest person I've ever met” (231). The guy wants to commit, so much so that he deactivates his online dating profile. This prompts the following response from Nina: “I deactivate my account, too. I picture marrying him under strands of twinkle lights and white mayflowers on the roof of the Seaport Market. I know my parents would like him. But I put off answering his latest message. It goes unanswered, and so goes the next. I ghost him. I'm a ghost” (232). By this point, the reader is left to wonder if this is not just the stream-of-consciousness of someone who is unhappy, but rather that of someone who cannot be happy. The Most Precious Substance on Earth is inadequacy porn.

But the book ends strongly. In the last vignette, the narrator starts a blog and soon finds that she has a troll. Rather than ignoring him, she actually tracks him down and schedules a meet-up. This may seem improbable and heretofore unforeseeable in the narrative, but it actually makes for a very fitting conclusion. After all, the narrator has effectively been trolling herself for the entirety of the book, and now she gets to meet a living, breathing (and rather pathetic) internet troll. Finally, Nina shows some nerve and stands up for herself like an adult. Still, it's not enough to convince this reader that Nina is anything approaching a well-adjusted grown-up. The Most Precious Substance on Earth is almost like a coming-of-age novel where the principal character doesn't actually come of age. Perhaps this marks the toll of Nina's sexual assault. The reader, sort of like the narrator, ends up waiting for something to happen to mark some kind of progress, but both end up just waiting.

A few memorable vignettes might not be enough for the majority of readers. All told, The Most Precious Substance on Earth seems to suggest that a life dedicated to language and storytelling is inherently depressing and unfulfilling and incomplete. But does it have to be? I'd recommend reading Bhat's novel to answer that question for yourself. The book serves as a great litmus test for your tolerance of how many maimed, melancholy thoughts you can stomach in one reading session.  

The Cult of Trump

True to its title, Stephen Hassan's 2019 book The Cult of Trump attempts to establish that Donald Trump has effectively conducted himself like a cult leader, especially during his presidential campaign and reign. While the hallmarks of cult behavior can be identified in many of Trump's methods (repetitive speaking, good vs. evil narratives, malignant narcissism) and among his followers (lack of critical thinking, trance-like states at rallies, etc.), it's hard to be completely convinced that Trump's political movement was and is tantamount to a cult like that of Scientology or the Unification Church (the latter of which Hassan defected from). At most, Trump's movement is cultish. That said, this book should not be considered a failure. In fact, its perspective is prescient. In the later stages of the book, Hassan makes reference to Jim Jones and the mass suicide at Jonestown. Very judiciously, he writes that "[i]t may seem to be a leap to mention Jonestown when writing about the cult of Trump." Perhaps it did in 2019, but since the publication of this book, we have seen the January 6th riots and the assault on the Capitol. Hassan basically predicts the final months of the Trump presidency in the second-last paragraph of the book: "If Trump runs again and is not reelected in 2020, he might claim that the election was rigged. Who knows what he might call on his followers to do in that case?" (233-234). So while Hassan may not have been entirely convincing in his argument for there being a “Cult of Trump,” he can at least be praised for his foresight.

The House of Daniel

The House of Daniel must be the product of authorial autism, senility or some kind of neurological insult, if not all of the above. In a novel that manages to be both rigidly formulaic and wildly picaresque, bestselling speculative fiction senior statesman Harry Turtledove doesn't just turn his attention to baseball, but rather fixates obsessively upon it. 

The House of Daniel follows a small-town roustabout named Jack "Snake" Spivey as he grabs a spot on a travelling team of bearded ballplayers (based on the real-life "House of David" of yore), all in an effort to evade an unsavory employer. Spivey goes from town to town with the team, seeing large swaths of the American southwest and Pacific coast along the way. In literally every town the House of Daniel plays in, our narrator Spivey (or, better yet, our author Turtledove) provides the same constellation of details about the stop: the layout of the town, the dimensions of the ballpark and its seating capacity, and the uniforms the home team wears. This culminates in about a page or two of description covering the gameplay, which frequently involves the eventual use of a "brushback" pitch and some subsequent hostilities, if not an all-out brawl. After virtually every game, the opposing team's manager either approaches or is approached by the House of Daniel's player-manager and, with Spivey always in earshot, makes a comment to the effect of "you really beat our boys" or "our boys really beat you." 

