The Ministry of Fear by Graham Greene

During the War, with London threatened nightly by German bombers, a lonely man, Arthur Rowe, went to a small festival. He went into the fortune-teller’s tent and the turbaned lady gave him a winning tip on the wonderful homemade cake, a cake made with eggs. Thus begins what seems like a mundane tale. Of course, this is Graham Greene, and the main character Arthur Rowe isn’t just a lonely man, he’s a man with a past. Rowe awakens from his ongoing lethargy when someone later tries to get the cake away from him.

Greene wrote what he called “entertainments” as opposed to what he considered his more serious novels. The distinction that Greene makes about his works seems too abrupt. While The Ministry of Fear isn’t as weighty as its immediate predecessor, The Power & the Glory, or the book that follows it, The Heart of the Matter (considered two of Greene’s finest works), but it nevertheless has plenty of depth along with intrigue and thrills. Even in a mere “entertainment”, Greene touches upon love, pity, fear, and guilt. Greene provides quick but definitive sketches of the characters that play a minor role, while his main characters receive the depth of treatment of which he is capable.

When reading this book, I thought that it would have made a perfect Hitchcock movie. (Hitchcock and Greene were roughly peers, although I don’t know of Hitchcock ever making a movie from a Greene book or script.) Upon investigating, I did learn that Fritz Lang did make a movie of the book starring Ray Milland, released in 1944. (I could see Ralph Fiennes playing the lead today.) Greene’s novels work scene by scene and are so well etched that they do convert effectively to screenplays. (Two excellent Greene stories turned to screenplays—done by Greene himself—are The Third Man and The Fallen Idol, both directed by Carol Reed.) I couldn’t find a copy to download, but the reviews of the film seemed good, and I suspect it would convert well.

If you’re looking for a thriller-plus, you’d be hard pressed to find a better book. The Ministry of Fear strikes the right balance between intrigue and deeper themes. It’s another excellent adventure in Greeneland.

The Master & His Emissary: The Divided Brain & the Making of the Modern World by Iain McGilchrist

Growing up in America as a member of the Baby Boom generation, I know that I’ve lived in the best place and the best time in the history of the world—or at least very close to it. Canada, some European countries, Australia, and later Japan can lay some claims to being the best places ever, but suffice it to say that I’ve been lucky. Yet, despite all the material comfort and security that my country and culture have allowed me, there’s still a sense that things aren’t as they should be. The twentieth century is full of contradictions: untold wealth and prosperity interrupted by horrific wars; deep economic depressions despite the existence of all the ingredients of prosperity; the threat of nuclear annihilation; a culture that sometimes seems alien to human concerns; and civilizations that degrade the natural environment with wanton indifference. Thus, despite my good fortune, I’ve been sympathetic to critiques of contemporary culture. My introduction to such a critique came from Theodore Roszak’s The Making of a Counter-Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and Its Youthful Opposition (1969), which I was assigned to read in my freshman year in college for my course “Introduction to Political Theory.” From that introduction, I went on to read the likes of Hannah Arendt, Lewis Mumford, Jacques Ellul, Phillip Rieff, the Frankfurt School, Jürgen Habermas, William Irwin Thompson, Wendell Berry, and others. I’ve found resonance with critiques of contemporary Western culture. And much of Asia and other developing regions have adopted Western culture, especially its economics and technology. I hasten to add that I’m well acquainted and sympathetic to the champions of our contemporary world, too, and as this is also “the best of times.” I appreciate the positive perspective as well as the negative.

I mention all this because now I have now encountered a new diagnosis and critique of many of the problems of Western culture that strikes me as uniquely insightful and truly ingenious.

