Americanah - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2013)

This is Book #2 after White Teeth on my reading list to counteract the overwhelming base of white male authors that comprise the Flying Houses review archive.  Actually, if you look back at the past 3 years, it's not so bad, but no further excuses.  A lot of people consider me "well-read," but I think that term is misleading.  I've read a fair number of books, but really not that many (I'm sure many critics that review books as their job have tackled 5-6 times my number), and really not that many from different cultural backgrounds.  Americanah was time well spent.

Have I read anything close to Americanah?  A long time ago, before I started Flying Houses, I picked up What is the What by Dave Eggers and got maybe halfway through it before finding it too tedious and painful.  It's a bit of a different book, because it's specifically about one of the Lost Boys of Sudan, his struggles in Africa, and his struggles as an immigrant in the U.S.  Eggers interviewed him extensively and transmuted the experience into literature.  Still technically a white male author though!

Americanah is quite different, and does not concern itself as greatly with human rights atrocities.  Rather, this is a book about being an African in America, and then being an American in Africa.  There are so many people that would be able to identify with this book, it's not even funny.  Because Adichie does not restrict herself to the female perspective.  True, it is a female perspective in America (and only a male perspective in England), but the alternating "Parts" are both a strength and a weakness of the novel.  Let me be clear: I am trying to be more picky about what I call the Best Books reviewed on Flying Houses, and many times, I felt this belonged there.  Maybe after I finish this review, I'll put it there.  But on my "scale," I would say it's better than White Teeth, definitely, and on par with The Goldfinch (which did not quite make the list).

The plot concerns Ifemulu.  Every single time I read her name, I wondered if the voice in my head was mispronouncing it.  Here is the way I heard it in my head: Eef-ay-moo-loo.  Ifemulu is a young girl growing up in Nigeria, who meets a young man, Obinze, at school, high school I guess.  They go to college together for a while, but then separate, as she decides to move to the U.S., as her aunt has done to become a doctor.  Ifemulu and Obinze are definitely an "item," and all of their friends pretty much presume that they will get married and be together forever, but this emigration effectively destroys their romance.

Though it is certainly about a different era, this book does have more than its share of similarities to Brooklyn.  I just realized that now.  I prefer Americanah because it's about our present age.  Actually, on the morning of the election last week, I was reading the section about the 2008 Presidential Election, and how Ifemulu liked Hillary Clinton a lot, but just had to support Obama.  Obama is a major figure in this book.  This book contains a recommendation for Dreams from my Father, which I'm sorry to say I haven't read.  Let me briefly give a shout-out to President Obama as one of the finest we have had.  My only complaint is the Affordable Care Act.  His heart was definitely in the right place with it, but these 2017 premiums off the Exchange are off-the-charts high.  Also the interest rates on my student loans are way too high.  Back to the book...

After Ifemulu arrives in America and enrolls at a college in Philadelphia, she has serious struggles with money.  She finds her footing after being hired as a nanny to an affluent family.  Through them she meets Curt, a cousin of the family, who falls in love with her and asks her to move to Baltimore with him, where he pulls some strings and helps her get a job in public relations.  Then one night she randomly hooks up with another dude in their apartment building, and Curt dumps her.  Shortly after this, she starts her own blog, Raceteenth or Curious Observations by a Non-American Black on the Subject of Blackness in America.

I think it is fair to say that we are in the midst of a civil rights renaissance, an acknowledgement that a guarantee of equal rights (i.e. equal treatment and equal opportunity) is little more than a rhetorical facade.  And so Americanah is a book that came at the perfect time.  Many of the chapters in this book end with a post from the blog.  (I am also having a sort of wonderful feeling of irony by reviewing a book about a blogger.) Almost all of the posts are highly-quotable, and written in a very different tone from that of the novel.  The most epic one is not at the end of a chapter, but read aloud by a friend at a dinner party, over pages 403 to 406.  I'll excerpt the end of it:

"Finally, don't put on a Let's Be Fair tone and say 'But black people are racist too.' Because of course we're all prejudiced (I can't even stand some of my blood relatives, grasping, selfish folks), but racism is about the power of a group and in America it's white folks who have that power.  How?  Well, white folks don't get treated like shit in upper-class African-American communities and white folks don't get denied bank loans or mortgages precisely because they are white and black juries don't give white criminals worse sentences than black criminals for the same crime and black police officers don't stop white folk for driving while white and black companies don't choose not to hire somebody because their name sounds white and black teachers don't tell white kids they're not smart enough to be doctors and black politicians don't try some tricks to reduce the voting power of white folks through gerrymandering and advertising agencies don't say they can't use white models to advertise glamorous products because they are not considered 'aspirational' by the 'mainstream.'
So after this listing of don'ts, what's the do?  I'm not sure.  Try listening, maybe.  Hear what is being said.  And remember that it's not about you.  American Blacks are not telling you that you are to blame.  They are just telling you what is.  If you don't understand, ask questions.  If you're uncomfortable about asking questions, say you are uncomfortable about asking questions and then ask anyway.  It's easy to tell when a question is coming from a good place.  Then listen some more.  Sometimes people just want to feel heard.  Here's to possibilities of friendship and connection and understanding." (405-406)

While this is definitely Ifemulu's book, Obinze is the other main character.  I would say 66% of this is Ifemulu and 33% is Obinze.  At first I thought the alternating book-by-book perspective was a weakness, but I grew to appreciate Adichie's ability to develop a male counterpart.  His experience in London, detailed in Part 3 of the novel, is one of its highlights.

And generally, the romance between Ifemulu and Obinze is the true highlight.  It exemplifies the cliche phrase "achingly beautiful."  There have been few other novels where I have rooted more for its characters to end up together.

I don't mean to get all gushy here, but I hope you've experienced the phenomenon of reading a book that seems eerily connected to your present situation, which then provides an extra layer of appreciation and meaning.  It happened for me with Americanah, dealing with a frayed, broken and resuscitated relationship, and an election that inspired more dialogue (or monologues) on racism than any other I've seen in my lifetime.

Did this book change the way I thought?  Not really.  Did it open up my mind to the experiences of others in a different position than me?  Sure.  Most importantly, was it entertaining?  Yes.

And that is why I think it is better than White Teeth.  White Teeth almost seemed to be going out of its way to be clever or comic in sometimes absurd situations.  Americanah simply rolls through a story with incredibly well-developed characters whose adventures are amusing, more often than not.  Of course when the "adventures" are more like "travails," the book remains gripping.

I feel like this is a hard book to know where to start and stop to avoid spoilers.  I will note that its structure is quite unique, and vaguely similar to what I did in my third book in that it uses a hair cut (really a hair-braiding) as a framing mechanism.  Ifemulu is getting her hair braided in New Jersey, having recently decided to quit blogging, to leave Princeton and to return to Lagos in Nigeria.  I don't really remember why she does this, but I guess underneath it all, she still subconsciously wants to be with Obinze.  In any case, the novel primarily occurs in a series of flashbacks and returns to the present in the hair salon, before a traumatic event involving Ifemulu's younger cousin, Dike, temporarily disrupts her plans (the NY Times review remarks that, "Early on, a horrific event leaves Ifemulu reeling, and years later, when she returns to Nigeria, she's still haunted by it."  I don't think this is the same traumatic event and I can only assume this is a reference to the soccer coach episode, but maybe my memory is hazy.  Was it something else?  Is that really as horrific as what happens with Dike?).

That is something I will not spoil, but I would like to say it was validating to find that Dike is an actual name, when I was given much grief over using "Dike96" as a screen-name for AOL back in 1996, probably because my youngest sister called me something like that as a baby (before she could pronounce my first name).  Moving on...