Dozens of descriptions following this precise template make up the bulk of the book. It's almost as if an aging Turtledove was contractually obligated to provide a novel-length composition, and so he leaned on this formula to pound out the pages. It makes for monumentally uninspired writing and (unintentionally) comically repetitive reading as Turtledove's mind loops back to the same observations and incidents from town to town. Perhaps it is all intended as a commentary on the repetitive life of a Depression-era barnstorming ballplayer. 

But this is not your granddaddy's Depression-era, as it also features, as per standard Turtledove, a robust population of zombies, vampires, and other fantastical creatures, all of which have been more or less integrated into American society. These beings don't have much bearing on the plot, with the exception being a zombie-related incident that happens about 220 pages in and diverts the team bus—really the only juncture in the book that breaks from the template detailed above. Sometimes these creatures enable apparent attempts at comic relief. In the Pacific Northwest, for instance, the main character meets a bigfoot, and rattles off the following observation: "In spite of the long hair all over, that bigfoot was definitely he. His feet weren't the only thing big about him." Beyond coruscating insights of this sort, the monsters serve no purpose; their inclusion may very well have been contractually obligated so as to shoehorn this baseball novel into the genre most accustomed for Turtledove's devotees. 

It strikes this reviewer that the monsters and crypto-hominids might have been able to serve as a point of departure for commenting on racial strife in past and present-day America—including the outright racism of the main character early on in the book—but Turtledove shows no interest in doing this. He just wants to tell you about ballparks and brushbacks with monsters in the backdrop, over and over  and over again. Let's hope that The House of Daniel was compelled by commercial concerns and not cognitive degeneration. In either case, the resultant composition makes for a terrible read.

Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom

A Muṭiyēttu performer 

Jeffrey Kripal's 2001 book Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom: Eroticism and Reflexivity in the Study of Mysticism is both the best and worst kind of academic publication. The book is great because, as usual, Kripal blends a host of sophisticated analytical frameworks ranging from Lacanian psychoanalysis to Robert Forman's insights on pure consciousness events, all for purposes of unpacking the writings and lives of famous mystic-scholars and scholar-mystics ranging from the obvious (Evelyn Underhill) to the oddball (Zoroastrian scholar R.C. Zaehner). The book is somewhat trying, however, because Kripal intersperses the analyses with his own "mystical" experiences, which encompass his personal interfacings with religion, sexuality, and pop culture. Given these not-infrequent autobiographical digressions, the book is likely to turn off traditional scholars, and certainly this is how Roads of Excess has been perceived in the academic community since its release. Nevertheless, these personal reflections provide some of the most lucid, original, and intriguing parts of the book. In one curious insight, Kripal compares the eyes of the Amazing Spiderman to those of the pan-Indian goddess Kālī. This comparison is unprecedented, uncouth, and likely offensive to a substantial proportion of South Asia scholars (it not to Kālī worshippers). But this insight is undeniably edifying, as it raises important questions about archetypes, as well as the parallels between pop culture and folk religion. (Also, Kripal's comparison makes me feel less guilty about my own nagging impression that the burly male actors playing the goddess Bhagavati in performances of muṭiyēttu in Kerala, in their frenzied transvestism, are reminiscent of Leatherface from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.) It's just unfortunate that more scholars of religion haven't been able to identify these merits in Kripal's work. Many have written off Kripal as a purveyor of navel-gazing drivel. It's too bad, for a host of Kripal's unprecedently honest intuitions and impressions remain as-of-yet unrecognized by his field. As a result, Kripal has drifted more and more toward studies of pop culture studies and, more damningly, the paranormal, even penning some popular non-fiction in the process. (See, for instance, his book with notorious hack-cum-crank Whitley Streiber.) Kripal's career, then, has been marked by the same kind of ambivalence as Roads of Excess itself: as Kripal gets a bigger audience, which is much deserved, he does it as the expense of scholarly rigor and respect. Perhaps Kripal was and is bigger than academia. Regardless of the merits of his newer works, Roads of Excess remains an enduring classic almost twenty years after its publication. Maybe it will take another twenty years for scholars to catch on and catch up. I've heard through the grapevine that Kripal commits himself to write three hours every morning without exception. I would advise him to continue with this regimen, as his own literary excesses might eventually help more mainline scholars of religion to wise up.

