Modern Romance - Aziz Ansari (with Eric Klinenberg) (2015)

Do I really need to write a review of this book?
Haven't you already seen the reviews, like five months ago?
This is actually one of the few books that most lay people (i.e. non-readers) of a certain age know.
They know it because they know Aziz Ansari, and it's about dating, and he's right: it's both a wonderful and horrible time to be single.
This book is candy to Penguin Press.

Do I need to parrot the ideas of this book or can I just write this as a special comment on Tinder?

I always try to "personalize" these reviews so they're more valuable than the "objective" stuff you'll find in any number of major newspaper markets across the country.  But this is a real opportunity for extreme personalization, and I don't want to go there.  I will start off with a pertinent quote, so you know what to expect:

"One thing that I definitely want you to know up front is that this book is primarily about heterosexual relationships.  Early in the process Eric and I realized that if we tried to write about how all the different aspects of romance we address applied to LGBT relationships, we simply wouldn't be able to do the topic justice without writing an entirely separate book.  We do cover some issues relating to love and romance among gays and lesbians, but not at all exhaustively." (8-9)

Because of this, while I initially flirted with the idea of putting this on the "best books" list, it fails.  I'm not that strident of an activist so I really don't care to start a fuss over the idea that LGBT relationships are different from straight ones, but I will comment briefly that a law school classmate of mine wrote a law review article about domestic violence in LGBT relationships and found that there wasn't much of a difference (I mean, obviously, in straight ones it's usually the dude doing the hitting, I'm guessing).  I do think gay dudes are way less picky when it comes to sex partners, in general.  That's about all I can say, though.  I'm not too angry, because I do think there should be a book about dating for bi people.  I just think it's a little troubling, economically, particularly when that big SCOTUS decision came down just as this book was released (June 16, 2015).  Straight people wouldn't be interested in reading about non-straight people, I guess.

What would a book about dating for bi people be like?  It would be the most fucked up thing in the world.  Do you disclose, or do you pretend?  Do you delete all your old Facebook references to anything that might give a potential date the idea that you had never strayed from the straight and narrow?  I really don't think there is any problem whatsoever for a bi dude to tell a same-sex partner that he likes girls--I think they're more excited by the idea of a straight dude than a gay one (at least for a casual thing)--but does that work on the opposite level for girls?  I mean, of course, girls don't want to go out with bi dudes, but are lesbians open to going out with bi girls?  Frankly, if Mr. Ansari would like to entrust such a project to a fellow '05 NYU Alum, I will rip up my law license and skip down the street.

I've been a little bit harsh in starting off this review, so let's move onto the positives: this is probably the funniest book I have reviewed on Flying Houses.  I laughed out loud while reading it more than a few times, and on the CTA that was sometimes embarrassing.  I think this was the line, yesterday:

"I'd run the Hardee's and probably be pretty good at it.  Maybe I'd catch wind of a guy who was running a huge 'biscuit extortion' scam to smuggle biscuits across the border to Georgia [from South Carolina].  The scam would work like this: The guy and his partner would steal biscuits from our store and then sell the stolen biscuits at a lower cost on the biscuit black market.  After getting suspicious of his frequent trips to Georgia, I would hide in the bed of a Ford F-150, under a bunch of biscuits, and when they reached their destination, I'd dramatically pop up and go, 'GIMME BACK MY BISCUITS!'
The family would be proud." (237)

It's not even that funny, really, but the image cracked me up.

Upon further review, it was actually this passage that made me laugh to embarrassment:

"My Dearest Charles,
I hope this letter finds you in the halest and heartiest of conditions.  I'm sure it will, as your constitution, as I recall, was always most impressive for its resilience and fortitude.
What do you make of this so-called 'Revolution'?  I fear that, win or lose, we shall be feeling its reverberations for decades to come.
In other news, in addition to your sister, I am fucking Tina, this woman I met at the bar last week.  I also caught syphilis from a prostitute I met in Boston.
Fondly, your brother-in-law,
Henry" (225)

Is Mr. Ansari a good writer?  I think so.  It's unclear to me how much of this book is written by him and how much is written by Klinenberg, but it feels like it's mostly Ansari, even when there's not a joke being thrown in every few sentences.

