The Power of Habit - A Review

As I was processing some difficult news this morning, my eye noticed the cover of the latest book I've been reading, Charles Duhigg's The Power of Habit.

The power of habit leads us to movement, progress, success, health even when facing unfortunate developments. Duhigg discusses the case of a woman who goes to a lab and over the course of two years manages to radically transform her life. She has not only successfully quit smoking, but also managed to run a marathon, and move up at work. It turns out, according to her neurologists, that her success was linked to a change in the patterns inside her brain.

The author postulates that the power of habit is so grand that without it, we would be lost. Much of good can be accomplished with relative ease due to it. While reading from it I got to thinking of my chess tutor when I was eleven. I had a hard time staying put, in a chair, and I always sought the easy way out. The easy check mate. "Muscle memory, Brikena, muscle memory. It needs to get exercised. While sitting down. Don't move your right leg. Don't tap on the table. Don't chew gum. Focus....." he used to say to me. I didn't like it when he'd say it as I'd rather check mate the other party quickly (or get check mated by it quickly) and run outside to my friends for a game of whatever.

It's amazing how we can get good at so me many things by relying on habits that at times appear to be clothed in antithesis. Consider bike riding and chess. The reason why I mention the former is because Duhrigg makes mention of it in his book as well and my experience is congruent with his explanation. He mentions bike riding as an example of practicing the "art of not thinking."

Biking like swimming are things I learned by myself. The same applied to chess in the beginning but once I displayed some understanding, I was given a tutor. I would watch my Dad and brother play and I'd mimetically get to a point of understanding. That's how I got to see how limited but dangerous the queen could be and how impulsive and manipulatable the knight is. But I digress.

When it came to swimming, it happened in the Adriatic. It was afternoon. I had a red bathing suit on. I had been in the water for hours and my lip was purple. My mom kept wanting me to come out of the water but I said "no!" "I need to learn this now!" I needed to do a frog style underwater. I just had to keep practicing. And so, after swallowing who knows how much salty water, I became, to quote Mom, fish-like. To this time, diving and swimming frog style under water is one of the most relaxing experiences in life. You learn it by doing. By not thinking, by simply allowing the body to enter in a dialog of understanding with water. The same applies to bike riding. I have a hard time with visual memory. I do, however, remember vividly when I first got to ride an adult's bike and swim long distances in the sea.

I loved riding bikes when I was a child. And I loved chess. I had two camps of friends. The popular ones who leaned more towards visibility and public games and the really smart but painfully shy group would come to my parents' guest quarters and practice the various theoretical chess openings. The chess nerds, or as my brother used to call them, the Kasparovs. Kena, dinner time. Are the Kasparovs gone yet? The art of thinking came in handy with the Kasparovs. And its sort of opposite is what I espoused when frolicking in the sun with the bike riders and swimmers.

The art of thinking and the art of non thinking are required in both activities. When it came to chess, I had to learn the hierarchy of strategy and how to better fight the opponent. When to attack the tower, or make the queen move so that the king would finally get nervous and eventually start moving nervously till he'd get check mated.

When it came to riding bikes or teaching my friends how to ride them, the advice was simple, and funnily in sync with Duhigg's premise: do, don't think. Duhigg makes the point that learning how to do different activities is going to require different modus operandi. For instance, the skills required to learning how to ride a bike are not easily explicable to the conscious mind. Chess is a bit of a different story.

Duhigg says that our conscious mind is not nearly fast enough or accurate enough to handle even what seems like a relatively simple task such as hitting a golf ball–which is why superior athletes must learn to practice “the art of not thinking,” in order to succeed.

In sum, The Power of Habit is a good read. It might make you revisit your past and the times when you first learned how to do things you're currently good at.

Steve McQueen's Shame: A Review

I saw Shame today. I like Michael Fassbender in most the films he's done with one exception: Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds.

I generally tend to not judge accents as I'm a veritable soup of idiolects myself. However, Fassbender's accent in Inglourious Basterds is the stuff of headaches. But back to the Steve McQueen's Shame.