Black Cloud

The first time I read Juliet Escoria's Black Cloud was just after its release in 2014. At first blush, I was dazzled by Escoria's punky, sexy goth-girl aura. It was as if a Suicide Girl had written a novel(la). Certainly, Escoria's online profile, which featured the author splayed in all manner of suggestive poses, contributed to this vibe. Even more appealing was Escoria's sparse prose tinctured with an almost exultant hurt, not to mention the ease with which she could intersperse disaffected sex scenes in her narratives. Straddling New York and L.A. cityscapes, she conjured (for me, at least) the portrait of a young woman enigmatically capering in bob-cuts and chokers between cosmopolitan mis-en-scenes. She was, in 2014, the kind of girl I wanted to connect with in mutual ennui, and in my first read-through, I felt as if this was happening. In short, Juliet Escoria was a fantasy.

The second time I read Black Cloud by Juliet Escoria (that is, Juliet Scum, for non-Spanish speakers) was just last week. This time around, I saw the book more clearly for what it is: the stark, uncompromising account of an addict and her personal undoing(s). It is not sexy at all. Why would we expect it to be? On the contrary, Black Cloud catalogues a deep lack of fulfillment with relationships on levels sexual, emotional, and existential. It is about being jerked around by fellow addicts, finding only bottomless hollows in boyfriends, girlfriends, family, and everyone in between. "Connecting" with anyone is, as per Escoria's work, all but impossible; sex, drugs and, hell, even wholesome pursuits all lead to dead-ends. 

Juliet Escoria is no fantasy. Her capacity for tracing the emptiness of addiction (and the wider world outside it) is about as real as it gets. Hopefully other readers will get that on their first read-through. I suppose my recent re-reading is inflected with post-#MeToo sensibilities. More palpably, I think it indexes my own growth--or my own giving up--and the solace that comes with it. I don't know if Juliet Escoria has grown up or given up or what, but I hope she's found some kind of solace, too.

What Philosophy Can Do

The late Gary Gutting used to be the big swinging dick of matters ontological and epistemic. I remember seeing him stand toe-to-toe with Basil van Fraassen, constructive empiricist extraordinaire, in an epic heavyweight dust-up in the pages of Monist back in '82. With his 2015 book What Philosophy Can Do, Gutting has attempted to go mainstream. He argues that philosophy can be useful in, say, potentially polarized political debates, as it can identify the convictions behind (and the limitations within) any given liberal or conservative position. This all smacks of the optimism of the pre-post-Truth era, and that seems to be the dustbin to which Gutting's book has been consigned. Just the other day, I saw more than a few copies marked down to $2 at my local paper peddler. Apparently, philosophy can't do much for anyone anymore. Thorough, well-researched, and well-considered arguments don't fly in this day and age of Trump and trigger-warnings. Nice try, Mr. Gutting, but everybody just goes with their gut now. If psychiatric drugs can't help these people, do you think philosophy has any hope? May peace be upon you, because we certainly won't have it here on earth.

The Writer's Guide to Weapons

If you’re going to be writing any story set in the United States, you’re going to need a working knowledge of a variety of firearms. That’s where Benjamin Sobieck’s Writer’s Guide to Weapons comes in. Sobieck writes with an obvious passion for firing guns and neutralizing targets, taking aim at writers who write poorly about weapons. He shoots down a lot of misconceptions in the process. Did you think the AR in AR-15 stands for “Assault Rifle”? Nope. It doesn’t stand for “Alt-Right”, either. It means Armalite, you ignoramus. In the presence of a gun nut, a faux pas of this magnitude could prove fatal, and Sobieck’s book makes sure you won’t end up a target of an NRA lifer’s ire. Sure, the skeptical may be saying, “hey, gun nuts don’t actually read.” True though that may be, do you want to be the writer who pisses them off when and if they learn how? In the meantime, reading The Writer's Guide to Weapons can at the very least help when you’re passing through rural areas—now you just might have an easier time making small-talk with sons of the soil.

Game Over

Game Over by journalists Bill Moushey and Bob Dvorchak provides a serviceable chronicle of linebacker coach-cum-pedophile Jerry Sandusky’s abuse of adolescent boys, and the listless efforts of Penn State higher-ups—none higher than college coaching legend Joe Paterno (right)—to put a stop to it. While the book is dated, going to print just before legal proceedings had begun against Sandusky, and also prone to repeating itself vis-à-vis some of the developments, it is still a worthwhile read. Its value endures on the grounds that the book is a repository of Sandusky-related public discourses that, quite frankly, reverberate with perversion, and affirm the man’s guiltiness in an intuitive way that transcends the mere verdict put forward by a jury of his peers.