I wish Flying Houses were as popular as Raceteenth.  I find the notion that Ifemulu would become quasi-rich-and-famous from a vociferous blog on race a bit far-fetched, but then again the blog is portrayed as a "safe space" where millions of disenfranchised people of color come to share their grievances and make one another stronger.  As a white male who is responsible for his own lack of opportunities in life, I can't really fathom "starting a blog" about anything except books, and the entertainment industry in general, and I've written before about how unpopular Flying Houses is and I don't have any illusions that one day people are going to wake up and realize that it carries some of the best reviews on the internet.  Absolutely not; this is not the New York Times and I am the only editor.  I'm still only at $33 earned after 8.5 years of this, payment threshold at $100.  Hopefully one day somebody will give me a MacArthur Genius Grant because they feel bad for me and realize that I've made a valuable contribution to the field of literary criticism.  More likely is that I will just die and be forgotten and my legacy will be a bunch of crappy status postings on Facebook that people will only notice for a few days or weeks after my death.  It's depressing as hell but I guess that is why I am starting to believe in reincarnation, as the only "fair" result of existence.

Wow that paragraph went dark places!  But the blog is an important element of this book because it speaks to the issue of "how to make a living." Ifemulu is invited to give "diversity talks" after her blog gains traction; she doesn't make all of her money off AdSense.  She also receives large donations from an anonymous supporter, so maybe I should set up some kind of funding portal...

It's quite difficult for me to think of anything else to say about Americanah.  It's pretty much everything you could ask for in a novel, but it's quite sad to read about the 2008 election:

"On television, Barack Obama and Michelle Obama and their two young daughters were walking onto a stage.  They were carried by the wind, bathed in incandescent light, victorious an smiling.
'Young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled, Americans have sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of red states and blue states.  We have been and always will be the United States of America.'
Barack Obama's voice rose and fell, his face solemn, and around him the large and resplendent crowd of the hopeful.  Ifemulu watched, mesmerized.  And there was, at that moment, nothing that was more beautiful to her than America," (447-448)

Contrast that with the way many of us have felt over the past 12 days.  I suppose the lesson that we should keep in mind is that, though it feels like we have taken a step backwards, we haven't undone all of the progress we've made. Books like Americanah should remind us that our country, and the literature we produce, is enriched by an inclusive ideology.  They can teach us how to be better to one another, and to open up our minds beyond ourselves.

The Oath - Jeffrey Toobin

The Nine: The Sequel

by Jack Knorps

The Nine  was a difficult book to review because I deigned to describe each Justice.  While it was a terrific book, and more even-handed than The Brethren, I criticized the amount of material the author included on Supreme Court appointments and Bush v. Gore.  Toobin has, in fact, written an entire other book on the subject (Too Close to Call), and I do not think I will be reading that.  However, I have heard good things about The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson and would consider reading that.  Toobin is a talented writer, and at times the words flow off the page.  He is a "quality author."  

That being said, The Oath is a better book than The Nine though there is almost nothing to distinguish the two from one another.  True, The Nine was about the period between 1993 and 2005--the longest period in which the same nine justices served together, and there is more material because the "length of the story" is longer.  The Oath is about the period between 2005 and 2012 (though primarily '08-'12) and clocks in at a perfect length of 300 pages.

A friend recently asked me what the perfect length for a book was.  It is a hard question and depends on the book but I have to say now that it is between 250 and 300 pages.

And I have to say that, though my review of The Nine (published January 1, 2012) was probably not read by Toobin himself, it is almost as if Toobin took my criticisms to heart and wrote a better book, substantially similar though it may be.

It is a subject that is hard to write about briefly.  The Brethren was very long, too.  So much has happened, but when we last left off, I had reviewed Five Chiefs and was bemoaning the Conservative Court--that is, the moment Justice Thomas replaced Justice Marshall (not the moment Justice Souter replaced Justice Brennan): the Court seemed like it was "fixed."

However, The Oath makes the point more than once that Justice Stevens, Justice O'Connor, and Justice Souter were all Republicans, and slowly but surely became part of the "liberal wing" of the Court.  I don't think this point can be emphasized enough.  If you look at the Court, you are looking at a group of extremely distinguished individuals, some of the most intelligent professionals in America.  That three of them abandoned their former party highlights my distaste for the conservative movement.  Toobin, I would imagine, shares this view.