I like Fassbender's work a good deal. There's a certain gravitas he projects that few actors have the ability to carry. Born in Germany and raised in Ireland, he's a picture of cultural and linguistic diversity which is perhaps the reason why he appears to effortlessly play anything from a New Yorker to an aristocrat a-la-Jane-Eyre, or an X-Men-er.

The premise of Shame is the 'text' of shame and how it is engendered within a Judeo-Christian framework regardless of how far from prescribed religiosity it finds itself. I found the form of the film beautifully mimetic of a religious ritual. One good decision McQueen made is to go for Fassbender. It takes courage to take on certain roles and I most definitely don't see a Brad Pitt or a Clooney doing the same thing. Ok, maybe Colin Farrell or Jared Leto who by the way came to a mind a lot when viewing this film. Think, Requiem for a Dream, perhaps.

Most critics regard the film to be an examination of modern/urban sociality and how much the contemporary person wants to be tethered to others even though a good deal of current life seems to be about heightened individuality and insularity. McQueen's cinematic strength is not content, however. As a matter of fact, it rarely is. One thing he seems to do well, however, is explore the substance of form. The shots are clean, fast but not furious. McQueen's choices made me think of Doug Liman's portraiture styles. The camera rests on the characters just long enough till it gets moving again to the next point in the plot. Incidentally, this is how the film manages to deviate dullness. Aesthetically, this film is rich. Some of the city shots were also reminiscent of Nicolas Winding Refn's film Drive.

The past few years, at least since the actual boom of web 2.0, there seems to be little, if any, change in aesthetics. Incidentally, Vanity Fair's Kurt Andersen has a new article out on the question whether we as a culture are stagnating aesthetically. I thought of it while watching the film, actually. You can read it here.

I suppose it makes sense that form remains the one last frontier that's resisting change as all else around it has been changing mercilessly. Think technology. Hanging on to one thing seems to be the one crutch one needs to cope with the novelty and unpredictability of everything. Or is it? This seems to be the question that Brandon, the main character, tries to answer and eventually reject. Much in life seems to come easily to him. Much but not everything. He seems to bridle all else but basic urges about things he deems utterly trivial in broad daylight and when in the company of full lucidity.

Brandon seems to have it all on the surface. He's well employed, is generally well liked, at least on the surface, and seems to be governed by self-discipline. Only, he doesn't seem to do so as well as he appears.

He appears to want to connect to the world but the world seems to move simply too fast for him. His attachments are flimsy and most of the people he meets are forgettable. There seems to be a crisis of supply and demand when it comes to meaningful human connectivity. Brandon wants the opposite of what he has but the urban survival camp doesn't seem to be capable of providing it. He desperately wants the opposite of what he can get and every time he tries to leave his patterns of living, he falls right back into the known regardless of how much it is mired in dysfunction. Every night he goes after a new pursuit so that the next morning he can go back to all he knows.

Carey Mulligan plays his sister. I have only liked her in one film, An Education. All the other films that have ensued are nothing more than an imitation of her debut film. But then again, it would be hard to compliment a character who needs little support. Fassbender is no Pitt. He needs little support from other characters. A better script would have helped, no doubt.

Jessica Chastain is good in this. Very good. She's another example of an underrated performer often stuck in incoherent filmic choices, think the widely overrated The Help.

In sum, I enjoyed seeing Fassbender and I enjoyed the cinematography of Shame. What I didn't enjoy is McQueen's verbose effort to school the audience on addiction. His effort was, at best, sophomoric. His director of photography, however gets an A. Fassbender gets a solid A- but only because there's only that much he can do given the script.

In Shame, he is close to aces.

This film won't make you want to go back and brush up on your Descartes. Or perhaps Kant. It might just make you want to watch a bit of Kubrick and perhaps get a bit melancholy that he's been gone for a bit over a decade now.