Consider these examples, all of which are compiled throughout the course of Game Over. Early on, there is a quote from a former Penn State linebacker Gary Gray, who describes Sandusky as “always touchy feely” (p. 27). When Sandusky himself retired abruptly and unceremoniously in 1999, he issued a statement about how he wanted to dedicate more time to the Second Mile, the charitable organization through which Sandusky harvested many of his victims: “As the organization has grown,” he explained, “the demands for my hands-on involvement have increased dramatically” (p. 30). Upon the news of Sandusky’s retirement, Penn State athletic director Tim Curley, who would later plead guilty to child endangerment charges for failing to report the abuses, offered the following: “His achievement as a human being is splendidly demonstrated by the thousands of youngsters he touches annually through the Second Mile” (p. 31). A couple years after stepping aside, Sandusky would put out his autobiography, ghost-written by Kip Richeal and published via a vanity press. Its title, you ask? Touched: The Jerry Sandusky Story.

You don’t need a Ph.D. in discourse analysis to read between the lines here. With the emphasis on “touching” in descriptions provided of and by Sandusky, how could anyone say they were “surprised” at the allegations? It seems like everyone who spoke of Sandusky knew on some unconscious level (verging on the surface consciousness) that the man was a pervert. Everything that Sandusky was involved with (I don’t want to say “had a hand in”) became steeped in perversion via the very fabric of the words that characterized his activities. 

Even when Sandusky’s attorney, Joseph Amendola, publicly went on the defensive in front of the media, the all-pervading perversity of his client managed to seep into the lawyer’s words. Amendola was incredulous that so many onlookers believed that Penn State higher-ups like Tim Curley would not, as men of immense character and responsibility, take seriously alleged child abuse and carry it forward to law enforcement. As such, he issued a challenge: “If you believe that, I suggest you dial 1-800-REALITY.” That number, the authors of Game Over inform us matter-of-factly, was at the time a “phone service offering gay and bisexual pornography” (p. 145).

The quintessential telos of Jerry Sandusky, then, is salacious sodomy.* Once again, we see how the perverse and pornographic permeates the entire sphere of Sandusky. Sandusky’s substrate is grimy, illicit sex. So deep is the level of synchronicity between Sandusky and indiscriminate, amoral sexuality that the entire thought-universe generated around him inevitably thrums and vibrates with lasciviousness. And for that reason, I’m going to end this attempt at reviewing this book, before Sandusky’s inhering stain seeps into me now inexorably on account of having tried myself to frame the man in words and paragraphs. In fact, Sandusky’s monstrous Midas touch, where everything he handled turned savagely and unlawfully sodomic, might be reason enough not to get your hands on a copy of Moushey and Dvorchak’s book.

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*Now, I want to be clear here that I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with gay sex. However, commodified, commercialized sex of any orientation is, I think we would all agree, at least a bit seedy. So what I’m saying here (following from Moushey and Dvorchak) is that there is something profoundly off when the lawyer representing an outwardly Christian man like Sandusky unintentionally references gay phone sex. The synchronicities are just too profound.

Epistemology Bloody Epistemology

Charles Norwood's Epistemology Bloody Epistemology is a novel(la) beyond comparison. Its body consists of six interconnected stories which trace the activities of philosophy students at a fictional university wherein preferences for different schools of thought have essentially degraded into gang affiliations. What follows is pure mayhem interspersed with thoughtful philosophical debate—imagine, if you will, that the script for Mad Max had been written by Bertrand Russell. The result is not always for the faint-of-heart, as the brutality gradually escalates throughout the piece, allowing for some truly demented—but unfailingly thought-provoking—scenes of hyperbolic carnage. Norwood delivers the narrative(s) in accessible prose, which occasionally proves artful, certainly surpassing that of your average e-book. And while Norwood may not solve the perennial debates of philosophy, he certainly lampoons the folly of embodying any given perspective in said debates too righteously. The "solipsist community" section is especially brilliant, reminiscent of something in a David Foster Wallace novel, and probably warrants a purchase for anyone who fancies extended literary elaborations of philosophical thought experiments. A few minor peccadilloes had this assessor considering a four-star review rather than a five. Norwood employs, for instance, more than a few overly conventional similes. Additionally, some passages are a bit didactic, but that may actually be the book's beauty. Altogether, the various interwoven stories converge upon something that resembles a structuring narrative for western philosophy as a whole, and the grisly scenes may even prove to be a useful mnemonic device for helping make the rudiments of various schools of thought stick. Thus, the book is of particular interest for students of philosophy, both undergraduate and graduate. Given the originality of the content, I am left with little choice but to give it my highest recommendation. EBE is well worth the low cover price, and perhaps even the psychological toll it may take on the reader.