Just My Type: A Book About Fonts by Andrew Garfield

This is a book about type and its modern-day equivalent, font. As the author points out, type was a big but hidden part of our lives, exclusively considered by designers, printers, and publishers. If you weren't in the "business," or some kind of business, you probably wouldn't know too much about type.

But computer fonts changed all of that, and apparently, Steve Jobs is the person who's responsible. Oh, the zeitgeist is all about font! Or, perhaps more accurately (or hopefully), it's about design.

Jobs, I understand, took a calligraphy course at Reed College, and while he didn't expect to do anything with that calligraphy knowledge, when the Apple Macintosh shipped, it had a bunch of fonts that permitted ordinary people like me to choose fonts and to consider which fonts they wanted to choose. Before that, the state of the art in the typewriter was the IBM Selectric (Garfield notes that Big Blue was the Apple of its day) and the balls could be changed. The only two type I ever saw was Courier or Prestige Elite. Well, Steve Jobs changed all that.

In Just My Type, Simon Garfield has given us a book that is part a biography of typefaces or fonts, and partly a guide.

For instance, I learned that for several years there has been a movement against Comic Sans. It's one of those fonts, along with Brush Script, Papyrus (!Ow! a former favorite!), which, when used, demonstrates the amateur status of the user.

This is a book that, instead of flouting the received wisdom, explains what the received wisdom is, for the uncool kids.

I found it surprising to learn that the same man who designed Zapfino designed Palatino (Hermann Zapf). Palatino isn't perfectly classical: if you look closely, you can see that the capital P is not closed! But it's very close to Roman lettering, and the addition of a certain expressive style gives it its charm. Whereas Zapfino is both dramatic, bold, flouncy and inconsistent - and, it's everywhere! Brush Script is a "bad" font, the choice of an immature, inexperienced designer, and makes whatever you're working on look like it was designed in the 1950's. But, why is Zapfino everywhere (in the brochure for the retirement community, on the side of the cookie box, and everywhere else) while Brush Script is bad.

Why is Comic Sans so despised? The short answer is that it's overused. (Why is it overused? I imagine because it reminds people of comics, and that there's something warm about it - it reminds me of Charles Schulz lettering for Peanuts.)

And how can Helvetica be so wonderful and so ubiquitous on the one hand, and be regarded as overused by some designers on the other hand? I guess there is such a thing as too much of a good thing.

As Garfield points out, type, or font, is everywhere around us. This book will lead you to see it with new eyes and soon you'll be saying under your breath, "That's Zapfino. That's Albertus, I think!"

And, when you have used Calibri for a sign because it just seems to fade into the background and doesn't draw attention to itself, you may, like me, be stunned to read that Calibri, "is a rounded, pliable sans serif with great visual impact."

By the end of this book, you'll agree that fonts are expressive and have personality. I wonder, though, if you might feel, like me, that not everyone agrees on what that personality is.

Yes, and if you loved the documentary "Helvetica," you'll love this, too. Here's something fun: a video promoting Just My Type (this is just the sort of thing I like)(photographed in London and Manchester): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhI2LYDkkZk

And you might enjoy this, too: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/im-comic-sans-asshole

Who is Harry Nilsson (and Why Is Everybody Talkin' About Him)?

If you love Harry Nilsson, you will enjoy this documentary. I wanted to know about his late and early career and his family. The highs and lows of his dramatic life and long career are all discussed here.

It was a pleasure to hear some of the songs again; I was especially pleased that they included "Don't Forget Me," on the sound track. I love that song, and in a way it's very typical of Nilsson as a songwriter: it's lovely, it's poignant, and it's frank in a way that pop songs rarely are ("I'll miss you when I'm lonely, I'll miss the alimony, too"). Nilsson was a really original songwriter and while that may not have always been commercial enough to win success on the charts, as a listener I find it inspiring, gratifying and moving. Different is not always better, but here it is.