When I reviewed The Nine I provided snippets about each Justice, and it was an extremely long review.  I will do my best to stick to the highlights in this review.  

The book is divided into five parts.  Part One focuses on Obama, his election, and the Court as it stood when he took office.  Part Two focuses on Second Amendment concerns and introduces Justice Sotomayor.  Part Three is basically about Citizens United.  Part Four introduces Justice Kagan.  Part Five is basically about the Affordable Care Act cases.  Oh and Part One also discusses Stern v. Marshall (briefly).  

Unlike Bush v. Gore, Citizens United and the ACA cases (which I wrote an extensive article and roadmap on) are both extremely interesting cases.  So obviously I like those parts.  Part One is good because it tells us some thing about Barack Obama that, shockingly, we probably did not know:

he went to law school when he was my age:

"His life as a public figure began in 1990, when he was twenty-eight and won election as president of the Harvard Law Review, the first African American to hold that position.  Obama practiced law for a dozen years and taught at the University of Chicago Law School for nearly as long.  But by the time he ran for president, Obama was above all a politician, and a cautious one.  Obama admired the heroes of the civil rights movement, including the lawyers, but he did not model his career on theirs.  Obama did not believe the courts were the principal vehicle for social and political change.  Elections, rather than lawsuits, were his battlefield of choice, and by 2008 he knew that the way to win the presidency was, in part, to embrace the individual rights theory of the Second Amendment." (22)

The Oath is quite timely but Toobin might revise that last sentence in light of the events that have transpired over the past four months.  We are living in an increasingly insane world where people are isolated and would rather go out in a blaze of glory and kill dozens of innocent people than attempt to grab that increasingly fictitious concept known as the "American Dream."  Chief Justice Roberts and Barack Obama, one might say, are both "living the dream"--but it would be wrong to say they are totally happy and their lives are perfect:

"Near the end of his memoir Dreams from My Father, which he published when he was thirty-three, Obama reflected on his education at Harvard Law School.  His tone was ambivalent.  'The study of law can be disappointing at times, a matter of applying narrow rules and arcane procedure to an uncooperative reality; a sort of glorified accounting that serves to regulate the affairs of those who have power--and that all too often seeks to explain, to those who do not, the ultimate wisdom and justness of their condition.'  Then, in a gesture that was common in the book, and in Obama's character, he gave the other side of the story: 'But that is not all the law is,' he continued.  'The law is also memory; the law also records a long-running conversation, a nation arguing with its conscience.'" (22-23)

The reason why I have no respect for republicans is because they lambast Obama as if he was the worst president ever and they have absolutely no idea what he has come up against.  Basically, whoever became president in 2008 needed to be FDR in order not to look like a douchebag.  Obama is not FDR.  People generally consider Lincoln the greatest President.  FDR is often near the top of the list, too.  For me, Obama is number three.  Some people put Kennedy up in the top five, but I'm not sure I could (shockingly I might even put Nixon above Kennedy).  I don't want to get into word games but I think Chief Justice Warren was probably the greatest Chief Justice (and Scott Brown took Ted Kennedy's seat in Massachusetts) and in three years, in my fantasy world, a different Warren could potentially be the greatest President, too.  

You can't blame Obama for putting Sotomayor and Kagan on the Court.  Sotomayor has recently become popular for putting out a book of her own--and she claims that Obama's book greatly inspired her.  It is quite shocking, though, to think of Chief Justice Roberts.  I made this point in The Brethren review, but I'll make it again: it is such a better job than President!  He could be Chief Justice for like, twenty-five, maybe thirty years.  Clearly, the Justices are the ones that see the change in the country more clearly than anyone else. 

I basically hate Chief Justice Roberts because he is so perfect:

"There was never a student like John Roberts at the La Lumiere School in LaPorte, Indiana, a quiet town near Lake Michigan, on the outer edges of the gravitational pull of Chicago.  It was a Catholic school, but it was independent of any order or diocese; the founders, all laymen, built the institution around an ideal of academic excellence.