College literature professor turned psychiatrist, Iain McGilchrist, has written a two-part book about the anatomical split in our brains and how that split in functions affects how we perceive the world and creates our culture. According to McGilchrist, we can consider our culture from the perspective of the different functions of the two different hemispheres of the brain. (For some further background, see my earlier post about McGilchrist’s RSA Animate presentation and the book he wrote as a follow-up to this masterwork under review here.) In the first part of the book, McGilchrist focuses on anatomical and functional details of the brain, with the well-known but often misunderstood division of the left and right hemispheres. The split is not, as first thought, a neat division of language and logic on the left versus vision, music, and feeling on the right. Functions for each of these skills draw on both sides of the brain. However, the brain is divided and is different on each side. In fact, it doesn’t even sit symmetrically within the cranium: it’s torqued (Yanklovian torque) as if someone had twisted it slightly from the bottom so that the right front is slightly larger than its left counterpart, and the left posterior just a bit larger than its right counterpart. Also, the two sides are joined by a bridge, the corpus callosum, which serves as the gatekeeper that regulates the traffic between the two halves. This (rather narrow) bridge provides a clue about the division of functions within the brain. The gatekeeper often performs its most important work when it inhibits traffic between the two halves. Why? Because each half has its own outlook or way of perceiving the world.

McGilchrist spends much of the book examining the two different ways each side of the brain perceives the world: the right deals with living, dynamic, unique, and context-dependent portions of the environment. The left side deals with (and creates) the static, still, and minutely focused parts of our attention. Each side has evolved to deal with two different needs. The two hemispheres of the brain cooperate, but their perspectives are mostly separate. Thus, language involves both sides of the brain, but the left side, with its emphasis on static, detailed information dominates vocabulary and syntax issues. Thus, while an impulse toward speech may originate in the right brain, those impulses must pass to the left side to obtain full expression. Here is where stroke victims and the subjects of split-brain surgeries (severing the corpus callosum to alleviate epileptic seizures) provide amazing clues about the different functions of the two hemispheres. McGilchrist wades through this research to deepen our understanding and appreciation of these issues.

But if the book were only a catalog of “our amazing divided brain!” it would prove exciting but not profound. The profundity value of the book comes from McGilchrist’s ability to trace the effects of this division of the brain into daily life, especially into a portrait of its influence on the formal culture of the West. (He doesn’t address Eastern culture, begging off for lack of acquaintance.) McGilchrist’s knowledge of Western culture, chiefly literary and philosophical culture, is impressive. McGilchrist argues that Western culture since the Enlightenment, and especially after the Romantic reaction to the Enlightenment, has been dominated by a left-brain perspective. The left-brain focuses on the static, the manufactured (i.e., the not living, not organic), and that which we can manipulate and control and which therefore pays easily identifiable dividends. The left-side also prefers the literal to the metaphoric and the artificial to the natural. 

McGilchrist finds this especially true in the 20th-century when examining contemporary literature and philosophy, as well as the broader cultural milieu. McGilchrist locates times in Western cultural history when attitudes, beliefs, and practices reflected in the two different perspectives and functions of the brain were balanced, such as in Periclean Athens and the Renaissance. Problems arose early, on the other hand, when the pre-Socratics, such as Heraclitus, with his emphasis on flux and change, were shunted aside by Plato and Aristotle, who preferred the static and established  “reason” as the ideal. Indeed, from Plato through Kant, Western philosophy emphasized the left-hemisphere perspective (with some exception for Spinoza: “Spinoza was one of the few philosophers, apart from Pascal, between Plato and Hegel to have a strong sense of the right-hemisphere world.” McGilchrist, Iain (2010-08-16). The Master and His Emissary (Kindle Locations 3804-3805). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.). In the broader culture, religion offered a good deal of counter-balance to the left-sidedness of philosophy. McGilchrist argues that with Hegel, philosophy begins to take a corrective turn. McGilchrist, following Leon Sass, agrues that modern culture displays many of the traits of schizophrenia. Publisher’s Weekly writes of Sass’s book Madness and Modernism: Insanity in the Light of Modern Art, Literature, and Thought:

Does the schizophrenic's chaotic inner world resemble modern art and literature? Sass, a clinical psychologist and Rutgers professor, argues that schizophrenia and modernism display striking affinities: fragmentation, defiance of authority, multiple viewpoints, self-referentiality and rejection of the external world for an omnipotent self or, alternately, a total loss of self. While the parallels he draws often seem superficial, there is much to ponder in Sass's notion that schizophrenia's core traits are exaggerations of tendencies fostered by our culture. 