The documentary has many people who knew Nilsson talking about him, and they all feel passionately about him; if you're a fan like me, you'll find that gratifying, I'm sure. Their portrait is affectionate and tactful, but truthful: Nilsson liked to party, was competitive, insecure, willful and stubborn; managed his own career and not always well.

I think I've felt sad that Nilsson's career has been eclipsed; I imagine I feel so strongly about it because he was such a great singer and such a great songwriter and that means something to me personally. (Why do fans take it personally?) I find myself wishing that more folks would discover him; perhaps because of this documentary they will.

It's gratifying to know that a tribute concert has been organized for November 26 at Off Broadway in St. Louis. I just read a bit of publicity about it online; one of the event producers, Kevin Buckley of Grace Basement, said: "However, Nilsson, for a variety of reasons, will remain somewhat on the fringes even if more and more people become aware of his work. Something about his art and persona is strangely subversive and elusive, while his music was so beautiful and melodious. Nilsson is interesting because he's confusing. He almost went out of his way to let people know he didn't take himself too seriously."

My favorite part of this documentary appears toward the end: Van Dyke Parks is facing the viewer and starts playing some music. I found myself beaming; then he turns away as if saddened, and I started crying. I guess I'm just an Aeolian harp but I was moved by something I took to be authentic.

The Tourist

I saw The Tourist last night. I suppose I watched it to see Venice. It was so different than what I imagined, and as I tried to take it in I couldn't make it hang together in my mind.

I suppose that movie was meant to star Cary Grant and Grace Kelly, and only if it did could it make sense - or seem to make sense. I can't think of an actress with the right kind of haughty froideur - oh, Joan Crawford, perhaps.

There were several ways in which the film was different from what I expected. One was the music. I think it was meant to be very old-fashioned movie music, that would tug on your heart strings and chill you with suspense and it didn't work. I really didn't like it and found it deeply disappointing. I think I started with a stereotypical thought like, "This is just what's wrong with movies today," and came to think that, while the original precis for the music may have made sense, it undercut the meaning of the film instead of supplying it.

Let Them Talk by Hugh Laurie and other artists

Mostly I am unfamiliar with the songs on this collection but I love "Tipitina," and think it worth the price of admission alone. I really love it. I love the song and I think this is an outstanding rendition and I love Laurie's singing here.

I'm afraid that I like to imagine myself discerning but I'm very opinionated and I'm no David Denby, that's for sure.

I like variety, and I like people doing things passionately, and I like folks with lesser vocal gifts singing musically and expressively. I enjoyed this record.

P.S.: I was driving a friend to the airport and listening to this record (to "Let Them Talk," specifically), and he suddenly burst out, "I like this guy! Who is he?" and I explained that it was Hugh Laurie.

As I've been listening to this record, it's been growing on me and I am now very fond of "Let Them Talk."

Once I was attending a performance of Madama Butterfly in a 4,000 seat hall. Someone complained that the tenor, not well-known, did not have a voice big enough to fill the hall. I thought about it and I decided that it was just unfortunate that you had to have such a big voice to fill a large hall like that and that I wanted to be able to enjoy his voice as well. I want to have a chance to appreciate everyone's voice. I personally feel that the final arbiter of worth here is "Do you enjoy it?" and I am enjoying Laurie's album.

Animal, Vegetable and Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver

I haven't finished this book (I'm only on Chapter 4) but I thought I'd give you a preview of coming attractions.

First, let me say that I have never read Barbara Kingsolver's fiction. If I had, I imagine I'd come to this book with greater eagerness.

Secondly, I like food and I especially like my favorite things, but I am not a foodie. I'm not a gardener, either. Kingsolver is and she is passionate about it. She takes real aesthetic pleasure in the flavors of heirloom fruits and vegetables, and a visceral satisfaction in the seasons of the year, and visual delight in the colors and flowers of the vegetables she plants. As a result, as I slog through this book I feel like the one person at the party who doesn't know anyone else.

