Blogcritics Author: emccullough

Announcement: Short-content feeds

Phillip Winn — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT

Sunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding.

Book Review: Wish I Could Be There by Allen Shawn

emccullough — Tue, 1 May 2007 07:26:38 EDT

Anxiety disorders, particularly panic disorder and phobias, have many strategies for maintaining their hold on sufferers' lives. They arise from the ancient, reptilian part of our brain and seize control of our autonomic nervous system before consciousness can kick in. They attach themselves to our earliest memories and slowly infiltrate every area of our lives. But perhaps their most powerful weapon is shame – the shame of being weak, of being cowardly, of being abnormal.And yet, nervous wrecks may be the bravest people on earth. Daily life presents more obstacles for phobics than any boot camp sergeant. Paradoxically, as Allen Shawn, himself an agoraphobic, points out in Wish I Could Be There, people with anxiety disorders may function exceptionally well in times of real danger. At last, their hyper-vigilant nervous systems exult, here's a situation I know how to cope with! Shawn is the son of William Shawn, legendary editor of the New Yorker from 1952-1987, and the brother of actor/playwright Wallace Shawn, and a twin sister, Mary. The Shawn household was riddled with secrets and forbidden topics, ranging from the family's Jewishness to William Shawn's long-running affair with Lillian Ross. The silence most central to Allen's life was the removal of his sister Mary from their home. Mary's condition is now understood to be a form of autism. As a small child she grew more and more difficult to manage, until finally her parents made the difficult decision to place her in an institution. Because of William Shawn's own overwhelming anxieties, visits with Mary were few, and the family's sensitivities dictated that the decision to send Mary away remain undiscussed.Fear shadowed Shawn's life from a very young age, but didn't blossom into full-blown agoraphobia until early adulthood. Despite his many fears, he has lived abroad, married and raised a family, and achieved success as a conductor and composer. No success, however, could expunge the deep shame he felt about his condition, or erase the hunch that his phobias were somehow meaningful. Wish I Could Be There is Shawn's attempt to make sense of his life and the role phobia plays in it:As a self-portrait, it is a bit like a photo cropped so that only my shadow is visible. Yet, regrettably, this is a shadow that accompanies me everywhere, indoors and out, in all weather, and probably always will.In writing the book I came to the conclusion that the shame I originally felt at the prospect of writing it was a fear worth conquering. My hunch is that beneath the surface of even the most smoothly functioning lives (and families) there are always fissures – psychological crises, deficits, conflicts. By putting my own worst foot forward, as it were, I mean to challenge our assumptions about what a normal person is.Shawn's investigations cover most facets of our understanding of phobias. He provides a thorough layman's introduction to brain physiology and the evolution of the fear response. He also discusses Freud's theories about anxiety and phobia as well as more modern versions of "the talking cure" such as cognitive-behavioral therapy. He then turns the analysis on himself. "Inside us," he writes, "the past is still there, as if it were occurring now." Though his anxieties may have been inherited from a high-strung father and conditioned by an overprotective mother, they also continually reinvoke the pain of parting from his first and dearest companion, his twin, and serve as a reminder "that we are part of something vast and incomprehensible." In that respect, they are not totally unwelcome.Shawn continues to struggle to understand and overcome agoraphobia. Most likely he always will. Wish I Could Be There is the chronicle of his struggle, a poignant account of childhood privilege and pain, and an encouraging signpost for his fellow travelers. The moral of his story, and it is a hopeful one, is this: …great achievements tend to come at a cost. Perhaps our best hope is to add something positive to the world and to do no great harm through our defects.To be sure, we shouldn't be complacent about our weaknesses and should push ourselves to be useful, healthy, and fully alive. But there is no one template for a full life.

I moved to Charlottesville, Va. a couple of years ago with my husband and kids. I love to read, I'm working on becoming a better writer, and I'm thrilled to be living in a community with so many bookstores, writing groups, exciting authors, and serious readers.