"Roberts was not just the valedictorian of the class of 1973.  He served as captain of the football team, a varsity wrestler, member of both the student council and the drama club.  (He played Peppermint Patty in You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown; the school was all boys in Roberts's day.) He continued taking Latin, as a tutorial, after the school dropped the language as a requirement...." (8)

Toobin goes on to explain Roberts's excellent memorization skills and how ironic it was then that he messed up on The Oath that he gave to Obama at his inauguration.  But there is something sinister about Roberts's perfection: he is too much like Kennedy (except not quite as well-to-do from birth) and his conservatism is blind to the problems of society's have-nots.  However, he did get one case right--and it was an important one.

Toobin covers the drama around the Affordable Care Act and the various legal challenges to it in an economical and entertaining fashion.  The same goes for Citizens United.  Thus, Part Three and Part Five are excellent reading for law students.  (Citizens United is only really studied, however, in classes on First Amendment Law and Campaign Finance law--it doesn't affect Americans as individuals as broadly as the ACA--but it has enormous philosophical implications: read thought control).  What is most upsetting about Citizens United is that we never got to read Souter's dissent:

"The new majority opinion--which transformed Citizens United into a vehicle for rewriting decades of constitutional law--shocked the liberals.  Stevens assigned the main dissent to Souter, who was in the last weeks of his tenure on the Court. (He was actually working on the opinion when he announced his departure.) The Kennedy opinion reflected everything Souter had come to loathe about the Roberts Court--its disrespect for precedent, its grasping conservatism, its aggressive pursuit of political objectives.  Worse yet, Robert's approach to Citizens United contradicted a position he had taken earlier in the term.  At the argument of a death penalty case known as Cone v. Bell, Roberts had berated at length, the defendant's lawyer, Thomas Goldstein, for his temerity in raising an issue that had not been addressed in the briefs.  Now Roberts--the chief justice--was doing precisely the same thing to upset decades of settled expectations.  

"Souter wrote a dissent that aired some of the Court's dirty laundry.  By definition, dissents challenge the legal conclusions of the majority, but Souter accused Kennedy and Roberts of violating the Court's own procedures to engineer the result Roberts coveted.  The dissent, had it been published, would have been an extraordinary, bridge-burning farewell to the Court by Souter." (168)

But "The Ninety-Page Swan Song of John Paul Stevens" is a pretty good thing to read, too. I have written at length on Justice Stevens and how he is my second-favorite Supreme Court justice so I will not add much, except that next time I go to Chicago I will take a picture:

"....Still, the family never recovered its former wealth, and it lost control of the hotel. (It is now known as the Chicago Hilton and Towers; the 'S' is still there.)" (187)

This book is not quite as gossipy as The Brethren but it is more gossipy than The Nine.  In The Nine Toobin makes some pretty incredible statements about Justice Thomas, but in The Oath he makes Thomas out to be some kind of enormous evil genius/fool.  I do not even want to repeat what Toobin wrote about Thomas (this is why I think writers are the only more hated group than lawyers: if I were Thomas I would go kick Toobin's ass for the things he suggests and reveals).  But now I know that "Lady Kaga" is not, in fact, gay, so I make this plea:

***

Dear Justice Kagan,

I know that you probably get lots of date offers but I want to ask you out.  I am a 29-year-old law student and that means there is only about 23 years separating us.  That is less than the difference between Justice Douglas and some of his wives.  I promise you that, if you give me a chance, I will be a good and loyal partner to you, and help you achieve whatever it is you hope to do in this life.  I will never "leak" anything.  I am a good cook and would make a great stay-at-home dad.  I also have a tremendous singing voice, and am a soon-to-be-acclaimed filmmaker.  