Kingsolver has something to say, and I respect that. Truthfully, without having something to say, what is the point? It's a didactic book, and meant to be one. To paraphrase Gertrude, this book has plenty of matter - not so much the art.

Kingsolver's trying to argue that the combination of industrial style farming, genetic engineering of plants for industrial farming, the loss of smaller family farms, and the way in which we city dwellers have lost touch with the source of our food and any knowledge about it threaten our food security. She's trying to argue that the situation is serious and the need to act is immediate, and that there are things that ordinary people can do, in feeding themselves, to improve the situation.

Her husband, a professor of environmental science at a Virginia college, argues that the amount of petroleum consumed to transport out of season produce dramatically raises it cost - a cost that is invisible to us and subsidized by our government.

Her family's experiment is presented as proof that folks can take matters into their own hands, and her account is meant to show, in part, how it can be done. After living in Tucson, Arizona, for many years, she and her husband move their family to his farm in Virginia. They spend a year eating only those things that they can grow themselves or purchase from folks living nearby, and this book is Kingsolver's account of that year.

In short, they eat in season, something many of us, with our hothouse tomatoes and raspberries in winter, do not do.

The story of the year that her family spent trying to eat food that they'd either grown themselves or purchased from nearby neighbors is a little short on drama. Plenty of passion when she talks about how the use of corn syrup in many of our foods has helped to fatten us as a nation at the same time that the year-round availability of most fruits and vegetables requires shipping long distances, and that the logistics of their shipping means they arrive at our table shorn of any flavor. This, at the same time that the profit-maximizing policies of seed companies like Monsanto have led to a greatly reduced biodiversity that, if allowed to continue, will likely lead to catastrophic crop failures and widespread famine in the developed world. (I don't think Kingsolver explicitly states that famine will definitely happen, but if you're Irish you know how the story ends.)

This is important stuff, and Kingsolver is committed and passionate, and I admire her, and I find that I need toothpicks to keep my eyelids open.

The chapters on "Molly Mooching" (a local name for morels, with recipes) and "Gratitude," are delightfully engaging, full of rich, descriptive writing and probably catnip for a foodie.

"Gratitude" opens with a Mother's Day gift to a neighbor, a tomato plant. Kingsolver reports that the recipient did not say thank you, and her family refrained from saying "You're welcome." This is because of a local belief that if you say "thank you," for a plant, the plant will die.
The type of tomato this was a variety called "Silver Fig" from the former Soviet Union.

The chapter continues with a section on the May planting, an arduous task begun before school starts in the morning and continued after school lets out until well after dark. More tomato varieties are described in loving detail. Kingsolver plants a Siberian variety, bred for its ability to ripen in a short summer, helping to ensure some early tomatoes.

In June, she's embarrassed when she plans to offer some of those Siberian tomatoes to a friend only to discover that her friend, living in western Massachusetts, already has some gargantuan tomatoes.

In this chapter, Kingsolver starts to talk about a practical problem: Americans have grown accustomed not just to eating out of season but to paying lower prices for factory-farm produced food that food produced by hand on smaller farms and sold at farmers' markets can be sold for.

But Kingsolver argues that the price differential is not enough to discourage low-income food consumers and that in fact, holders of food subsidy vouchers can use them at farmers' markets. I didn't know this, and it's a big revelation to me. In fact, there are foodmobile buses - Kingsolver mentions one in Tennessee and I know of one in Austin - that take fresh produce to urban neighborhoods. I am intrigued and wonder if it is really possible for there to be a successful farmers' market in an area that's not very affluent.

The book ends on the happiest of notes, as the author and her youngest daughter celebrate the birth of their first turkey chicks on the farm, a joyous event and the realization of the author's dream to help preserve vintage varieties of turkey.

