Majo Montemayor Montemayor itibaren Baijala, West Bengal 712409, הודו
Lately, I've been hearing and seeing David Sirota everywhere, on NPR radio shows, on Salon.com and elsewhere, criticizing President Obama for failing to deliver the kind of radical economic policies he had hoped for. For more on his views, I turned to this book. Sirota contends that millions of Americans are full of rage at an economic system that is blatantly unjust, delivering the vast bulk of its rewards to a few at the top. So far, I'm with him -- and I give him credit because he appears to have seen this anger building much earlier than most other analysts. But he then takes his argument a step further. This anger, though unfocused, disconnected and atomized, has laid the groundwork for a new radical political reform movement that will produce fundamental change -- an uprising. Sirota travels around the country, visiting different outposts of the "uprising" -- but fails to make his arguments stick. More likely, the rage will cool as soon as the economy begins to recover and things will continue much as before. There is no uprising and there will not be one. Sirota establishes his "gonzo" credentials right from the first sentence: "I'm pretty sure I'm still at the Riviera Hotel here in Vegas. I know this not because I can see through the blurry haze of my hangover or think past this pounding headache or feel anything other than the sharp pain of dehydration in my stomach, but because I can still smell the cigarette smoke embedded in the wallpaper." What's remarkable about this is not only the fact that the words "I" or "my" appear seven times in one short paragraph but that the whole description is both unevocative and irrelevant to the book. Sirota is no Hunter S. Thompson, although he perhaps wishes he was. (I guess the decision to begin the book drunk in Vegas should be taken as a clear 'hommage'.) But Sirota cannot match Thompson's self-destructive contempt for authority. He's is more of a policy wonk: we see him in committee meetings and TV studios and at conventions. Most of all, Thompson would never have written a sentence like this discussing politics in Montana (page 18): "It is a carefully calibrated meme recognizing Montana as one of America's boiling cauldons of subjugation psychology..." There is some merit and interest to this book. But it's marred by too much of the author's ego and reporting that does not go sufficiently deep. If Sirota sees something or hears something, it goes into the book. If not, not. That's fine for a travelogue but not for a work of series political analysis.
Mistral creates vivid characters out of anything: a country, an orchard, the sea, the thin air. These characters tend to tell a quiet, everyday tale where the revelations of more romantic poets would be unnecessary. Mistral is a more reserved Whitman, ready to praise everything but not quite as willing to let it all out at once. While at times her purpose is almost lost in the ebb of her conversational verses, the strong sense that the world operates for a positive purpose is never lost. Favorite poems: We Were All Going To Be Queens Epilogue: The Last Tree -- I shall leave what I had of ash and firmament, my flank full of speech and my flank full of silence; the loneliness I gave myself, the loneliness they gave me, and the tithe I paid the lightning of my gentle, severe God. (From "The Last Tree")