Al Rowell

This book in many places was a long plod through intricacies of mathematics and cryptography with only slight glimpses into the man who was Alan Turing. Persistence will be rewarded, eventually, as the picture of Turing emerges from a tedious chronology– an incredible genius and worthy of the label “visionary,” yet hopelessly naive in the workings of the world, both political and social. He anticipated a universal computer and laid the foundations for artificial intelligence, yet in his later years, he was relegated to a sarcastic footnote in contemporary accounts of the development of the computer.

A reader who dares to attempt this tome surely knows that Alan accepted his homosexuality as a part of his being and that he was crushed by the (conservative) British society he had a significant role in preserving with his code-breaking contributions, particularly in breaking the Enigma encryptions for the Atlantic sea campaigns. The author has made a remarkable effort in assembling from available records this portrait of a complicated man who advanced mathematics and computing, yet tragically was unable to realize all he envisioned.

The wreck of the whaleship Essex, stove in by a whale, is an established part of American lore and notably appropriated by Melville for Moby Dick. In the Heart of the Sea weaves together the narratives of the survivors to present their ordeal in a manner that is both clinical (with depictions of the processes of both whale rendering and human starvation) and unsparing in its presentations of the misjudgments of impetuous First Mate Owen Chase and the irresolute Captain Pollard. Beyond the tragedy of the Essex, this book captures in exacting detail life in the whaling community that was 19th century Natucket

I was drawn to this book after reading the author's article “Is Google Making us Stupid” in The Atlantic, and I share some of the author's concerns about becoming less attentive and finding it difficult to concentrate on tasks for any length of time. Carr does a remarkable job of bringing together relevant research, and he provides an impressive history of how technology has changed how people think over time. Obviously new information technologies draw our attention and distract us in many ways, but Carr seems less able to explain how we will continue to adapt than he seems to be defending the necessity of preserving how we have thought in the past.

As Banned Books Week ends, I have just finished reading Julia Alvarez's “In the Time of the Butterflies.” Alvarez tells of the Mirabal sisters in the Dominican Republic during the time of ruthless dictator Rafael Trujillo. Las mariposas, the butterflies, each in her own way, find the courage to oppose the brutalities of this despot, and three of them are murdered for their refusal to yield. The work is a historical fiction that develops a haunting and beautiful portrait each of the three murdered sisters and of the sister, Dede, who survives to tell their story. Alvarez weaves a remarkable story that is still compelling, even as the sisters draw toward their inevitable end. But the soul of the book is the celebration of their lives, and not a mordant fascination with their deaths.

The book has been banned for various reasons. It includes a crude diagram of a bomb the revolutionaries construct in their preparation for a revolution. Men and women portrayed in the novel have sexual feelings and act upon them, but not in a prurient manner. And more recently, conservatives are appalled that people being tortured and murdered in their country might speak well of revolutionaries in Cuba who overthrow their government. Mary Grabar is the most ludicrous of this sort of critic. She positively gets the vapors about the implied masturbation in one page and by the characters praising of Castro in some small sections when the entire book graphically portrays the terror of living under an autocratic regime. http://frontpagemag.com/2013/mary-grabar/common-core-exemplars-graphic-sex-and-praising-castro/

Okay, this is going from review to rant, but how can anyone be a professor of literature with this attitude: “I must admit that I would have been too embarrassed to teach Julia Alvarez's sexually explicit novel, In the Time of the Butterflies, to the college students I have taught for over twenty years, much less to ninth- and tenth-graders, as many Georgia high school teachers have been instructed to do.” First, that Georgia high school teachers have been told to teach the work to ninth and tenth graders is a damnable lie. And second, if you have seen Miley Cyrus lately, you aren't going to lose your innocence by reading a novel that's essence is the unyielding resolve of people, especially these women, and our ability to find courage in the most difficult and trying times.

Even today, Georgia's Governor Nathan Deal has asked that the Common Core English Language Arts exemplars be removed by the state board of education. Evidently, the Gov and his circle mistakenly believe that English teachers might see a two-page passage in the Common Core documents and think they must teach the novel to be able to pass the test. The governor has even called for the creation of a single state reading list of “approved” books. http://www.ajc.com/news/news/state-regional-govt-politics/deal-orders-review-of-common-core/nZYbc/

I certainly imagine that Rafael Trujillo would agree with that sentiment.

Constantly re-read this book in high school. I still remember many of the excerpts from the Messiah's Handbook. “You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it come true. You may have to work for it, however.” “There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands. You seek problems because you need their gifts.” And many more.