In the Belly of a Beast of a Beast

Greater than day-to-day reporting, outstanding journalism can carry  with it the creativity of literature and the power of the truth. It does not come easily – demanding talent, skill, commitment and courage.

Oscar Martinez is an El Salvadorean journalist who writes for Elfaro.net, an online Latin American newspaper. It is an informative, vibrant site that offers insight and news into a region that is often under-reported and poorly understood. It’s a good place to learn and explore.

Martinez parlayed his reporting into an outstanding book, The Beast. It is a fearless study of the migration of people’s from Latin America to El Norte, the U.S., through a focus on “La Bestia” – the freight train that runs through Latin America. Much of the content was in a series of articles penned by Martinez. The book is more, though, and taken as a whole it portrays a harrowing region and movement of peoples. There is a great heroism, compassion and care here. Also, there is horrific violence, cruelty, greed and indifference. Beautifully written and close to its subjects and their accounts, The Beast is difficult to read. The stories are that tough.

The book came out in Spain in 2010, in Mexico in 2012, and in the US – and English – a few years later. It won awards and praise. Martinez interviewed migrants, families, travelers, the police and gang members. He helps the reader understand the difference between fleeing and migrating – and also the hard choices people must make. Kidnapping, theft, rape and exploitation are rampant. The normal structures of civil society have been bought off or threatened into inactivity. The crimes, desperation and migratory patterns have developed over so many years that they collectively have become something of a “system” – and with their establishment, ever greater resistance to reform or improvement. The system itself is an indifferent beast.

Martinez writes from a perspective that every life has value, that every life matters. The Beast explores a world based on an antithetical view: life is nasty, brutish and short – and no one individual matters all that much. It is an ugly, frightening picture. It’s all the more damning because economic and political actions by the US are active contributors. Governments have been destabilized and the growth of the drug cartels has been fueled in part by American markets. Reading this book gives insight into why so many are fleeing Central American.

The book is driven by outrage, but this is no polemic. The Beast gives voice to the powerless and mostly stereotyped immigrants. Martinez cares about them and their plight – and makes the reader care, too.

David Potash

December 19, 2018 American Culture Today, Reviews

Lyrical Wisdom and Loneliness

The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone by Olivia Laing is a brilliant and wise book that defies simple categorization. Part memoir, part reflection, part observation, with quite a bit of biography, The Lonely City is an extended conversation with an extremely smart writer. Laing is incisive, and insightful, and both in the book and around it. She’s a novelist, critic, and very well-read writer. The book is an unexpected and thought-provoking journey into what it means to be alone in the big city.

Laing tells us about herself, a Brit who moved to New York City for a marriage that never took place. She remained in New York, considering herself and her environs. Laing had lived alone before but in Gotham, she experienced a deep sense of loneliness and isolation. She saw herself as the woman in the Hopper painting Automat – on display and quite alone. An elegiac tone pervades the narrative, but it is not depressing.

From these beginnings, Laing walks us through her thoughts, ruminations, and interactions in the city. She explores her situation and makes sense of it through art and biographical investigations of four artists: Edward Hopper, David Wojnarowicz, Henry Darger, and Edward Hopper. Each addressed questions of human interaction and connection differently. Each used their talents differently. And each, through their art, creates much-needed intimacy.

Laing’s work captures a mood, a feeling, a sense of aloneness that lurks within everyone who resides in a big city. It does so with great wisdom. It was surprisingly cheering, if only for her smarts and understanding. And perhaps because it connected this reader with the author in unexpected ways. I can’t say in any way that I know Olivia Laing, but I do feel more connected – and just a small bit smarter and more hopeful – for having read her book.

David Potash

December 3, 2018 American Culture Today, Reviews

Latino Migrant Politics, History and Theory

Making sense of US immigration policy and practice – especially what has happened in the past few decades with America and its neighbors to the south – is an extraordinarily complicated task. There are many moving pieces: local histories, transnational histories, international histories, changing laws, policies, practices and economics, and a complex overlay of perspectives and agendas. No simple narrative that can capture what has happened and why.

