2024

Uh, right. Catching up here on a very light year.

Goodbye Madame Butterfly: sex, marriage and the modern Japanese woman, Sumie Kawakami

Remember this being strangely unpleasant, but I can't recall why. Strangely judgy in places and not others, maybe?

Vinyl junkies: adventures in record collecting, Brett Milano

A slightly amusing but oddly sexist bit:

Women can love the music and relate to it. But you take a guy that really loves some kind of music, and he's got the potential to look at the back cover and say, "I wonder what tevery other record by this guy would sound like? Maybe I can find more records by everybody who played on this one. And maybe I'm gonna start collecting records with guys on the cover who wear red hats, just because I like that too."

The Catcher was a spy: the mysterious life of Moe Berg, Nicholas Dawidoff

Somewhere between interesting and sad. Moe Berg seems to have told a lot of tall tales and invented a meaning in life for himself.

Japanese lessons: a year in a Japanese school through the eyes of an American anthropologist and her children, Gail R. Benjamin

Embarrassingly bad. This one deserves its own section, because I took notes.

So. Where did Japanese Lessons go so very, very wrong? The main problem is that it was written by an anthropologist who apparently has never studied a human being outside of her immediate circle of experience. Anything that's even slightly different from her WASPish (I'm guessing here, but I bet I'm right) upbringing is "weird" or "wrong" somehow. She's surprisingly judgy, but seems unaware of her own idiocies.

Page 8: "Think of nine hundred bicycles converging through narrow lanes on the school and the problem of where to put so many bikes during the school day!" Yes, I'm thinking of it Gail. I don't have any trouble thinking of it, in fact, since I grew up in the Netherlands, where this is the norm. It's not a difficult fucking problem.

Page 13: "Because of the nature of the writing system, people in Japan seldom use typewriters and make a fair number of mistakes when handwriting." Yes, "because." WTF are you smoking, lady? Oh, incidentally, this was part of a paragraph in which Gail seems confused that the school specified the hardness of the pencil (hey, genius, they fucking do that in America, too, you were just too stupid to understand what "no. 2" meant, apparently) or the type of eraser.

Page 14: "For swimming, a pair of the physical education program, there is an ugly navy blue swimsuit for girls..." OK, "ugly"? Again, WTF are you smoking, lady? Are you really an anthropologist?

Page 15: "The first day Sam and Ellen were sick, she came to our door looking for them. After that I went down to notify her if they were not going to school." This in reference to a parent who would lead all the children from the immediate neighbourhood in their walk to school. In other words, Gail was all "ladida, I'm not going to bother telling them my kids are ill and not to wait for them" until after the first time? WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU? How FUCKING irresponsible can you be? Well, buckle up, because we'll find out...

Page 22: "Because comparisons between Japan and other countries show the relative superiority of Japanese students increasing more and more as the number of years of schooling increases, it is not unreasonable to suppose that it is theier schooling that gives them their advantage." Nor is it reasonable, Gail. This will no doubt come as a shock to a third-rate "anthropologist" like you, but other things increase along with schooling: age, years spent eating a Japanese diet, years spent playing with Japanese peers, years spent watching Japanese television, ... How FUCKING stupid do you have to be to not understand this? Yes, maybe schooling is the difference, but absolutely nothing in this statement indicates that it is (nor in the following paragraphs).

Chapter four: almost the only properly interesting thing in the book: a discussion of "han" groups. Semi-longterm (semester? year?) groups, designated by the teacher. These groups do projects together, work on assignments together, etc.

Page 68: "We see infants as dependent and all too connected to other people; they need to become independent and capable, to trust their own perceptions [...] The Japanese see infants as isolated, with only their own interests to guide them, needing to be brought into social relationships in order to appreciate and accept the moral behavior that groups entail." Really? Intersting thought exercise, perhaps, but this seems a bizarre oversimplication of what's really going on (clearly both things).

Page 70: Re: politeness levels in speech and social hierarchy: "English speakers, however, usually avoid thinking overtly about these choices and their social implications. Japanese, on the contrary, are quite self-conscious about the same sorts of choices and interpret their linguistic decisions as socially significant, revealing of hierarchy, and burdensome." Really, Gail? When did you become an expert linguist? Given how much of a sham-anthropologist you seem, I'm going to politely ask you for a fucking source on this bullshit you just pulled out of your ass. Fucking hell.

Page 137, 138: Gail's flag-waving right-wing idiocy to the forefrunt: she thinks nobody bats an eye at the Pledge of Allegiance, the national anthem, or the US flag being used in US schools. She claims "no one seems to think this is inappropriate." Maybe in butt-hole Alabama, Gail.

Page 170: "...most people feel there is something missing if Christmas, however secular, does not include charity." No, Gail. Again, that's you and your WASPish friends. The entire world doesn't give a flying fuck about your magic man's supposed birthday, and your bizarre-o traditions are not universal. HOW DID YOU EVER GET A FUCKING DEGREE IN ANTHRO?!?!?

Page 192: I can't even. Gail doesn't tell her useless lazy-ass children to do their fucking homework and she doesn't follow the rules of the school, instead self-righteously complaining about being told what to do. Yes, you're being told what to do because you're an incompetent twit and your children suffer because of it. Fucking hell.

Page 194: Because Gail is so utterly useless, her daughter takes to signing her initials on the booklet the school sends home with notes for the parents. Then Gail has the temerity to claim "In Japanese terms [it was all right]." NO IT FUCKING WASN'T! You just were being a dreadful parent. Again. FUCKING HELL! How unaware can you be?!

Page 195: Gail can't be arsed to make sure her stupid kids take everything they need with them in the morning, so the school sends a note home telling her that her kids are forgetting too many things and to take care that doesn't happen in the future. Gail's response is beyond moronic; she "became indignant at the use of such techniques to enlist home support for school goals." WHAT THE FUCK LADY! You and your kids being forgetful idiots isn't the school's fucking problem to solve—it's yours! What. The. Fuck. I can't really put into words how angry I was by this point in the book.

Page 226: "People learn more in their first five years of life than at any later time." By what bullshit made-up pulled-out-of-your-dumb-arse metric, Gaily dear?

As you can imagine, I finished this book out of spite. I hate the author with the heat of a million supernovae. Fucking hell. It's a goddamn' crime against humanity that this drivel was published. I think forcing myself to finish this POS book kept me from reading more this year—that's how upsetting I found it.