Book Review: Stuart: A Life Backwards by Alexander Masters

emccullough — Sun, 1 Apr 2007 16:29:57 EDT

The frustration of everyone involved in a biography -- from the author, the reader, and the subject (if he or she is still living) -- is the inability of the form to capture the essence of the subject, the "real" person who lurks inside a dense cocoon of facts, statistics, family connections, resumes, observations, interviews, letters, and photographs. Ronald Reagan’s biographer, Edmund Morris, was so baffled by his famously opaque subject that he resorted to writing a novel instead (Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan, 1999).Alexander Masters was similarly baffled by his subject, a British man named Stuart Shorter, though not because his subject was famous, controversial, undocumented, or remote in time. Stuart was very much alive during the writing of his biography, very forthcoming with the details of his life, and had a large hand in shaping the book into its final form. The problem was that Stuart was a member of what Masters terms "the chaotic homeless," with the emphasis on chaotic.Stuart's homelessness stretched from his teens into his thirties, broken by stints in juvenile homes, prisons, hostels, and government housing. The only consistent theme in his life was chaos: a sociopathic father, an abandoned education, petty crimes, then more serious crimes, mental illness, and substance abuse.Masters met Stuart while working at a day-center in Cambridge, UK. He formed the idea that by telling one man's story, he might somehow come to understand the causes of chronic homelessness. Masters' first attempts, full of footnotes and theorizing, put Stuart right off: "It's bollocks boring." He wants something more like a Tom Clancy thriller, so he suggests, "Do it the other way ‘round. Make it more like a murder mystery. What murdered the boy I was? See? Write it backwards."So was born Stuart: A Life Backwards.It isn't all grim. Despite his problems, Stuart retains a sense of humor and reveals glimmers of sharp intelligence that belie years of sniffing glue, alcoholism, and antipsychotic medication. Many reviewers have found the book "funny," even "hilarious," but there is so much pain here: Stuart's pain, the pain of those who try to help Stuart, and even Masters' pain. Sometimes Masters wishes Stuart would just die; he's that difficult and his problems are that intractable. By his very nature he proves a slippery subject for standard biography, even a backwards one. Masters demands of him, "But some sense of time – you must have had that?""Nah. Some minutes was long, other minutes was short. I know that. Sometimes I was in the park, sometimes I wasn't. Sometimes I was in a cell, sometimes I wasn't. Sometimes, which were supposed to be weeks and months – I don't think they happened at all."Masters' research eventually takes him back to the event or events that "murdered the boy I was." The truth is that Stuart was murdered, again and again, by the people who should have taken the best care of him, by a system erected to protect children like him, by a criminal justice system that processes men like him, and finally by a world that could make no place for him.The "backwards" approach creates a strong sense of suspense, though occasionally the narrative is unnecessarily confusing. This is a small fault in an otherwise masterful piece of work. Stuart will touch you deeply and leave you with more understanding of those hard cases whom a famous teacher once called "the least of these my brothers."

Book Review: 40 Days and 40 Nights by Matthew Chapman

emccullough — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 00:20:56 EDT

Scopes v Tennessee in 1925, Edwards v Aguillard in 1987, and Kitzmiller v Dover in 2005: Christians have made repeated attempts over the decades to give the Biblical account of creation a place in public school science education alongside or instead of the scientific theory of evolution. Kitzmiller v Dover, which pitted the townspeople of Dover, Pennsylvania, against each other in the courtroom, the classroom, the newspapers, and the streets, examined the degree to which the propositions of Intelligent Design are religious in nature and motivation, and the degree to which ID has been successful as a scientific theory. The implications of the trial and its ruling were national in scope, but the origins of the conflict lay in the personal convictions of a handful of small-town citizens.Matthew Chapman, the great-great-grandson of Charles Darwin, is singularly suited to tell the story behind Kitzmiller v Dover. In Trials of the Monkey (2001) he told of his journey to Dayton, Tennessee, to investigate the site of his ancestor's first clash with the American education system with good humor and insight. His follow-up account, 40 Days and 40 Nights, is just as funny, sincere, and thought-provoking. The title is a reference not just to the days and nights of rain during Noah's flood, thought by some young-earth creationists to have laid down the fossil record and carved out the Grand Canyon, but also to the length of the trial: exactly 40 days.Chapman has the gift of being generous in his dealings with people while remaining firm in his humanistic convictions, which must serve him well as a documentary filmmaker. Although he has definite feelings about which side is in the right, he treats all the principals of the trial with compassion and understanding. In fact, one of the most moving chapters of the book is the one titled "Buckingham," about Bill Buckingham, the school board member who was one of the prime movers in bringing ID to Dover. Buckingham is a fundamentalist of the most narrow kind, but he is also a man who has seen hardship and pain, culminating in an addiction to Oxycontin. Chapman treats Buckingham fairly, and also demonstrates his flair for capturing the voices of his interviewees with an apt phrase. Buckingham: "I was so low, I’m telling you I could have sat on a dime and my feet wouldn't have touched the floor."Judge John Jones III released his opinion at the end of 2005. He found that Intelligent Design was religious in its motivations and effects and a failure as a scientific theory. Furthermore, he singled out some of the most loudly religious defendants for perjury and bad behavior. The efforts of the Dover School Board (which had already been unseated in the November 2005 election) to put Intelligent Design in the classroom were defeated. Some relationships and reputations were destroyed in the process; others were formed and strengthened. Kitzmiller v Dover is a turning point in the history of science education in America, but it’s also a personal story. We’re fortunate that Matthew Chapman was there to report it all.

Book Review: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog by Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D and Maia Szalavitz

emccullough — Wed, 7 Mar 2007 18:14:51 EST

When Bruce Perry was training as a child psychiatrist, the conventional wisdom regarding the effects of child trauma was, "Kids are resilient." Children who had experienced trauma -- abuse, neglect, violence -- would "get over it" faster than adults and needed no special handling. Young trauma victims who subsequently developed behavioral disorders, attention deficits, dissociation symptoms, and the like, were diagnosed with Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Attention Deficit Disorder, schizophrenia, Reactive Attachment Disorder, etc., and treated with medication and other coercive methods, including restraint amounting to torture, even leading to death in some cases.This approach did not make sense to Dr. Perry -- how could a child's history of trauma and her behavioral and mental disorders be unrelated? He decided to let his patients lead the way in showing him what they needed. With a deep knowledge of brain development and the functioning of the central nervous system's stress regulation mechanisms, he developed a treatment protocol that took into account the interruption in the child's neurological, emotional, and social development caused by the trauma.Dr. Perry's courageous and insightful treatments are innovative and effective, but that's not the reason for laymen to read this book. Read this book because you will meet a group of children -- Laura, Peter, Sandy, the survivors of the Waco Branch Davidian disaster -- who will show you what the human spirit, mind, and body are capable of in the face of overwhelming odds. They have much to teach us about what children and all human beings need from each other.