The constant jokes aren't a distraction.  Instead, they change the book into something different entirely.  Now I know that comedians get book deals, and sometimes their books are funny, but this is more impressive because it's about something else, something that most younger people might want to know.

The problem is that we all already know.  There is some interesting research that the book brings out, but all of the perceptions, all of the subjective stuff, we know.  We know about not texting back immediately for fear of seeming too desperate.  We know about selecting profile pictures.  There is a lot of stuff "we" know, but we don't really know that other people feel it too, and I guess that's why this book is nice.  Ansari is never mean-spirited with the jokes here, and that's impressive in this arena.  It also has the potential to get extremely raunchy, but the dirty stuff is kept relatively safe.

The central thesis, if you will, is that "good enough" partners are not good enough for people anymore.  We now require a soul mate.  Along the way in that search, we might discard some really amazing people, and Ansari advocates on behalf of "quality" rather than "quantity."  It's better to get to know a person really well and find out everything that's great about them, rather than to meet a lot of people and only get to know them superficially before deciding there's someone better for you.

This is kind of the romantic issue of our time, and Ansari is clever to seize upon the moment and call it out for what it is.  Thousands of people have written about these issues over the past half-decade, but Ansari is the first to turn it into a book with mass appeal.  And he is the right person to do it because the humor complements the material in a strange way.  In a sense, it almost detracts from the material, but this turns it into a strength.

Perhaps this sounds strange.  Really what I mean is, you can't take a book with this subject matter all that seriously.  You're not supposed to.  Ansari isn't saying WE ARE ALL LIKE THIS; he's just sharing stories that he heard in focus groups and surveys and sociological studies.  He also writes about his own romantic travails to powerful effect, though I contend that he leaves an important element of dating/mating out: money.

Maybe I'm cynical, okay, but we can't all go out every weekend night and spend 5 hours in a bar or club and spend $200 on drinks.  And when we think about who would be a good partner, tell me nobody cares about their job.  Of course, many more women pursue a professional career than in the past, and marriage has become a kind of status symbol--more of a "power couple" thing than the traditional "sole breadwinner" thing.  I would have liked to hear more about stay-at-home dads.

Ansari effectively describes the shift in marriage habits, from our grandparents' and parents' generations to ours.  Perhaps this is why I often said I wished I was 10 years older, back in '01 and '02.  But maybe it's more like 20 or 30 years older.  The difference is, the older generations did not have the experience that we do of "emerging adulthood," the period between, say, 23-30, when we pretty much live on our own and seek a mate that is most complementary to our vision of a worthwhile existence.  Ansari thinks this period is a great thing, more or less, but personally I'm not sure.  Now, I have no problem with their being tons of single people getting older and not having kids--so long as we're not lonely.  But I do have a problem when I am 32 and I look around and see that most people my age are married, or engaged, or have kids, or have a good job with a retirement plan, and I have nothing.  I guess it would hurt a lot more 20 years ago to be in the same situation at my age, but my belief is, it wouldn't be this way 20 years ago.  But I should shut up before I say something dumb and insensitive.

There are some really intriguing parts, particularly about Japan and the way their government is responding to the low-birth-rate crisis by subsidizing singles' parties.  And of course there are some priceless stories:

"Back in June of 2012 when I was 43, my boyfriend broke up w/ me via a text message after being together for 8 years!  I practically raised his daughter, and had been totally committed to him [and] everything that came w/ him.  I was really offended and hurt as I felt that I at least deserved to be broken up with in person or at least on the phone! 
Apparently the wound didn't run too deep, though, because look what happened next:
After 10 months of no contact, his uncle passed away [and] I called him [and] left a message w/ my condolences.  We finally talked after that [and] eventually got back together.  I still love him completely [and] have forgive him for how things went down.  And you best believe I gave him hell for that text! :-)
No offense, but at this point let's take a moment to be thankful we are neither of the people in that relationship." (194)

