O Calcutta!

There are many pleasures to reading the recently published English translation of Chowringhee - Sankar's Bengali novel from the early sixties. To me, the greatest of those pleasures was to see Calcutta as she looked half a century back. You only have to read a few pages of Chowringhee to be transported to that delightful Calcutta street. And by the time you get through the book, you have been up and down the city, from the shimmering lights of Shahjahan hotel (the fictional setting for the book), to the dark underbellies of Calcutta, where there are stories lurking in every shadow. If you are one who is fascinated by land of Pujo, you will likely be drawn into the book, as I was.

Chowringhee is from an era where writers believed their task was, first and foremost, to narrate a good story. This story is told in the simplest, most natural of forms. Not for Sankar any of the sophisticated tools of a modern novelist. He introduces us to our central character (also called Shankar - no last name) on the first page, and simply tells the stories of people Shankar meets over the next few months as a lowly employee of Calcutta's glitzy Shahjahan hotel.

There are two kinds of people we meet on this ride - the guests of Shahjahan, and the employees. "That's the end of the air-conditioned area", one of the characters says, going up to the terrace where the employees live, "and the beginning of ours". Over the course of Chowringhee, each chapter is (loosely speaking) the story of one of the characters. As the background of each character gets filled out, I found myself more and more drawn into the lives of these people. Which is another great strength of the book. The characters are varied, interesting and powerfully drawn. It is not easy to let the people go after you put the book down. Bose-da, the smiling chief receptionist, Connie the cabaret dancer, Gomez the unfulfilled musician, Marco Polo the hotel manager in desperate search ... these are not characters easily forgotten.

Then there are the social mores of 1950s Calcutta. From casual references made by characters and from situations that develop into full-blown stories of their own, Chowringhee draws a picture of the cultural context that existed in early post-independence Calcutta. There is a hangover-like fascination with all things European for one - exotic Parisian entrees are listed with rapture, the music of Beethoven, Mozart and Bach are praised in exalted tones; hotels in Europe are admiringly noted for the perfection they have achieved ... in all, "enlightened Europe" as one character calls it, is presented with great admiration. There are many such oblique glimpses at the context of the times that Chowringhee offers the reader. As one might expect, not all of it is pretty. And that is one of the reasons the book makes the cut as interesting enough to talk about on Brick and Rope.

The translation is adequate without being spectacular. There are places when Sankar's Bengali puns and poetry show up in dull reflection in the English translation. That said, it is polished enough to convey the multiple shades of key characters, the lyrical beauty of the teeming city, and the grace of the storyteller. And for that, Arunava Sinha and Penguin Books deserve our thanks.

Kindling, anyone?

I will be the first to admit that gadgets fascinate me. There is something oddly sensual about a device that satisfies a need you never knew you had. And if it comes in smooth, shiny exterior, all the better. I will also be the first to admit that I have no qualifications whatsoever to talk about technical merits of one gadget over another. I either like stuff or love stuff. Which doesn't make for a compelling gadget review, I would guess.

There is one gadget though that does merit a Brick and Rope mention (despite the author's lack of technical competence)- Amazon's Kindle. The Kindle, more than any of its predecessors, is trying to do what seems on the surface like the impossible - make reading look cool and stylish.

There are thousands of questions worth asking about the Kindle. What role would the kindle play in the life of readers a few years from now? How will publishing and writing change in the face of the Kindle? Is 'kindling' going to follow the trail to verb status that was blazed by xeroxing and googling? Does this whole conversation even matter? (This last is the question addressed in one of the better articles on the Kindle that I have read - Check this out from Wired)

But the question that really bothers me is this - what will happen to my lovely bookcases if the Kindle were to succeed in its diabolical scheme? From as far back as I remember, I have aspired to living a life where I am literally 'surrounded by books'. Over the years, as I have been an active buyer and reader of books, I have slowly built up enough of a collection to fill a few bookcases. And these I proudly display in all parts of my house. Now, out of nowhere, comes an upstart that wants to stop this growth in its tracks. I am not too proud to admit that I feel a bit threatened. Is all my childhood desire to come to naught? Am I soon going to find my bookcases a relic of a quaint past? Am I going to be reduced to living my life around a Kindle? I sure hope not.

So here's a toast to the best holiday present of all - pieces of paper wrapped around pure magic - the physical book. Happy new year! These new gadgets can't hold a kindle to you!

While America Aged - Roger Lowenstein

There are a few things you know about a Roger Lowenstein book before you start reading. It will be well researched, it will be eminently readable, and it will be insightful. While America Aged does not disappoint on any of those fronts.

I bought the book a little while back, but did not start reading it till last week. Somehow, in the middle of the mortgage and subprime led financial meltdown we are in the midst of, reading about an entirely different financial time bomb felt a little anachronous. I am sure the publishers and author felt some of these misgivings as well. Clearly, Lowenstein has spent years researching the potentially explosive issue of pension debts. Which is why it is somewhat awkward that just as he gets ready to publish a strong call to action, he finds the economy in the midst of a very different storm, and his recommendations feel like so much shouting against the wind.

That said, While America Aged makes a compelling case that "America is sitting on a retirement time bomb". The approach Lowenstein takes is to draw three detailed case studies. He explores General Motors and how pension obligations have brought a once great company to near bankruptcy. He then explores the historical context for the New York subway system's pension obligations and how things led inexorably to the recent subway strike. In the third case study, he lays out the extraordinarily corrupt and cynical dealings in San Diego and how they led to the ruin of that city's finances. Each case study is compelling drawn, with strong individual personalities at the center. While reading each story, one has the uneasy feeling of watching a devastating train wreck happen in slow motion, over decades.