Happiness and Excoriating

"I've got to tell you something and I know you'll excoriate me," says he as I drive through the rainy streets of the city thinking of ways to improve two things I'm currently struggling with. Driving, like working out, is a good way to clear my head. Another way is going down by the beach, sitting on my favorite bench that's usually unoccupied around 9pm and between 7am-8:30am.

"What makes you think I'll excoriate you?" I say to him as I make a right turn.

"Because I know you. Plus, I know I'm in need of being excoriated." he adds. Usually, I would have interjected one of my usual one-liners known only to those who know my discursive routines. Instead, I say nothing. I'm in too involved a mood. My mind's busy. I say nothing and almost enjoy the silence for a bit.

"I might have something you'll excoriate me about, too", I finally say, "but let me hear yours first."

He proceeds to tell me the details and I ask him if he needs to hear from me the same thing I've told him a number of times in the past. He says he does. He feels like a review. "I feel like a good review," he says. Thus, we review.

I've thought a lot about happiness recently and how it relates to micro and macro sociality. Blame it on the rain, I suppose. It does have a tendency to lead to written fecundity. Writing pours out of me when it rains. Incidentally, I just finished a draft I'm submitting in two weeks. But back to the happiness thing.

Happiness cannot happen without self-examination. This is not some adage I had to think long and hard about. This is what the Western canon has taught me since early childhood. Start way South with Sophocles, move on a bit North to Plautus, pick up a bit of Dante in the neck of Florence, head North and West to Shakespeare, head back South and pick up some Goethe and, while you're at it, swing by France and have a sip of existentialism and what you'll end up gleaning is the following: Happiness cannot happen without self-examination. We cannot know the other, without knowing the self. Nobody can tell us what feels good to us, unless we experience it ourselves. I love the smell of pines. Absolutely, love it. It drives me insane with happiness. I discovered it when I was fourteen, right after learning how to dance with a tall boy with whose family we were vacationing and who was a horribly bad badminton partner. Happiness needs context in order to get registered. It needs a vehicle of narration. Without storytelling ability, it cannot be.

And it most certainly cannot happen without a clear grasp of history, one's own history. There's a better chance to face what's around the corner when you know and understand the corners you've left behind. And living because one can is no answer to existence. While existence might be nothing more than a string of coincidences, what our canon teaches us is that collectively we feel better about our individual and collective experience in life when we view it in connection to something larger than ourselves, like a bigger group of people, or a larger cluster of interests.

One of the first Shakespeare bits I memorized as a teen was a Hamlet soliloqui. I mostly saw Hamlet as a spoiled brat, not that different from other spoiled brats I knew growing up. And yet, I was in love with his eloquence. He was a brat who had a way with language. I've never been able to resist this kind, the kind that has a way with language. And my history will back this up.

"What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how
infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and
admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like
a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet,
to me, what is this quintessence of dust?"

I always found it curious that while most people responded to the first verses, I was always keener on the "quintessence of dust" part. For some reason, I mostly use this phrase when break into German. I really don't know why. Translating Shakespeare into German is almost as sacreligeous as translating Goethe into English. My German counterparts often say, "Was ist denn mit der Quintessenz?!" Essence is fine enough a word, no? I wanted to say Quintessenz on Saturday. I didn't. I remember the context well. I was simply too tired to use it as using it would invite even more questions as to why my speech is often peppered with uncommon words.

The reason why I always respond to the "quintessence of dust" bit of the soliloqui is because it encapsulates the notion of life and human existence most fundamentally. And yet, it's poetic. It's association with nothingness is poetic. While our entire literary canon suggests than meaning resides in tropes, sometimes it feels better to embrace the simplicity of experience for what it is, a speck in time, a cluster of little somethings, some of which are good and others the stuff of anxiety, which inevitably make up one big trace.

The thing is, happiness is about shared experience. We need canon to live well. We can easily survive without a historical blueprint of existence. Animals do it. But to live and to want to live well, a script is needed, a well written one. One that says that happiness is our duty and that to go after it is somehow lofty a pursuit, noble even. We spend our lives going after goals, hard ones, to reach a level of happiness much of which seems to be rooted in status and accomplishment.