As this quote suggests, McGilchrist, following Sass, finds striking resemblances that McGilchrist identifies as a manifestation of a left-brain perspective run awry. Identifying and counter-acting this trend is a defining part of McGilchrist’s project. He writes:

Hegel, along with Heraclitus and Heidegger, has a particular place in the unfolding story of the relationship between the cerebral hemispheres, in that, it seems to me, his philosophy actually tries to express the mind's intuition of its own structure – if you like, the mind cognising itself. His spirit is like an unseen presence in this book, and it is necessary to devote a few pages to his heroic attempts to articulate, in relation to the structure of the mind or spirit (Geist), what lies almost beyond articulation, even now that we have knowledge of the structure of the brain. 

McGilchrist, Iain. The Master and His Emissary (Kindle Locations 5477-5481). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

Along with Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein, among German-language philosophers, receive extended and sympathetic treatment (demonstrating that McGilchrist willingly suffers through some dense and challenging prose to retrieve nuggets of insight). Also receiving favorable treatment and consideration are lesser-known figures like Husserl, Scheler, and Merleau-Ponty: each gives voice and insight into the function of the right brain. Finally, McGilchrist considers the American pragmatists, John Dewey and William James, for their useful perspectives on philosophy and the organic nature of reality.  

My choice of the Nietzschean fable of the Master and his emissary suggests that right at the heart of the relationship between the hemispheres I see a power struggle between two unequal entities, and moreover one in which the inferior, dependent party (the left hemisphere) starts to see itself as of primary importance.

Id. at 5481-5483.

Is all of this worth the effort? I think so. It’s a very valid and live issue, I believe. How we view our world, what perspectives we take, will change the course of our actions. If we do in fact give predominance to the left-brain perspective, we will reap consequences that will likely backfire on us. Like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, we have loosed its magic on the world, but we have lost control. We need the Master, the living world of the right brain, to come to the rescue.

The Unknown Known: What You Didn't Know You Didn't Know: A Film by Errol Morris

“My goodness, what should we think of such a film?” I can hear Donald Rumsfeld saying it now. His good-natured, awe-shucks language serves as a veneer on this most ambitious and arrogant man. 

For those of you who may have forgotten, Donald Rumsfeld served as the U.S. Secretary of Defense for George W. Bush. On the filming and questioning end, we have the acclaimed documentary filmmaker Errol Morris, whose documentary The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert McNamara is among my favorite films. Indeed, I savored the anticipation of comparing the McNamara experience with Rumsfeld’s, but the comparison fell flat.

Someone likened McNamara to the Flying Dutchman, sailing from port to port in search of redemption. In The Fog of War, we see McNamara trying to come to terms with the tragedy of Vietnam, the tragedy of Lyndon Johnson, the harrowing experience of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the loss of innocence (if that’s the right term) caused by the assassination of JFK. He came across as genuine and conflicted—not an evil man. He believed in his calling, and he remained loyal to the memory of the two presidents under whom he served. McNamara did only one stint in government: Secretary of Defense for Kennedy and Johnson (excluding military service in WWII for the Army Air Corps under Curtis LeMay) .

Rumsfeld doesn’t generate sympathy; he generates perplexity. His smile and charm are like the smile of the Cheshire Cat: he hides behind it. Morris lets us know that when Rumsfeld took the helm at the Pentagon for the second time (he held the job under Gerald Ford as well) he had the reputation of a consummate Washington player. One gets the sense from his resume and from keeping pals like Dick Cheney that he never went into anything naively.

We learn in the film that Rumsfeld is a memo-maker, writing notes to himself and others incessantly. “Snowflakes”, he (or someone) came to call them. He thinks on paper, or at least seems to think. But here's the enigma: the man who tried to reason out his votes as a young congressman appears immune to real reflection—at least by the time that he’s serving in the Bush Administration. One takes away from the film no admission of misjudgment or mistake and only a cursory admission of uncertainty about the whole Iraq War undertaking.