I could go on, and on and on about this book and excerpt every single great joke, but I'm gonna wrap things up here.  I just can't resist putting in my favorite part, which is where Ansari advocates for monster truck rallies as ideal venues for first dates:

"One of the social scientists I consulted for this book is the Stanford sociologist Robb Willer.  Willer said that he had several friends who had taken dates to a monster truck rally.  If you aren't familiar with monster truck rallies, basically these giant-ass trucks, with names like Skull Crusher and The ReJEWvinator,* ride up huge dirt hills and do crazy jumps.  Sometimes they fly over a bunch of smaller cars or even school buses.  Even more nuts, sometimes those trucks assemble into a giant robot truck that literally eats cars.  Not joking.  It's called Truckzilla and it's worth looking into.  Frankly, it sounds cool as shit, and I'm looking at tickets for the next one I can attend. (140)
"*Okay, I made up ReJEWvinator, but it would be cool if there were a Jewish monster truck scene." (141)

The book also ends on a really sweet story about a couple meeting and how they left notes to each other on the doors of their apartment complex.

This isn't necessarily "required reading," but I wouldn't be surprised to hear about this book being passed around between groups of friends in "emerging adulthood."  That is the way the most culturally relevant books attain their cache.  This is increasingly rare, and I applaud Ansari for rejuvenating the medium.

Slapstick - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

In Palm Sunday (1981), Kurt Vonnegut gives each of his previous books a grade.  These are the results (books I have read will be marked with an asterisk; books I have reviewed on Flying Houses will be marked with a double-asterisk):

Player Piano: B
The Sirens of Titan: A*
Mother Night: A*
Cat's Cradle: A+*
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater: A*
Slaughterhouse-Five: A+*
Welcome to the Monkey House: B-*
Happy Birthday, Wanda June: D
Breakfast of Champions: C**
Slapstick: D**
Jailbird: A
Palm Sunday: C*

Slapstick (1976) thus appeared to me to be a waste of time, something I would put off until after reading all the other Vonnegut novels.  (I still have a lot to go, and a lot to re-read to be posted on this blog).     Over Thanksgiving break, I saw a copy of the book on the kitchen counter-top in my parent's house.  I asked my mom who was reading it and she said she had come upon it at the dump and felt that I might be interested in it.

None of this sounds very reassuring, I am sure, but I have to say that Vonnegut was unduly harsh on himself in his grading of this novel.  While it does not rise to the heights of Cat's Cradle or Slaughterhouse-Five, it bears a certain resemblance to God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, is probably more entertaining than Mother Night (though I would have to concede that book to be much stronger overall), and may be nearly as strong as Sirens of Titan (though some people may want to hang me for making that statement).  The bottom line is that, just as Vonnegut is too harsh on himself with Breakfast of Champions (which undoubtedly deserves at least a B+ if not an A-), so too does Slapstick deserve a higher grade (B+).

I am not sure why people would forget about this book more than the others.  It is typical post-Breakfast of Champions Vonnegut, where he seemed to dismiss the idea that he should attempt to write "serious" books, while concurrently writing on a more subversive level that was more reactionary to the contemporaneous political regime.  And yet Slapstick, despite its title and moments of sheer ridiculousness, is a very serious book in terms of pinpointing the problem of all government: the idea of "extended families," out beyond the "nuclear family" or the "immediate family."

The story concerns two twins who are grotesque and tall and ultra-intelligent.  But they seem to become stupider when they are kept apart from one another.  They have some sort of telepathic connection in their sinuses.  This makes the book sound strange.