If you'd like, I would be your law clerk for a year if you wanted to test me out.  If that's too much trouble, I understand (my credentials are nowhere near as impressive as Sparkle's), but if you just want to grab dinner sometime and see if we'd get along, that could be really cool.  I'll take the Bolt Bus down to D.C. and meet you some Friday evening when you get off work.  I'd even be willing to pick up the tab!  Please respond via comment if you are so interested. (And yes I am being totally serious.)  

***

Kagan also apparently kicked a 20-year cigarette habit.  On that note, I am going out to have one....

Kagan was also a classmate and friend of Toobin's.  He can't recuse himself from writing this book, but it highlights his own achievements.  While I don't necessarily agree with some of his statements (for example, that Justice O'Connor is "the most influential woman in American history" (207)) The Oath is more often than not, erudite and sensitive to the political climate of our nation's capital:

"Stewart [not Potter-Ed.] was wrong.  Congress could not ban a book.  McCain-Feingold was based on the pervasive influence of television advertising on electoral politics, the idea that commercials are somehow unavoidable in contemporary American life.  The influence of books operates in a completely different way.  Individuals have to make an affirmative choice to acquire and read a book.  Congress would have no reason, and no justification, to ban a book under the First Amendment." (166)

It is an important book that everyone should read. (Many will not because reading about law is boring--and honestly, having studied the law for the past two-and-a-half years, sometimes I just don't want to read about all of those Commerce Clause cases over and over again...) It also taught me how to correctly use parenthetical sentences, so it may improve your writing also (though I would hardly call this review one of my finest moments).  

Basically, if you are pressed for time, read The Oath.  Then, if you want, you can read The Nine for the sake of nostalgia.  The only problem with this book is that it preempts its prequel.  But a lot of people still prefer the first Back to the Future to the second one.  I would imagine the debate between fans of those two movies is quite similar to the debate that fans of these two books would have: it largely depends on how accurate their vision of 2015 will be.  I, for one, hope that there is another Warren on the way to "reshape" American society, and not another Clinton. 

Points of Rebellion - William O. Douglas

Justice Douglas is my favorite Supreme Court justice.  Law school is extremely boring at times, but any class that features Supreme Court opinions from 1939-1975 holds the potential for excitement: Douglas is likely to dissent in many cases, and there is almost always a sentence or two of pure brilliance and disgust.  Points of Rebellion, then, is a 97 page dissent against America as she stood in 1969.  It is a fantastic book and I highly recommend it.

In college, I majored in Writing and Politics at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University.  We were required to state our concentration and present a colloquium on the topic.  I chose "Political Rebellion in Literature."  My presentation (delivered to my academic adviser, as well as two other faculty members) was mostly a mess.  We had to talk about 30 books.  Some of my books were Utopia (Sir Thomas More), Hamlet, The Rebel (Albert Camus), The Flowers of Evil (Charles Baudelaire), The Origins of Totalitarianism (Hannah Arendt), One-Dimensional Man (Herbert Marcuse), White Noise (Don DeLillo), Something Happened (Joseph Heller), Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (Richard Hofstadter), The Trial (Kafka), Discourse on Method (Descartes), Bend Sinister (Vladimir Nabokov), and others...

My basic argument was that the different forms of rebellion had been squashed by the majority in American society.  I could not make this argument anywhere nearly as well as I could today.

Points of Rebellion would have been THE PERFECT BOOK for this colloquium, and I am sorry that I did not know anything about the law, or the Court, when I was 21 and designing my project.

Were I to give this presentation today, the so-called "Occupy movement" would no doubt move heavily to the forefront of the conversation.  Last year when the police arrested protesters on the Brooklyn Bridge and raided Zuccotti Park, I wrote on Facebook that it had taken 7 years, but I had finally been proven wrong: the flowers of rebellion still bloom today.

But I would like you, one day, to look at Google Analytics (I find it from my finance page) and look at Domestic Trends and see the last ten years in various industries.  You will be able to see some remnants of the Great Recession, but more notable is the continued dominance of the credit card industry.