Without connectivity, we have no context, no history and few things taste better to one than being known, resisted, and eventually agreed with. Happiness is having someone who truly knows you and whom you truly know say to you that they've said or done something you'd excoriate them about. Bottom line, they know how you'll react and they know they'll feel better after sharing with you their short narrative. And while you've read their script over and over again you somehow feel good that they feel you know how to read them and, like a forgiving teacher, you'll excoriate them briefly but then you'll write little notes on the margins of their essay and they'll know how to get better and do right by you.

Familiarity gives me comfort because familiarity gives us all comfort. Humans like routine. It's
due to our enculturation. We have no say in the matter. It's like saying we like how water tastes after being deprived of it. Another synonym for familiarity is intimacy and intimacy is harder for some for it resides in the territory of vulnerability where impulse and unhoned instinct doesn't do very well and where damage can easily be dished out. Giving intimacy means getting known and there is no ouvre bigger and more significant than that. C.S. Lewis wrote that we "read to know we are not alone."

Those who say they can do without familiarity have never had the courage to acquire it, they're strangers to it. And one could never rely on someone who refuses familiarity because to refuse it means to refuse a shared history, connectivity. And while contentedness can happen free of context, happiness needs more, at the very least, it needs a semblance of importance. The feeling of sucking on frozen grapes makes some, including me, feel content. Wearing silk panty hose with a form-fitting black dress hand-made in Berlin in the early 90's while wearing high-heeled boots as I meet someone for dinner makes me feel good. I do it when I feel like my inner self needs excoriating so that it can get to feeling better.

When in Doubt, Think Dante

I think about Dante all the time.
All the time.
I especially think of Dante when in times of hardship.
Of course, it helps that since the age of nine I got in the habit of maniacally memorizing verse after verse and, oddly, have yet to forget a single stanza in the terza rima. Dante helps me organize my thoughts. His work helps me get centered and put things in perspective.

As a doctoral student in Germanics, I took a PhD course in Dante's Inferno. I was the only non-Italian PhD candidate in the course. The professor, one of the better known Dantisti in the States, asked me one day, "Brikena, come mai Dante?" i.e.: "Brikena, how come Dante?"

Stutteringly, I said: "Perche, eeee, insomma, perche mi parla...." i.e.: "Because uhm, well, because he talks to me."

Since early childhood, I've most likely spent thousands of hours reading Dante. Easily. Dante never feels like reading. It doesn't feel like work. It's like listening to music. It speaks to me. And unlike much else, it never disappoints. It always gives me something. It doesn't just take. It gives. Therein lies its unfading novelty and attraction. Novelty and attraction can only work well in the confines of giving. Deprive them of it and they'll vanish.

Dante understood that the human experience is marked by universality. He knew that while we might term certain emotions and feelings differently, our experience of the great basics, i.e., love, pain, anger, anxiety, difficulty are fundamentally the same whether one is professor Brunetto Latini who's condemned to inferno for eternity (see Canto XV) or Virgil, the guiding poet, who was unluckily born a few decades 'ahead of his time.'

Feeling good is 'dolce' and feeling badly is not. The dichotomy is clear to all. Dante refers to himself as two separate entities. On the one hand, there's the generally cerebral Dante, il poeta laureato, and on the other hand, there's Dante, l'uomo, the highly emotional man. The man, who faints at the sight of the great emotional pain of Paolo and Francesca in Canto V.

Dante embraces his emotional and cerebral sides fully. In my view, this is what makes me be as Dante-centric as I am. Dante fills a need. A need to self-soothe and inevitably self-ameliorate.

Why Dante, others, other than Prof. Di Tommaso have asked me. Why not Sophocles or Shakespeare? Or Goethe, even. For crying out loud, especially Goethe!

The answer is easy. I've long held that we don't get to choose art. Art chooses us. I believe this. As a matter of fact, I'll venture so much as to say that few things are solely choice-based. Very few. We think we choose but in most situations we are swayed to go one way over another.