Here is what Brick and Rope can promise - once you read these three stories, you will feel sick in your stomach. You will be convinced that most pensions are an unsustainable promise this generation makes at the expense of future generations. And you will know that where such promises have already been made for decades past, there aren't any easy answers.

Lowenstein does not necessarily take a 'neutral' stance on the issues here. It is clear that he considers the 'no tax increases' position of parts of our population too ideologically rigid. He positions himself in favor of tax increases of some sort to fund pension and retiree healthcare obligation of cities and states. Without actually using the phrase 'universal health care', he also expresses support for a structure where the government actively subsidizes healthcare for all age-groups (not just the over 65 population covered by Medicare). And he argues for this subsidy to be on a sliding scale according to income.

These are politically charged recommendations, and I was happy to see that Lowenstein took a stand, rather than present a 'on the one hand, on the other hand' kind of list that a more traditional academic might present.

The problem is, as Lowenstein freely admits, that while there are some solutions for the retiree health care issue that have been proposed, there isn't any easy answer for the pension issue. Where cities, states or corporate entities have made unwise promises to their employees in the past, there is no easy way to keep the promise without causing pain to taxpayers (either directly through higher taxes, or indirectly through bailouts).

I found myself in agreement with most things Lowenstein presents in While America Aged. The one exception in my mind was his representation of unions. Unions and their negotiation tactics over the last few decades have caused a lot of the pension problems we find ourselves in right now. That said, in talking through them, I found that Lowenstein takes too starkly negative a view of unions and their contributions over this period. While I agree with some of his assessments, I found his language in dealing with union personalities (with some exceptions) too strident and negative.

That is a minor complaint on what is for most parts a compelling 'caution - danger ahead' kind of book. My one wish - I hope Lowenstein has shifted focus to the macro-economic mess of 2008 and is researching a book on what led us here. Sign me up for that book now!

The Black Swan - The improbably avoidable book event of 2008

When someone writes "Fooled by randomness" for a debut, they earn the right to have newfound fans wait with barely contained anticipation for their next master-piece. They also earn the right to think they are on to a good thing, and maybe, just maybe, they can explore some finer, lesser appreciated corrolaries of their theory. What they do not earn, is the right to parade themselves as the only original thinker left on the intellectual map. They do not earn the right to indulge in self-promotion thinly disguised as scholarship. And they do not earn the right to take their readers around a 300 page walk-around only to drop them back where they were after 30. In short, they don't earn the right to get away with "The Black Swan".

The high points first.

I loved the title of the book. This is one of the (surprisingly) few books where the title vividly and visually captures the central thesis. Two other books come to mind - the classic "Where are the customer's Yachts?" and the more recent "The Long Tail". The thesis of The Black Swan is delightfully simple. There are random events that are highly unpredictable, have massive impact, and engender post-facto explanations that make them appear less random than they were. These are the Black Swan events. Events that, if acknowledged for what they were, would force one to rethink a long held belief that all swans are white. I find the thesis simple, stark and one of those things that you know are true the moment they are uttered. For an intellectual thesis to base a book on, this is a great one.

As in Fooled, Taleb is witty, full of interesting anecdotes, and irreverant. It makes for interesting reading, as I found myself reading breathlessly, waiting for which intellectual or investment titan might be the subject of Taleb's next roast. It is like sitting backseat with Simon and waiting for the next hapless singer to turn in a bad performance on American Idol.

Which is where things start going downhill.

The acerbic tone and the incredulous 'can you really believe that Nobel laureate said that!!' voice of Taleb starts off being hilarious, Stephen Colbert funny. But soon, I found myself mildly annoyed at how much of the book was that tone, and how little was the actual thesis. And once you find yourself not sitting shotgun with the writer of a book, it is not a long stop to disillusionment-land. I counted myself a fan of Taleb after Fooled, but here, halfway into the book, I found myself rooting for the opposing team. It was clear to me that The Black Swan was written more to impress than to express.

Two concepts bring this out starkly for me and are worth pointing out in Brick and Rope. In the Chapter called 'Giacomo Casanova's unfailing luck', we are introduced to the concept of 'Slient Evidence'. We are also introduced to the 'self-sampling assumption' and the 'reference point argument' and of course, Casanova's unfailing luck. Through the 20 page chapter, you are often entertained, mostly impressed, but never given the chance to suspect that this might be the concept of 'survivor bias' that one might have read of elsewhere. Taleb is so focused on ensuring that he comes across as the only truly original thinker around, that he coins new terms for any concept that might have been explored by others before. He takes care to avoid ever using the phrase 'survivor bias', not even to point out how his ideas are different or more nuanced than survivor bias. Similar are the attempts at coining new terms like 'naive empiricism', 'negative empiricism', and 'round trip fallacy' - all within one chapter designed to avoid any references to terms by which you might already know the central concept of that chapter. If you only read the dizzyingly long bibliography of The Black Swan, you might be forgiven for assuming that the book itself would be a humble acknowledgement of how the writer stands on the shoulders of giants. Once you read the book of course, it is clear that the Bibliography is a lengthy list of everyone whose work is either ignored or insulted in the previous pages.

And then of course there is Yevgenia Krasnova. Much has been said about this character elsewhere. To me, pitching a long story of a person as a startlingly real illustration of what a Black Swan could look like in real life, but then stating in a small footnote later in the book that the whole example was completely made up, is dangerously close to intellectual duplicity. I am sure there were real 'real-life' examples that Taleb could have picked from. Why he chose a fake one is beyond me.

So there it is. I waited long for this book. Bought it with great expectations. And came away with one 'that is so interesting' moment (which came with the explanation of the title), a few other moments of thought-provoking insight, and an overwhelming sense of having spent most of an otherwise good party unable to escape a conversation with a loud, foul-talking, braggard.