While the "Occupy movement" may have brought like-minded individuals together and fostered a stronger public consciousness of the ways in which the financial industry has siphoned off economic growth from 99% of the population, it is hard to say that they have made a serious impact.  Elizabeth Warren has made a much stronger impact in terms of formulating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and she is but one person.  It is far too early to talk about 2016, but other people are already whispering that Hillary Clinton will be running on the Democratic ticket--but I am convinced that the only way we can enter into a "golden age" is with Warren as President.  Many people are saying that we will continue to live with high unemployment rates for the rest of our lives, but if more people read Points of Rebellion, one would realize that rapid and radical change is, in fact, possible.

To be sure, Douglas's vision of an American utopia is improbable.  It is quite easy to counter Douglas's statements or claim that he asks too much out of people.  Indeed, many of his statements ignore the psychological tendencies of people to organize themselves in "the Establishment" that Douglas faced in his lifetime, and that we still face today.

First, Points of Rebellion was written in 1970--but it might as well have been written yesterday because nothing has changed (excepting some of the statements about foreign affairs):

"The advances of technology present the problem of increasing disemployment in the private sector.  We brag about our present low unemployment.  But that is due to Vietnam.  Without Vietnam we would have 15 per cent or more unemployment.  Must we fight wars to have full employment?
Technology is in the saddle and displaces manpower.  The old problem of unemployment has become the new problem of disemployment.  How many of the present eighteen-year-old men and women will be permanently disemployed?  Thoughts such as these fill the hearts of the young with dismay." (66)

Douglas does, at one point, flex his literary experimentation to hilarious effect:

"A number of federal agencies also use personality tests.  One included the following choices:--my father was a good man, I am very seldom troubled by constipation, my sex life is satisfactory, evil spirits possess me at times, at times I feel like swearing, I have had very peculiar and strange experiences, I have never been in trouble because of my sex behavior, during one period when I was a youngster I engaged in petty thievery, my sleep is fitful and disturbed, I do not always tell the truth, as a youngster I was suspended from school one or more times for cutting up, everything is turning out just like the prophets of the Bible said it would.
The experts are at odds about these personality tests.  These tests commonly grade a person by eight, nine, or ten traits while twenty-five thousand traits might approximate an accurate personality portrayal.  Moreover, the creator of the test fashions his own neurotic world as, for example, to daydream is neurotic--the thesis that is present in one personality test." (25)

Most people know nothing of Justice Douglas.  Law students may hear the gossip that he was married four times and that he was an early advocate of environmental protection.  His passion for the environment is present throughout Points of Rebellion.  Sometimes his love for it is so innocent and genuine that one cannot help but be moved:

"I remember an alpine meadow in Wyoming where willows lined a clear, cold brook.  Moose browsed the willow.  Beaver came and made a dam which in time created a lovely pond which produced eastern brook trout up to five pounds.  A cattle baron said that sagebrush was killing the grass.  So the Forest Service sprayed the entire area.  It killed the sagebrush and the willow too.  The moose disappeared and so did the beaver.  In time the dam washed out and the pond was drained.  Ten years later some of the willow was still killed out; the beaver never returned; nor did the moose." (83)

Notably, Justice Douglas does not write as you would expect a Supreme Court justice to write--and it is refreshing as hell:

"In April, 1968, only 3.5 per cent of the general population was unemployed, while for those in the slum areas it was 7 per cent, with 5.7 per cent for whites and 8.7 per cent for Negroes.
The national white unemployment rate has been about 3.1 per cent and the national Negro unemployment rate 6.7 per cent.
Police practices are anti-Negro.
Employment practices are anti-Negro.
Housing allocation is anti-Negro.
Education is anti-Negro.
The federal government, with its hundreds of federally-financed public road contracts, and its thousands of procurement contracts negotiated each year by the Pentagon and other agencies to purchase munitions, towels, stationery, pens, automobiles and the like, is admonished by Congress to make sure that the contractors for these goods make jobs available without discrimination.  President Johnson gave hardly more than lip service to that mandate." (45-46)