Daily, I'm amazed at the multitude of applications that La Commedia lends itself to. And daily I'm tempted to apply it.

Dante spoke to me first on a cerebral level as someone with a doctorate of philosophy. He spoke to me equally strongly on a personal level. My whole life I've had difficulty with displays of emotions. I've always privileged my cerebral side. And unfairly so at times. But the older I get and the more I experience raw life, the more I allow myself to taste the opposite of ease, levity, and happiness, the more I'm drawn to Dante. It's hard, no, impossible, to ignore something that reaches you both on a cerebral and emotional level contemporaneously. Try it. You'll most likely fail.

What's been claiming most of my thoughts recently is the notion of the pursuit of happiness and it tenability. I've long wondered what it is that Dante must have experienced to write in Canto V that there's:
Nessun maggior dolore
Che ricordarsi del tempo felice
Nella miseria (lines 121-123)
There is no greater sorrow
Than to be mindful of the happy time
In misery.

Cerebrally, I've always known this. I've lectured on it plenty. Emotionally, I'm convinced that the only way to get happiness, to truly capture it albeit fleetingly, is to see it in conjunction with pain and memory. Happiness cannot exist in the confines of complacency. It couldn't. It needs the oxygen of immediacy. It can't be without. Happiness can only be when ridden with the anxiety of potential loss.

Being, at times, happy is the hardest task to accomplish. Some are aided by their respective genetic makeup to have a somewhat easier/harder time with happiness. Generally, however, happiness takes much conscious work. If left to chance, the end result will undoubtedly be difficult. The gift of introspection, some call it. This ability that some have to look inward to find answers to the human condition. Introspection is not a gift. Introspection is work, a lot of arduous work. Introspection cannot be given one. It needs to be acquired. One individual at a time.

Emerson Goodness

Was just reminded why I'm keen on Emerson. The following comes from his Notebooks (1841).
Tip of the hat to Tyler for the pointer.

"We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over & actually read a volume of 4 or 500 pages. Even the great books. “Come,” say they, “we will give you the key to the world” — Each poet each philosopher says this, & we expect to go like a thunderbolt to the centre, but the thunder is a superficial phenomenon, makes a skin-deep cut, and so does the Sage — whether Confucius, Menu, Zoroaster, Socrates; striking at right angles to the globe his force is instantly diffused laterally & enters not. The wedge turns out to be a rocket. I have found this to be the case with every book I have read & yet I take up a new writer with a sort of pulse beat of expectation.

New Videocast: What's Up with Dante's Pettiness?

In this episode I talk about Dante's rarely discussed 'petty' character.

This was first inspired by a conversation I had with a close friend about Dante's choice of characters in his Inferno.


You may view this episode here.

Feedback welcome.

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New Videocast: Individual Skill and Destiny in the Middle Ages

In this new episode of De Amore: On Love with Brikena Ribaj I talk about the character of Gregorious in Hartmann von Aue's Gregorius der gute Sünder. The question I raise is how a medieval character's skill set manages to inform the overall individual destiny of said character.

You can view this short episode here.

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Genius? No, I Do Not Agree with David Brooks

If you think the word 'genius' gets thrown around a lot in the vernacular, raise your hand. Well, metaphorically. Unless someone reads this to you out loud and you end up raising your [well, my, in this case] hand accompanied by a pronounced rolling of the eyes. Then you've entered another realm of bizarreness. But that's another story.

Let me explain why I am of the opinion that the word 'genius' is disrespectfully and superfluously exposed to the vernacular without much thought. The reason why I'm giving this some thought at this point is because of the recent NY Times piece on the topic by David Brooks.

Consider the following from said article. Brooks notes:

" What Mozart had, we now believe, was the same thing Tiger Woods had — the ability to focus for long periods of time and a father intent on improving his skills. Mozart played a lot of piano at a very young age, so he got his 10,000 hours of practice in early and then he built from there.

The latest research suggests a more prosaic, democratic, even puritanical view of the world. The key factor separating geniuses from the merely accomplished is not a divine spark. It’s not I.Q., a generally bad predictor of success, even in realms like chess. Instead, it’s deliberate practice. Top performers spend more hours (many more hours) rigorously practicing their craft."