Alfonso Gonzales, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, Riverside, provides a provocative and helpful take on the topic in Reform Without Justice: Latino Migrant Politics and the Homeland Security State. Gonzales’s research rests on a solid review of better-known historical events (public marches, legislation, speeches, etc.), interviews with more than 60 activists and many immigrants personally affected by the issue, and a powerful neo-Gramscian political theoretical lens. Antonio Gramsci was an Italian political theorist, communist, and anti-fascist who spent many years imprisoned by the Mussolini government. Gramsci’s work often revolved around questions of power and hegemony. He looked at ways that groups in power are able to remain in power, even in periods of transition and uprising. His insights – which cross many disciplinary boundaries – give tools to help map out complex issues of power, adjustment, and continuity.

Gonzales harnesses a reading of Gramsci to explore how, during a period of national shifts in political parties and massive street protests advocating for immigrant rights, conditions for so many Latino/a immigrants worsened. The US experienced a period where many thought that ground up change would lead to an opening of opportunities and supports for immigrants. It did not transpire. Governmental controls increased. The political culture worked against comprehensive immigration reform and the extension of immigrant rights. To explain this, Gonzales identifies an anti-immigrant hegemony that cuts across parties, social groups, and other categories. This “structure” has grown in power, too, under the Trump administration. Absolutely central to that effort, Gonzales effectively argues, is the criminalization of the immigrant.

Adding to the power of the narrative is Gonzales’s willingness to occasionally insert his voice as an immigrant. He is judicious but when he does insert himself, it resonates. Gonzales is an activist who cares. His work, as a theorist and as a chronicler of change, is valuable.

Reform Without Justice offers a persuasive lens to help to understand current American political culture and politics when it comes to immigration and Latinos.

David Potash

August 28, 2018 American Culture Today, Reviews

Like A Vision He Appeared

Back in the day, I grew up in New Jersey. It is easy to stereotype the Garden State, from the “Jersey Shore” to Atlantic City to Frank Sinatra’s Hoboken. But for those who have lived there, we know that the state’s diversity resists easy simplification. It is densely packed with history and people, rich in cultures and distinctive communities. The northern part of the state skews to New York City, the southern part is influenced by Philadelphia. It has great poverty and tremendous wealth, rural farmland and robust cities, all surprisingly close to each other. It is, in no uncertain terms, a complicated place without multiple sites and sources of identity.

Jersey heritage figures prominently in my reading of Bruce Springsteen’s wonderful autobiography, Born to Run. Springsteen has become many things to so many people throughout the world over the years. That kind of impact first took place in Jersey back in the 1970s. Appointed and anointed as perhaps the state’s only unifying force, Springsteen made fantastic music that spoke to northern Jersey, southern Jersey, to rural Jersey and urban Jersey, in the burbs and down the shore. I heard bar bands cover Springsteen, give tribute to Bruce, and do a good job with “Rosalita” just a few years after the album “Born to Run” was released. He is a New Jersey state treasure. How did it do it?

Springsteen has a way with words, in music and on the page. He’s a genius – and it is a beautifully written book. It is frank, candid, dark and optimistic. Springsteen’s focus is, rightly, on his journey – and not the reasons that so many of us see him as ours. His prose is grounded in “how”: how he grew up, how he was loved and rejected, how he developed his career, and how he dealt with his battles, failures, and successes.

We know that Springsteen has tremendous talent and is a great showman. His autobiography highlights that wrapped up in the very core of the man is discipline and an extraordinary work ethic. The artist “Springsteen” is an authentic creation, the outcome of thoughtful choices and boatloads of effort. He worked at his music, his career, his image and, in many ways, his friends and family. He has struggled with depression. He has consistently mined his pains as catalysts of creativity. It has not happened easily. While we may think of it as just the triumph of talent, the book makes clear that it has happened through deliberate hard work.