If you'd like to know more about Barbara Kingsolver's experiment, her family, or resources for learning more about Slow Food International or Slow Food USA, there's a special website (with recipes!) at http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com/

You can find out about Slow Food USA's Ark of Taste here: http://www.slowfoodusa.org/index.php/programs/details/ark_of_taste/

"Cruelty to Animals" in Rebecca Wells' Little Altars Everywhere

I enjoyed Little Altars Everywhere a little bit more than Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, and one of the big reasons why is the chapter "Cruelty to Animals". It's some strange cross between Flaubert and Benny Hill. I dare you to read it without laughing out loud. In fact, I think if you read it out loud to someone else you'll soon both be in stitches.

Public Speaking

I enjoyed this documentary, directed by Martin Scorsese, which presents Fran Lebowitz doing what it may be she does best: talking. It's not a completely fresh idea, and Fran Lebowitz may be a "character," but she is an independent and very entertaining woman - two things I greatly admire.

Scorsese presents her attractively and I suppose I have to wonder: what was left out? How was the narrative shaped? If I viewed the entirety of her remarks would I have been disappointed?

I remember reading something about John Huston -- or perhaps it wasn't about John Huston -- but that the best directors love actors. Perhaps the best directors love people, and that warmth is an important job requirement, and perhaps it's the warmth of admiring friendship that frames this portrait of Lebowitz.

This movie seems like an intimate portrait, although it really isn't. Perhaps it's the closeness of the camera or the fact that Lebowitz's comedy seems so personal, to spring from a unique personal viewpoint. Her comedy is observational, like Seinfeld's, but so much more personal although not really self-revealing.

I feel as though it's hard for me to come to any kind of judgment about Lebowitz, because I haven't thought about her for a long time (I read Metropolitan Life but long ago) and I suppose I shouldn't let that get about, especially if I'm an admirer of Lebowitz, because it seems to have no effect whatsoever on my extremely dull life.

Her timing is excellent and she's unafraid to use expressive gesture to help convey the import. I see now that gestures do not convey meaning; they convey punctuation.

Let me paraphrase, badly, one of the funniest things (I think) she says in the film. She's talking about her writer's block. She says something like, "I am the foremost waster of time of my generation. I didn't look at the clock from, say, 1979 to 2007, when I suddenly thought, "Hmm .. gotta get busy."

But comedy is hard, and more so for women, and I think she does it very, very well.

"Design Principles: The Studio of Jobs and Ive" in Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs

I was interested in finding out if Walter Isaacson would talk about the connection between design, production and marketing in his biography of Steve Jobs. I suspected that Apple was a perfect example of the close relationship between marketing and design that Seth Godin espoused in Purple Cow.

I've only dipped into it, but the first chapter I chose to read was "Design Principles," and in it, Isaacson does make that connection.

When Jobs returned to Apple, Jonathan Ive was already working there as a designer but was thinking about leaving: he didn't like the way that production and design was organized. After Jobs left, design became an afterthought. Engineers designed the inside of products, according the specifications of function they had also designed, and the job of the design department was to make a case that would fit.

After Jobs returned, design returned to its former role where the design of the product was paramount and the engineers were required to make the components fit - and function - in the case created by the design department.

Jobs was passionate about design, grew close to Ive, and gave him independence in the company structure so that, as Jobs said, "There's no one who can tell him what to do, or to butt out. That's the way I set it up."

Ive was influenced by a designer for Braun, Dieter Rams, whose personal design philosophy was summed up in the phrase, "Less but better." Similarly, Ive and Jobs sought the simplest design that was still functional. What Ive says about this is fascinating to me, and I'm not sure I understand it, and I certainly didn't expect it:

"Why do we assume that simple is good? Because with physical products, we have to feel we can dominate them. As you bring order to complexity, you find a way to make the product defer to you. Simplicity isn't just a visual style. It's not just the minimalism of the absence of clutter. It involves digging through the depth of the complexity. To be truly simple, you have to go really deep. For example, to have no screws on something, you can end up having a product that is so convoluted and so complex. The better way is to go deeper with the simplicity, to understand everything about it and how it's manufactured. You have to deeply understand the essence of a product in order to be able to get rid of the parts that are not essential."