You can read the rest of his piece here.

Brooks' article was the focus of much of our Sunday conversation and I thought I would share some of the thoughts shared.
First, Brooks seems to reduce genius to much fundamentally concentrated practice. Granted, practice is indispensable to success but there is something unique that natural ability alone coupled with utter dedication can contribute. Brooks mentions Tiger Woods. The reason why Tiger Woods is the best golf player to ever practice the game is not because of his long practice sessions. There comes a point where sheer talent catapults one to a point beyond compare. What marks him so very uniquely is also what he does off-court and how game-centered he is. Extremely high results are not derived only from focused practice, a strong desire, and ultimate focus but rather a combination of all of these things plus a good measure of raw talent/natural skill.

Genius is about achieving machine-like results through analogue processes. It's a holistic process that approximates the slow, methodical tedium that David Brooks calls genius. By way of his own admission, Brooks is coming from a modern point of view which is why his discussion of genius is incomplete. What constitutes 'genius' is a modern view, which is exactly why modernity is so bereft of real genius. Now granted, we have many, many examples of competency in our day and age. There is certainly no shortage of pluggers away which, naturally, is a positive.

Brooks mentions Mozart and how uncomplicated his earlier works were. Well, what about his later work?

Only people with a superficial knowledge of a field recognize its greatest figures because of the things they did well through practice. Granted, Mozart practiced a lot and his early compositions are ordinary and imitated but the prodigy aspect of Mozart isn't what people in the know respect most about him. What inspires awe are works like Mass in C Minor, the Requiem, the mature operas and symphonies. The greatest works weren't arrived at by driveling away in the menial fashion the way David Brooks suggests in his awfully superficial treatment of this very important concept.

Now let me submit another example. Dante. Dante wrote his Divina Commedia in the 'terza rima.' A total of 100 cantos all written with unbelievable precision in the third rhyme. The Divine Comedy comes to us circa 1300. Dante was in exile, he had no access to Ivy League libraries, super computers and resources, or even an iPhone with incredible applications. Jest aside, what Dante had, other than much dedication and work ethic, was incredible literary talent. He had that which many other writers didn't. Naturally, a whole lot of menial years are required before great works are accomplished. But hard work alone is not sufficient. A lot of people work hard and a lot of them are great at certain tasks. However, they're not producing Comedies or Requiems a dime a dozen.

Tip of the hat to my dear LS for the food for thought and always delightful conversation.

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New Videocast: Moderation in the Middle Ages

In this sixth episode of De Amore: On Love with Brikena Ribaj, I discuss the concept of moderation and what it meant to the people in the Middle Ages based on what the literature of the German Middle Ages teaches us.

This is one of the concepts in which I have the greatest scholarly interests. I find moderation not only relevant from a literary perspective but also significant with regards to modernity.

You can view this new episode here.

Feedback welcome, of course.

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Freud and Zen?

The Times has a most interesting spread on Western traditional attitudes about the mind and self-analysis and what Zen philosophy's answer is to both.

Here's a paragraph.

"...Rubin was convinced that “the marriage of Buddha and Freud” would benefit both disciplines. “When you combine the best of Buddhism and psychoanalysis,” he told me one day last winter, “you get a full-spectrum view of human nature focused on both health and spiritual potential as well as on the psychological forces we struggle with and the obstacles we unconsciously put in our way.” But people at the conference still seemed bunkered in their doctrines, and he often found himself tacking between camps. He was scheduled to summarize a dialogue between a Buddhist and a psychoanalyst, but he was suddenly struck by the fallacy that enlightenment meant complete freedom from self-deception.."

Read it all here.

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New Videocast: Anxiety and Wanderlust in the German Middle Ages

This is the most recent recording for my second podcast series De Amore: On Love with Brikena Ribaj.
This piece is about the character of Gahmuret in the German narrative from the Middle Ages, Parzival.