 
I’ve read recently about human reasoning as a vehicle for persuasion rather than a process for reaching truth. Sperber and Mercier have proposed the Argumentative Theory of Reason that claims that humans developed reasoning skills to persuade others. (Their paper here and summaries here & here.)  In a group with open discussion and the ability to examine and criticize others, reasoning can work well. However, when we attempt to reason on our own, our reasoning goes astray under the influence of the confirmation bias and other self-interested motives. Iain McGilchrist in his RSA Animate short and in his book The Master and His Emissary makes a related point about the brain. McGilchrist argues that the right brain, which perceives experience in context and dynamically, is undercut by the static, abstract, and tightly focused left-brain that is dominant (but not exclusive) in the production of language. McGilchrist writes: 

Sequential analytic ‘processing’ also makes the left hemisphere the hemisphere par excellence of sequential discourse, and that gives it the most extraordinary advantage in being heard. It is like being the Berlusconi of the brain, a political heavyweight who has control of the media. Speech is possible from the right hemisphere, but it is usually very limited. We have seen that thought probably originates in the right hemisphere, but the left hemisphere has most syntax and most of the lexicon, which makes it very much the controller of the ‘word’ in general. Coupled with its preference for classification, analysis and sequential thinking, this makes it very powerful in constructing an argument.

McGilchrist, Iain (2010-08-16). The Master and His Emissary (Kindle Locations 6099-6104). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

I mention this because watching this film seems to lend so much support to this perspective. In appearance and in language (oral and written), Rumsfeld comes across as the consummate thinker and reflector, but in reality, it’s all so much bull shit. He makes no connection between the realities in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Guantanamo and his words. In print and briefly in the film, Morris notes that Rumsfeld was very taken with the issue of Pearl Harbor and how the Japanese were able to attack U.S. bases when the U.S. knew that an attack was likely. (In articles appearing in the New York Times, Morris further discusses Rumsfeld’s interest in the work of Roberta Wohlstetter and Thomas Schelling about Pearl Harbor.) In fact, we learn that in July 2001 Rumsfeld wrote a memo about how such an event might occur again and (presumably) how to avoid it. But he makes no substantive connection with the events of 9/11. This happened on his watch. One plane crashed into his Pentagon. All words, no connections.

The film takes its title from one of Rumsfeld’s most famous utterances. You must watch to the end of the film to unpack what he said and then attempt to figure out what he means. In the end, it just seems to have been words, words, words.

At the conclusion of The Fog of War I felt sympathy for McNamara and I said to friends at the theatre, “they should send this to the Bush Administration”. I don’t think anyone in the Bush Administration watched that film before heading off into the war in Iraq. Alas, at the end of The Unknown Known, I can't feel sympathy for Rumsfeld. I feel sorry for us. I think we got suckered.

The Risk Agent by Ridley Pearson

Several years ago at the Iowa City Book Festival, I heard Ridley Pearson speak in the Old Capital. Like many a writer, he started off in another calling, but he couldn’t resist attempting a book. He eventually received recognition (sales), and he's made a career of it. He related that, among other things, he participated in a rock bank (“The Rock Bottom Remainders”) with Stephen King, Amy Tan, and Dave Barry (along with others). But mostly Pearson talked about writing and his book, The Risk Agent. The Risk Agent arose out of a teaching stint in creative writing he did at a college in Shanghai. He reported that you could learn a lot about life in China from the essays of 20 year-olds. 

The Risk Agent centers of two characters, one is a brash, use-your-fists American with a wary eye and a soft heart. He’s brought to China to try to resolve a kidnapping, and his employers match him with a young, American-educated Chinese woman who’s trained as a forensic accountant. The plot gets thick with the Chinese police (local and state security), an American corporation doing business—perhaps some shady business—in China, a rival Chinese corporation, and lots of thugs. The setting is in and around Shanghai. Pearson weaves in many local landmarks and brings in as much local and Chinese culture as he can. For instance, we learn that there’s a Shanghainese language besides the standard Mandarin. (Our American hero, of course, speaks both.)