Isaacson explains that Jobs and Ive believed that design was not just the surface of the product, or the way that it looked, but its essence, which includes its function.

In the design of the PowerMacs, for instance, there was "total collaboration" between the designers, the product developers, the engineers, and the manufacturing team as the design went through many iterations.

Ive told Isaacson a story about his visit to kitchen supply store in France with Jobs. They both admired a knife but as they picked it up to look at it more closely, they saw a tiny bit of glue between the handle and the blade. That kind of detail revealed a lot about how the knife was manufactured and represented the opposite of what Jobs and Ive strove for: "products should be made to look pure and seamless."

In Ive's studio, there's a room with computers on which the designers design the models. There's a another room, next to it, a "molding" room in which the computer designs are turned into models. Next to the molding room is another room for spray painting the molds.

Jobs visited the design studio many days; he examined the different iterations of the model and made comments or involved other staff from outside the design department in questions of manufacture or strategy that arose from the design.

Ive said about this, "Much of the design process is a conversation, a back-and-forth as we walk around the tables and play with the models.. There are no formal design reviews, so there are no huge decision points. Instead, we can make the decisions fluid. Since we iterate every day and never have dumb-ass presentations, we don't run into major disagreements."

Isaacson adds that the "packaging of Apple signaled that there was a beautiful gem inside," and that seems to me to be another example of almost seamless integration, here of marketing and design.

Perhaps my view of this is exaggerated, but elsewhere in the book I read that Jobs forced folks from different departments to work together as teams, and furthermore, required that profit and loss be reported only for the company as a whole - not for each department. I think his attitude about the profit and loss reporting might be a reflection of how united he felt that the departments should be because he wanted to foster an operational process in which marketing, engineering and product design were almost unified.

Bill Cunningham New York

I loved this documentary! If you at all think you would enjoy it, make it a point to see it.

Obviously, if you love fashion, you'll enjoy meeting this man who so ardently loves fashion as well.

But what I admired so much about him was his generous and egalitarian spirit. It seems to me to be something truly special, and I was utterly charmed.

Bill Cunningham is a street photographer who writes a column for the New York Times. I've not often seen this column as I rarely have a print copy of the Times in my hand. (Sadly, this is part of what's lost in not having a print copy in your hand; you can read a specific article online but you can't enjoy the serendipity of discovery.) And, truly, I don't have his eye for fashion nor do I feel the excitement that he does about it although I do understand it. It is wonderful: exuberant and vital.

In the film, Cunningham says that fashion is the armor that we wear to protect ourselves, but also, obviously, it's a way that we express ourselves and that's wonderful. In this film, New York is where there are so many different people as well as so many people who love fashion and this film captures that.

The film shows Cunningham at work, both as a photographer and in designing the layout of his column at the Times. It was wonderful to see him at work, pairing two photos that had in common the same gesture captured in a photo taken on the fly. What I love about his photo spreads are the color, the composition, the freshness and immediacy. Of course, through his process of selection -- both in taking his photos, selecting photos for publication, and in arranging them -- his photo spreads are his self-expression, as well. This film captures his wonderful enthusiasm for design, and an unpretentious passion for people.

Purple Cow by Seth Godin

Purple Cow is a neat little book. It's full of short essays about the importance of a innovative marketing.

Godin argues that marketing used to be buying print, TV and radio ads. A company created a product, and it was the marketing department's job to sell it, mostly by buying ads.

Today, customers tune out ads, and marketing has to change. He advocates ideas that have been advanced by many others, sometimes under different names.

He advocates using customer loyalty and enthusiasm to get more customers. He points out that word-of-mouth is the single most effective form of marketing. Haven't you turned to a friend for advice on what to buy? Why? It's fast, it's easy, it builds a relationship, buying the product your friends have already bought makes you feel like one of the gang, and it's sometimes the very best method for making a purchasing decision.