When a Supreme Court justice can write the way Douglas does, one feels more secure in their love for their country.  However, there have not been many like him.  Points of Rebellion predates the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, and one supposes that Douglas would think that agency a step in the right direction.  However it is more likely that he would find much to hate about it too.  His distaste for the administrative state is eloquently stated in another passage that could be written yesterday:

"Corporate interests, as well as poor people--unemployed people as well as the average member of affluent society--are affected by these broad generalized grants of authority to administrative agencies.  The corporate interests have been largely taken care of by highly qualified lawyers acting in individual cases and by Bar Associations proposing procedural reforms that define, for example, the 'aggrieved' persons who have standing to object to agency orders or decisions. [One wishes Douglas was on the Court when Lujan v. National Wildlife Federation came down...] But the voices of the mass of people are not heard; and the administrative agencies largely have their own way.
Moreover, the Establishment controls those agencies.  That control does not come from corrupt practices or from venality.  It results from close alliances made out of working relations, from memberships in the same or similar clubs, from the warp and woof of social relations, and from the prospects offered the administrator for work in the ranks of the Establishment, if he is the right and proper man.  The administrative office is indeed the staging ground where men are trained and culled and finally chosen to the high salaried posts in the Establishment that carry many desirable fringe benefits.  The New Dealers mostly ended up there.  Under Lyndon Johnson there was lively competition for administrative men who would in two years have made a million working for the Establishment.  That is a powerful influence among many agencies; and it results in those who have agency discretion exercising it for the benefit of those who run the corporation state.  And those people are by and large the exploiters." (79-80)

Like a law review article, this book ends with suggestions for reform.  President Obama should read this book (or at least indicate to me that he has read this book) and so should Elizabeth Warren.  They are the only ones out there right now that can make any of this change happen.  Of course, Congress will likely stand in their way, but if lawmakers are truly servants of the public, then they must listen to reason rather than self-interest.  Douglas nicely summarizes his vision at the end:

"There are only two choices: A police state in which all dissent is suppressed or rigidly controlled; or a society where law is responsive to human needs.
If society is to be responsive to human needs, a vast restructuring of our laws is essential.
Realization of this need means adults must awaken to the urgency of the young people's unrest--in other words there must be created an adult unrest against the inequities and injustices in the present system.  If the government is in jeopardy, it is not because we are unable to cope with revolutionary situations.  Jeopardy means that either the leaders or the people do not realize they have all the tools required to make the revolution come true.  The tools and the opportunity exist.  Only the moral imagination is missing.
If the budget of the Pentagon were reduced from 80 billion dollars to 20 billion it would still be over twice as large as that of any other agency of government.  Starting with vast reductions in its budget, we must make the Pentagon totally subordinate in our lives.
The poor and disadvantaged must have lawyers to represent them in normal civil problems that now haunt them.
Law must be revised so as to eliminate their present bias against the poor.  Neighborhood credit unions would be vastly superior to the finance companies with their record of anguished garnishments.
Hearings must be made available so that the important decisions of federal agencies may be exposed to public criticism before they are put into effect.
The food program must be drastically revised so that its primary purpose is to feed the hungry rather than to make the corporate farmer rich.
A public sector for employment must be created that extends to meaningful and valuable work.  It must include many arts and crafts, the theatre, industries; training of psychiatric and social workers, and specialists in the whole gamut of human interest." (92-94, emphasis mine)

Justice Douglas is most famous for introducing the word "penumbra" into the world of constitutional rights.  A lot of people criticize him for that.  People tend to forget that he was giving married couples the right to use contraceptives.

If Justice Douglas was mentioned in my U.S. History classes, I can't remember.  However, in my small and humble opinion, he was one of the greatest Americans to have lived.  Law school has been a long and painful process, but at the very least it allowed me to gain exposure to Douglas, and to find a view of the Constitution and American society at large with which I could agree and seek to propagate in my own life.

Points of Rebellion is an inspiration.  Some of the material may be dated, but those portions are at least entertaining.  It is a short little book.  If you care about radical politics, I highly recommend you check it out.  Then go out there, and try to build a more enlightened society.