Pearson’s book is a romp. The plotting is extensive and takes the two protagonists to the tops of Shanghai’s mushrooming glass-box high-rises, into back alleys, and then concludes with a brief trip into the countryside. There’s lots of movement and action here. The characters are tolerably rounded, and we can easily tell the good guys (and gals) from the bad guys. Thus, if you’d like a view contemporary Shanghai and environs with a prototypical American and classy Chinese woman who can throw a punch and remain inscrutable, you can enjoy this book. I listened to it via Audible. I thought it went on too long. The dénouement could have come sooner for me. But if you’re looking for a romp through contemporary China, join the ride.

The Case of the Love Commandos: A Vish Puri Mystery by Tarquin Hall

Readers of this blog will know that I’ve become quite a fan of Tarquin Hall’s Vish Puri books. They satisfy on a couple of levels. They are neat little mysteries. One blurb calls Puri “the Indian Hercule Poirot”, while others compare him to Alexander McCall Smith’s “The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency” series set in Botswana. Fun plotting (and sub-plotting), along with insights into Indian culture, make the books work. In fact, it’s this later point about the insight into Indian culture that make the books so fun for me. Hall is an outsider who’s peaked behind the curtain or at least one who’s bothered to look. His comments on roadways and traffic, unique Indian phrases, Indian snacks, arranged marriages, exams—I could go on, but you get a catalogue of life here. For someone still trying to figure things out, observations that confirm my own thinking or that elucidate the strange are most welcome, especially when shared in such a fun format. 

This book in the series deals with arranged marriages, “love marriages” (not arranged), caste, and political corruption—issues that remain at the very heart of Indian society today. Vish Puri, long-time husband in an arranged marriage, isn’t convinced that the trend from arranged marriages to love marriages is necessarily a good one (nor am I entirely), but he nevertheless gets involved with an effort to the thwart an arranged marriage goes awry. Having gone down the rabbit hole, Puri finds himself dealing with the Dalits (once known as “Untouchables”), the lowest rung on the caste rung, which isn’t supposed to exist, but does persist still in varies guises. Throw in genetic testing and a large scientific research enterprise—well, you should have the picture by now. 

Vish Puri has once again not only cracked the case, but he’s cracked many a smile on my face. Informative, fun, and insightful, this book is a great read for understanding India while following the intrigues of the ace detective (and his mother!). 

Istanbul Passage by Joseph Kanon

Author Joseph Kanon’s Istanbul Passage is a fine thriller, full of the intrigue of espionage and the attendant moral quandaries that the best writers in the field, Greene, Ambler, and Le Carre, do so well. Set in post-WWII Istanbul, the Second World War has only recently ended, but already the intrigues of the Cold War have commenced. Germany and Eastern Europe have unearthed not only Jewish refugees hoping for a secure future by passing to Palestine (then a British protectorate), but also war criminals, some of whom know things valuable to the U.S., the Soviets, and maybe even the Turks, who are caught between the two new superpowers.

The central character is an expatriate American businessman turned sometime spy. Leon Bauer is mostly a courier, but then on “one last mission” things go astray. Far astray. Now Leon, who speaks Turkish and knows his way around the famed city, must use wits and guile that he’d never had to use before to try to turn things toward . . . what? Leon isn’t just presented with issues of tactics, but some troubling moral questions, too. Whom is he helping? Who’s trying to get him? Why should he help a likely war criminal? Besides the atmospherics of Istanbul and Ottoman intrigue, Kanon keeps his readers wondering about what will happen next, whom to trust not to trust, and what Leon can do to preserve some sense of moral rectitude that we know that he seeks. 

#JLF 2013 speaker Kanon whom I heard in Durbar Hall. Thanks again, JLF!

I was a little reluctant about this book because I’d seen a film version of this book, The Good German which didn’t work for me (or many other viewers either, it seems). But while the film didn’t work for a variety of reasons, I know now how the book could. Kanon has staked out an era (the immediate post-war) that is fertile for intrigue and moral quandaries, much as Le Carre did with the Cold War and Alan Furst (with less moral tension) in the immediate pre-war and early war period. He’s worth another read.