He also talks about the importance of setting yourself apart from the competition. It might be by finding a special niche - providing a product or service first. It might be by offering the best product, or by offering the most exclusive product, or by offering the cheapest product -- or the best service. But then, you really have to provide the service.

Marketing, he suggests, needs above all to be distinctive to make itself heard amid the din of marketing messages. He talks about outrageousness. The example he uses here is a slogan for the restaurant chain, Hooters: "Delightfully tacky, always unrefined." Being tacky and unrefined will definitely turn some customers off. But it will also turn some customers on. Ask yourself: which are your customers? Like to be turned on or turned off? You don't know? Find out! Put yourself in their shoes!

He argues that you should think about outrageousness, if only as an exercise in leaping out of the box of your current thinking. It's definitely not the right strategy for every product or every customer. His point is to include every possibility as an aid to creativity and innovative synthesis.

Above all, he argues, abandon the illusion that you can avoid risk altogether by continuing to do what you're already doing, or what worked in the past, or what your competitor is doing, or what seems safely conventional or unlikely to offend. The old adage of making one product for everyone doesn't work anymore. He argues, persuasively, that choosing a marketing strategy because it's safe is less likely to work in this environment, in part because the old rules have been exploded and things are changing so fast. The only safe course, he argues, is to fight hard by taking some chances and setting yourself apart from the pack.

Interestingly, he talks about how cell phones have become boring now that everyone who needs one has one and everyone who merely wants one has one too. He talks about Motorola and how phone manufacturers are looking for the next big innovation. This seems particularly prescient in a post-iPhone world (this book was originally published in 2002).

He talks about the importance of design and how marketing might once have been primarily about how to position the product in the marketplace but is now every aspect of the product, including its design. He advocates giving designers a place on the marketing team. Steve Jobs' success would seem to be a case in point.

What's another way to set yourself apart? Be honest! He cites an example in which McDonald's in France suggested to consumers that they should not eat at McDonald's more often than once a week, an approach that reflected an awareness of different cultural assumptions about food in France.

Godin argues the importance of passion: he explains that it's vitally important to understand the needs and wants of the consumer, and if you're a surfboard company it makes sense to have a staff full of surfers. If you're a dialysis machine manufacturer, it may not be possible to staff your marketing department with dialysis patients but you can still spend time talking to your customers and use your imagination to put yourself in their place and imagine what they need.

The significance of the title is this: on vacation with his family in the country, he saw that his entire family was charmed by some cows they saw. As they continued on their journey, they saw many more cows and cows started to lose their charm. After they'd seen so many cows, the only new cow that would be likely to interest them would be a purple cow!

Seth Godin wants you, your product, and your company to be a purple cow!

Godin addresses himself to marketers and suggests that they use this fun and easy-to-read book full of mini-case histories of marketing efforts to convince managers and troops that this is the way forward. Recent history shows that he's right.

Reading now

Of course, I'm still getting around to finishing Purple Cow (a slim book). I wonder what I should do to celebrate when I finally get it finished!

I've started reading Hardball by Sara Paretsky. She's been writing a long time, and I read her first novel and several others in the V.I. Warshawsky series. I've enjoyed this series in the past because I found Warshawsk'si passion and strength attractive.

I've just started yesterday Just My Type: A Book About Fonts. This is the book I didn't know desperately needed to be written. I love it.

For instance, I had no idea that Hermann Zapf designed Palatino - man, he's my hero! I love Palatino!

Author Simon Garfield thoughtfully illustrates this book with examples of how type has been used, and I know that this will help me think about how I want to choose font. I never thought, for instance, that the use of Bodoni conveys class but I'm sure that that knowledge might come in handy someday.

I find this book easy to read, and engaging, which is my standard for having been written well. But there's something about Garfield's words I find somewhat surprising and I haven't put my finger on it yet. Perhaps it's only that he resists the temptation to give you a lot of history at the same time that he's giving you a little history.