The question I tackle here is: "Why is it that the best of knights are always in a state of anxiety?" "Why do they have the urge to move from adventure to adventure?"

Familiarity with Wolfram von Eschebach's Parzival or the earlier French version, Perceval, the Story of the Grail by Chrétien de Troyes, can help but it's not a must.

All the episodes are now uploaded and running on iTunes as well as the blog.

You can view this episode here.

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New Videocast: Coachella and the text of Rock Festivals

In this videocast I speak about Coachella, the mega rock festival which just took place in Indio, California. Being both a music lover and a literary theorist, I find venues like large-scale music festivals most gripping and worthy of some commentary.

Just why is Coachella so popular with young people and young professionals? Is Indie music something that could be liked cross-generationally?

You can view me discussing these questions here.

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Mysteries of Pittsburgh: The Movie

Well, folks, one of my all-time favorite novels is adapted for the big screen. Mysteries of Pittsburgh, the movie, is coming out soon.
Few authors 'get' gender the way my favorite American novelist, Michael Chabon, does.
If you have not read the novel yet, do so.

I do have to note that I have some measure of hesitation with regards to the film as the character of 'Arthur' seems to have been left out. And in my view, Arthur was the making of the novel. But, it's a Chabon-based story and it's definitely worth a look. Let's hope the filmic adaptation of the novel oozes some needed Chabon-ness so that it can succeed.

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What I'm Reading

Edward Skidelsky's Ernst Cassirer: The Last Philosopher of Culture is definitely worthy of attention.
Ernst Cassirer, a German-Jewish philosopher (1874-1945), is one of the leading intellectuals of the Weimar period. His contributions to the liberal-idealist tradition are definitely worthy of more time and attention. I recommend.


Bethenny Frankel's Naturally Thin: Unleash Your SkinnyGirl and Free Yourself from a Lifetime of Dieting is an amusing and at times bizarre read. I have long maintained that dieting is rarely about the waist size and Frankel seems to support the same idea. In a roundabout way which is what makes her book, well, funny.
I find Frankel's book to be providing nothing new on the topic. What makes her book entertaining however, is how she explains that moderation is really where it's at.


William Cohan's House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street is an interesting 'reading' of the mess on Wall Street and how it it reached the point of break. This is an easy read and those who are not in the field of finance and economics should have no trouble following along. The book mostly delineates the far-reaching effects of unbridled greed. Definitely worthy a read.

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New Podcast Series

HetPer is proud to announce a second podcast series called De Amore: On Love. This series will focus on the concept of courtly love in the Middle Ages and how it is transmitted and received in later times.

These podcasts will be strictly literary in nature and the majority of the direct and indirect literary and historical references will come out of the European Middle Ages. The focus will mostly be on German, French, and Italian texts.

Stay tuned for the upcoming first episode which should become available in a few days.

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Susan Sontag: A Profile

I highly recommend this Times profile on the brilliant Susan Sontag.

"Then Sontag marries. The sequence of events is breathtakingly abrupt. She moves to attend the University of Chicago on a scholarship in the fall of 1949. In November she writes, “A wonderful opportunity was offered me — to do some research work for a soc[iology] instructor named Philip Rieff.” In the next entry, Dec. 2: “I am engaged to Philip Rieff.” A few pages later, after a trip to California to interview Thomas Mann, comes the entry of Jan. 3, 1950: “I marry Philip with full consciousness + fear of my will toward self-destructiveness.” And then she is on to “War and Peace” and Balzac and lists of works on theology. Her decision to marry Rieff is never explained or examined, and in fact she says nothing more about the matter, barring an ambiguous recounted dream, until she begins fulminating against the institution of marriage in 1956. The intervening years barely exist in the journals — five years dissolve in nine pages. The birth of her son in 1952 goes unrecorded; he makes his first appearance in an aside."

Find it here.

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New Podcast: Literary/Cinematic Analysis of Voyager, Part II

The new podcast is Part Two of a two-part literary/cinematic analysis. In this piece I compare and contrast the Swiss novel Homo Faber and its cinematic adaptation, Voyager. In this podcast I explore the relationships and relations between the key characters in these two narratives.
To listen to the new piece, click here.