Born to Run left me with more admiration for Springsteen, more understanding of him, and appreciation for the pain that has haunted him. His father’s mental illness, the challenges of his childhood, and his demons have been real and powerful. It is a testament to the man that he has had the gifts, skill and temperament to use them and much more to make music that the entire world sings. I will re-read Born to Run. It will be worth it, just like revisiting older Springsteen favorites.

David Potash

And a big thanks to my sister for giving me the book!

April 19, 2018 American Culture Today, Things someone who grew up in NJ might write

But For the Grace of . . . .

Daniel Ellsberg is famous for leaking the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times. The papers, classified documents that showed that the US government was aware that the Vietnam War was not going well, redefined the public debate about the conflict and led to the prosecution of Ellsberg. He escaped conviction – the government broke many laws in its attempt to silence him – and he left government work to devote his life to political activism.

It was no accident that Ellsberg, a trusted civilian defense analyst in the 1960s, had access to sensitive material. He was a Marine who attended Harvard for his undergraduate and doctoral degrees. Ellsberg’s dissertation on decision theory raised issues that are still being studied to this day. His work for the RAND Corporation was very well-received. A smart and knowledgeable scholar, Ellsberg’s professional life developed at the intersection of ideas and defense policy.

Ellsberg recently wrote The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. A non-fiction autobiographical account of his work as a nuclear war strategist in the early part of his career, the book explains much of the thinking – or non-thinking – surrounding the development and potential deployment of the US nuclear arsenal. It is a book about organizational decision-making, politics and strategy. It is a sobering read. The Doomsday Machine is not the most up-to-date or comprehensive work about contemporary nuclear arms. It lacks current data, the big picture about how things have and have not changed over the past few decades, and efforts and stabilization. It does bring a personal touch to the madness, though, and make a compelling case for attention. With the recent nuclear false alarm in Hawaii on our screens and in our minds, coupled with the latest plans for loosening the potential use of nuclear weapons, the warnings in The Doomsday Machine seem all the more relevant.

Some of the key points Ellsberg hammers home:

  • There is no one nuclear “button.” In fact, the decision to use nuclear weapons is decentralized and at the discretion of military officials far down the organizational tree.
  • Much US nuclear strategy is based on the assumption that the US would strike first.
  • Much US nuclear strategy assumed that a nuclear conflict could only occur with the USSR and China – never just one of these countries. This was a problem for decades.
  • As US nuclear planning became more sophisticated, anticipated casualties – which numbered in the hundreds of millions – grew to reflect the true consequences of a nuclear war.
  • When Ellsberg first saw Stanley Kubrick’s apocalyptic satire, Dr. Strangelove, he considered it as accurate as a documentary.

Ellsberg’s proposals for a saner, slightly more safe future involve taking apart the doomsday machine (his term for this decentralized nuclear arsenal) include getting rid of the land based Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs), stop planning for strikes that target other country’s leaders (with no leader, there can be no surrender or de-escalation), and then promise never to use nuclear weapons. He notes that many times US presidents reference the potential use of nuclear weapons.

It is a scary problem to consider. We have more than enough nuclear weapons to make human life an impossibility and seemingly poor controls regarding their potential use. Ellsberg’s analysis of the Cuban Missile crisis highlights just how lucky we have been in avoiding nuclear conflict. Deterrence is poorly considered and something that needs a rethink. In fact, the broad question of nuclear strategy demands attention. Ellsberg’s book is a well-written and cogent warning about the state of the nuclear arsenal: who controls it, who thinks about it, and how it developed.

David Potash

January 17, 2018 American Culture Today, Reviews

Facing Addiction – Full On

Charming and deceptive. Honest to a fault and blind to large truths. Lovely and awful. Cat Marnell is a super smart recovering addict who lives these contradictions.