And, I'm reading The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin, which I find quite interesting. I'm on the second chapter, which I really enjoyed. She's clearly done a lot of research, which she frequently summarizes. She also quotes folks quite frequently, including your friend and mine, Dr. Johnson. Apparently the good doctor had quite a bit to say about happiness.

Part of the charm of the second chapter is that she neatly solves a persistent domestic problem: nagging and resentment. Actually, the solution isn't that neat because it requires thought and self-discipline. Speaking only for myself, let me say that self-discipline is hard. (Those of you who find self-discipline easy can spend this lesson working on your tact.) However, she demonstrates that it can be done. She undertakes a project called the Week of Extreme Nice, in which she bends over backwards not to criticize, not to nag, and to go out of her way to be cheerful, pleasant, and thoughtful to her spouse. And, by the end of the week, she finds that her spouse has noticed and responded. Vicariously, I find that immensely satisfying.

Oh, and I started to read 'Tis. And I've also begun Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. It's her account of a year that her family spent farming and eating things that they either grew themselves or got from someone nearby, eliminating the petroleum consumption that's a part of the cost of the things that you buy in the grocery store.

Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust by Immaculee Ilibagiza

This book is a personal account of the author's experiences during a 100-day genocide in Rwanda in 1994.

Rwanda was then under attack by Tutsi rebels. The Hutu president's plane was shot down and everyone in it was killed. The ruling Hutus revenged themselves by beginning a genocide of any and all Tutsis. Estimates of the number of Tutsis killed ranges from 800,000 to 1,000,000. Everyone in her immediate family was killed except for an older brother who was then attending studying in Senegal.

After the killing started, her family asked a neighboring pastor to take her in. He hid her, along with six other women, in a bathroom just large enough to hold a shower and a toilet - the size of a deep closet. This lasted for two months, when the pastor's family judged it was too dangerous to hold them any longer and took them to a nearby camp of French soldiers.

She got through the experience by praying, fervently, and used her sense of faith and moral conviction to hold off two angry mobs.

Much of her account is about how her relationship with God deepened in this crisis and how she used her faith to survive the tremendous psychological pressure of hiding in such cramped conditions, and to rebuild her life after the genocide was over. She recounts in detail her thoughts, state of mind, and prayers to God during her ordeal.

The purpose of her book seems to be to memorialize her family, in part, and to bear witness not just to their lives but to the importance she places on her ability to forgive the killers of her family in order to live a spiritual life.

Today I learned about a new book by Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. I find it hard to believe that that's true but I hope that it is.

A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me about Love, Friendship, and the Things That Really Matter by William Deresiewicz

Let me say this at once and get it off my chest: I loved this book!

In this book, which uses memoir as a framework for an explanation of Austen's themes, William Deresiewicz frames the six novels of Jane Austen with the story of his own graduate school years, when he was "coming of age" like Austen's heroines.

When I started the book (some time ago, ahem) I looked at the Table of Contents and I was thrilled - because each Austen book had its own discrete chapter. This permitted me to read one chapter at a time, put the book aside, and return to it when I had more time.

I puzzled over where I should begin, and finally decided I should begin with my favorite novel, Persuasion.

I'd recently read Persuasion with my book group and when it was time for us to comment on our reading, I struggled to explain why I loved the novel so much.

I wondered if my love of this novel could merely be wish fulfillment: Anne Elliot is on the shelf for seven or eight years after she rejects the proposal of the man she loves, having been persuaded to make that decision by a dear friend who meant well. At home, she's lonely, bored, and entirely overlooked by her family who doesn't value her good qualities.