But early on they make several discoveries about the world, and one of them was quite enjoyable for me, as I was studying for my exam on the First Amendment (Constitutional Law III) at the time of reading:

"Yes, and Eliza and I composed a precocious critique of the Constitution of the United States of America, too.  We argued that it was as good a scheme for misery as any, since its success in keeping the common people reasonably happy and proud depended on the strength of the people themselves--and yet it described no practical machinery which would tend to make the people, as opposed to their elected representatives, strong.
We said it was possible that the framers of the Constitution were blind to the beauty of persons who were without great wealth or powerful friends or public office, but who were nonetheless genuinely strong.
We thought it was more likely, though, that the framers had not noticed that it was natural, and therefore almost inevitable, that human beings in extraordinary and enduring situations should think of themselves as composing new families.  Eliza and I pointed out that this happened no less in democracies than in tyrannies, since human beings were the same the wide world over, and civilized only yesterday.
Elected representatives, hence, could be expected to become members of the famous and powerful families of elected representatives--which would, perfectly naturally, make them wary and squeamish and stingy with respect to all the other sorts of families which, again, perfectly naturally, subdivided mankind.

***

Eliza and I, thinking as halves of a single genius, proposed that the Constitution be amended so as to guarantee that every citizen, no matter how humble or crazy or incompetent or deformed, somehow be given membership in some family as covertly xenophobic and crafty as the one their public servants formed.

Good for Eliza and me!" (57-58)

The book details Eliza's and Wilbur's (the narrator) upbringing.  They are sheltered and locked away, they behave like idiots, and they secretly learn Greek and Latin and read every book in the family library.  There is also a fair amount of incest, which is a bit disturbing, but mitigated by the fact that the plot of this book is almost entirely absurd.

Wilbur is 100 years old as the novel begins in medias res and living in Turtle Bay in Manhattan.  Manhattan is referred to as the "Island of Death," or "Skyscraper National Park."  Gravity (and the Albanian flu) has destroyed a large majority of the human population on Earth, and the Chinese have figured out a way to shrink themselves beyond all possible human proportions.  Wilbur is President of the United States of America at one point, and runs his campaign on the slogan "Lonesome No More!"  It is based upon the idea of giving everyone new middle names, and it seems rather nice in theory:

'I spoke of American loneliness.  It was the only subject I needed for victory, which was lucky.  It was the only subject I had.

It was a shame, I said, that I had not come along earlier in American history with my simple and workable anti-loneliness plan.  I said that all the damaging excesses of Americans in the past were motivated by loneliness rather than a fondness for sin.

An old man crawled up to me afterwards and told me how he used to buy life insurance and mutual funds and household appliances and automobiles and so on, not because he liked them or needed them, but because the salesman seemed to promise to be his relative, and so on.  

'I had no relatives and I needed relatives,' he said.

'Everybody does,' I said.

He told me that he had been drunk for a while, trying to make relatives out of people in bars.  'The bartender would be kind of a father, you know--' he said.  'And then all of a sudden it was closing time.'

'I know,' I said.  I told him a half-truth about myself which had proved to be popular on the campaign trail.  'I used to be so lonesome,' I said, 'that the only person I could share my innermost thoughts with was a horse named "Budweiser".'

And I told how Budweiser had died." (183-184)

It is also funny when another faction springs up:

"Was there no substantial opposition to the new social scheme?  Why, of course there was.  And, as Eliza and I had predicted, my enemies were so angered by the idea of artificial extended families that they constituted a polyglot artificial extended family of their own.  

They had campaign buttons, too, which they went on wearing long after I was elected.  It was inevitable what those buttons said, to wit: 

[Picture of a button that reads, 'Lonesome Thank God!']" (197)

There are moments in this book of total absurdity and also moments of deep profundity.  I can sort of understand why Vonnegut might have given himself a "D" (sometimes the book seemed "padded" in some way), but it is of fairly substantial length, and--typical for Vonnegut--able to be read in a day or two.  

The small moments of profundity definitely make this book worth reading.  One of them comes near the end:

"I was impressed.  I realized that nations could never acknowledge their own wars as tragedies, but that families not only could, but had to.

Bully for them!" (244)

The science fiction elements of Vonnegut novels are not always believable, but sometimes they are at least plausible.  As usual, his imagination is driving at full speed, and it makes for a solidly entertaining read.  I certainly recommend this book--with the caveat that there are perhaps a dozen Vonnegut novels I would recommend be read before it.