The podcast is also available on iTunes under "Gendering the Media with Brikena Ribaj" along with the other weekly contributions.

Note: I picked this photograph from sartorialist as it oozes the kind of urban feel I get from Schloendorff's Voyager.

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New Podcast: Literary/Cinematic Analysis, Part I

The new podcast is Part One of a two-part literary analysis. In this piece I compare and contrast the Swiss novel Homo Faber and its cinematic adaptation, Voyager. In this analysis I explore the relationships and relations between the key characters.
To listen to the new piece, click here.

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2008: Reflections on a Year Gone

In some parts of the world it's already 2009 but where I am now it's still 2008. For at least a few more minutes. So, I took the opportunity to get to my laptop and make a few remarks.

I am the kind of person who subscribes to agito ergo sum by nature. And the more I'm on the move, whether it's by way of actual travel or just active engagement to what I do, the more amazed I am by how much gets accomplished in a single year.

However, this is not about a hierarchy of achievements. Far from it.

Achievements in and of themselves mean little if they don't reveal much of consequence about the overall human experience. I believe that and I'd like to think I live that, too.

Here is a list of my most memorable things 2008:

1) Experiencing the quotidian with my parents. The text behind this is hugely significant for me. I hadn't really done do since I was a wee kid as a result of my 15-year formal education. It was a wonderful, marking experience. Whether it was discussing life and philosophy with my Dad when on our way to the grocery store or Starbucks, or rediscovering the absolute wonder that is my Mom's artistic ability, it was a stupendous experience and the personal, familial, and professional highlight of my 2008!

2) Sharing some of the day-to-day summer routine with my 17-year-old German-raised niece and appreciating again how grateful I am for the linguistic and cultural diversity of one single family.

3) Grateful for the 'wells of inspiration' and that they did not run dry. On the contrary, they were kind, very kind.

4) Grateful and more mindful of the hands-on support I get from my behind-my-scenes 'peeps'.

5) Learning much more about current research in my immediate field of academic research and producing more published writing in it.

6) Music and how it empowers me daily. And grateful for the human factor who tolerates my constant need to be in its company.

7) Web 2.0. What a great technological expression! Even though I've been a blogger for a while it was not till 2008 that I became experientially and cognitively aware of the beauty of Web 2.0 and how it makes the fragment be in constant touch with the aggregate. Beautiful notion. Thank you, Web 2.0, for feeding those of us who thrive on constant information.

8) The gift or Art. Even though I am no artist, the arts run deeply in my my veins. For I am the granddaughter of a poet and the daughter, sister, cousin, friend, and lover of artists. This year I had the wonderful opportunity to learn more about the art of those closest to me and I stand in awe and full admiration. I think about their artistic contributions and I feel lucky to have enough sense and ability to appreciate their work.

9) The wonders, exhaustion, and beauty of travel.

10) Economy of speech and extravagance of action.

11) Driving by the mountains and being aware at that very moment of how 'infinite' I felt. It took years to gain actual awareness but I can now pinpoint a moment in time in 2008 when, faced with the mountains, I became one with the moment.

12) Living up to the old 'Ribaj clan' adage: 'We say we're going to do something and we actually do it."

13) Rediscovering the joys of discipline.

14) Embracing the fact that some of us unwind lying down looking at the screen while others do so moving about or doing outdoor sports. Accepting both routes with ease.

15) Loving, fearing, and appreciating every second when engaged in mountain biking on hard terrain. This might sound trivial to some but it's life-defining for those of us who 'are by doing.'

16) What a great year this was in the business of books! I raise my glass to the countless hours of great reading! Thank you, Tuesdays at Barnes&Noble. Who needs to chew brunch or lunch when you can cruise the new titles.

And so much more.

Have a great 2009 everyone. May the year be full of moments of active awareness. I wish that upon you, me, and mine.

Cheers!

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