She meets Wentworth again after seven years have passed. Ironically, and perhaps cruelly, Wentworth's sister and brother-in-law move into the Elliot family home, Kellynch, after the Elliots are forced to rent it out to offset their proud and profligate spending. She is embarrassed and terribly saddened at the same time. It hurts her that Wentworth barely acknowledges their former acquaintance when they meet once again. Her sister tells her that Wentworth reported that she'd changed so much he hardly recognized her (ouch! -- Anne's sister Mary is not blessed with tact); her sister Mary and Mary's husband, Charles, immediately start speculating about which of their sisters would be most likely to marry Wentworth, "a capital match," as he's wealthy from the cargo French ships he seized as a captain in the British Navy.

All this makes Anne's eventual fate seem like a triumph, when Wentworth not only proposes to her again, but does so in a letter that is the apex of romantic declaiming ("You pierce my soul!").

But all Austen's novels end in advantageous marriages to worthy men (whether wealthy gentlemen or conscientious clergymen).

So what's so special about Persuasion?

Deresiewicz explains that he chose to write about Persuasion for his dissertation because he himself was experiencing a saddening transition. In high school and college, he had taken his friends for granted. As he began graduate school, his friends all began their adult lives, often far away, and he wasn't able to spend time with them or to share their experiences. He'd lost his own personal community.

At the opening of Persuasion, Anne Elliot has no community. Her family doesn't value her, and is happy to loan her out to a married sister to perform a variety of domestic tasks.

But by the end of the novel, Anne Elliot has a community, a group of friends clustered around the Harvilles. Captain Harville's sister was engaged to be married to one of his shipboard colleagues, Captain Benwick. Tragically, Miss Harville died before she and Benwick could marry, but this shared tragedy drew Benwick closer to the Harvilles. The Harvilles are also very close to Captain Wentworth, which is how Anne meets them -- Captain Wentworth invites Mary, her husband, her husband's two sisters, and Anne to join him in visiting the Harvilles in Lyme Regis. The Harvilles, Captain Benwick, and Captain Wentworth together form a kind of family.
Derewiesicz points out how frequently Austen uses the word "friendship" or other variations and how frequently she describes characters as a "true friend."

More importantly, he explains something that I find amazing: he shows that Anne copes with being forced to live with her family in their home in Bath, a place where she's not really included, by spending as much time as possible with her friends, old and new, but especially with the Harvilles (with their "unpretentious warmth," Captain Benwick, Captain Wentworth, and her sister's husband and his family, the Musgroves. Captain Wentworth's Navy "family" (Captain Benwick and the Harvilles) offers a new social circle to Anne, one that she can turn to for kindness, support and intellectual stimulation.

As Deresiewicz points out, Anne's lack of interest in her father and her sister and their affairs becomes so great that when she hears gossip about a scheme that threatens their happiness, she doesn't do anything about it. Implied in this situation is a rejection of the aristocracy (Sir Walter Elliot, Anne's father, is a baronet) for the rising middle class and a notion of meritocracy (the men of the Navy: Captains Harville, Benwick, Wentworth, and Wentworth's brother-in-law, Admiral Croft).

Deresiewicz concludes by saying that Austen taught him that friends are the family you choose. I suspect that that very modern sentiment is why I love Persuasion so much.

I read a review which noted that the frame of Deresiewicz's real life experiences for his discussion of Austen's novels seemed a little creaky - perhaps lacking in color and excitement. Just to prove that there's no accounting for taste, I have to say that didn't bother me at all. I'm constantly thinking about why we read fiction and lately, memoir, and I have to say that I think that one reason we read memoir is to "benchmark" - to compare our experiences with others', undoubtedly to gain wisdom and maturity and I suspect to permit us to feel better about our ourselves.

The themes that Deresiewicz addresses: who will be my friends? who will be my family? how do I relate to my father (copy him?, reject him?, forgive him?, embrace him?), how do I respect my father when I'm more American than he is? are questions that a lot of people confront. Some of them would be very interested in learning about Deresiewicz's experience and about what Jane Austen thought about these questions. Deresiewicz makes Austen relatable rather than just glamourous.