Marnell recently came out with a memoir, How to Murder Your Life. She’s held a number of positions in the beauty/women’s media – with Glamour, Vice, Nylon, xoJane, and Lucky. She’s written about herself – her drug use, career, love life, sex life, family, obsessions and self-harm with humor and honesty. She embodies intelligence and self-destructiveness. The story of her longer journey, captured in this book, is fascinating and terrible to behold. Making it more than bearable is Marnell’s wit, humor and a candor that makes one wince. You want to look away, you want to shake her, and you keep reading.

Marnell’s narrative voice is both agent and witness to success and catastrophe. She knows how to pull it together and she knows how to flame out – and she does both with regularity. The painful repetition of her screw ups can make for less interesting reading. However, it underscores the difficulty of stopping  addictive behaviors. Addicts don’t stop being addicted; it is part of their identity. As much as you may wish for clarity and happiness, there is no complete resolution in any next chapter of Marnell’s book. She lives a life of more highs and more lows.

Marnell’s childhood was marked by wealth, strife, and unhappiness. From an early age, prescriptions and non-prescription drugs were a part of her everyday life. Health care professionals, including her father, a psychiatrist, made sure that she was medicated and re-medicated to deal the stresses of growing up, attention deficit disorder, and teen angst. She moved from a college internship into full-time employment in the New York City media world. Work gave her a sense of importance and agency that was missing from the rest of her life. You can feel the triumph in her voice when she describes those early career advances. But from her teens until now, in her mid-30s, she’s struggled with her addictions, career, relationships, and gaining control of her life. At many times she self-sabotaged to the point of murdering her life. Luckily, there are some rehab services who provide the assistance. Additionally, if you are addicted to ketamine, you may consult an expert on this addiction. On this website, you can find valuable information and resources to help you on your journey to recovery.

And yet – and the yet is important here – Marnell’s immediacy gives a real sense of what it is like to live as an addict and to have hope. My experience is limited. I have known two friends who have lived with serious drug addiction. For both, it fractured their identity, scrambling sense of self and direction. It is more than a conflict between healthy and unhealthy impulses. Addiction reshaped identity through action, adding a lens of meaning that fundamentally altered their person-hood. In such situations, seeking help for addiction becomes crucial, providing a pathway towards recovery, restoration, and the rediscovery of a healthier sense of self. Additionally, there are rehab for celebrities. You can also read this article for more information. That splintered self, aligning actions with impulse, is woven through How to Murder Your Life.

Marnell might sell many copies of this book for the scandals, and the drama. Stick with it, though, and you’ll gain an understanding of the powerful ways that addiction harms. I really wish Cat Marell well. She’s a very talented woman who is lucky to be alive. She’s also fortunate to have the facilities to write such fresh and engaging prose. I do not believe that all of her really wants to murder her life. She’s around to talk about it and she cares. She is clear and direct about behaviors to avoid, particularly for women.

I am optimistic that her honesty strips the appeal from what an Instagram-follower might believe is a glamorous lifestyle. Her story is cautionary. Life can be challenging enough.

David Potash

November 13, 2017 American Culture Today

Changing My Movies

I love a good movie. Not films – movies. Movies are about entertainment. No friend ever says “You have to go see this movie.” That’s not the case for films. Seeing a film is freighted with expectations of art, philosophy and meaning. When I’m looking for that, I reach for a book.

But of late I’m finding it harder to enjoy movies. My mind wanders. I’m increasingly aware of genre, expectations, and arc. Why do the plots of so many movies resolve around violence? I know that conflict is essential to drama, but movies’ fixation on one kind of conflict – violence – has become tiresome. It is not escapism. We have more than exposure to violence every day.

I don’t understand why action and suspense so often relies on explosions and guns. Or why a movie’s final conflicts must have even larger explosions and bigger armories. Guns, more guns, and even more guns are not the only way to solve problems or bring a conclusion to a movie. Violence in a movie is not necessarily satisfying, suspenseful, or entertaining. It is lazy, to my way of thinking, and it perpetuates a ton of lazy thinking about violence. It’s so common today and movie makers seem unable to break out the rut. Movies weren’t always like this.

No longer do I get a cathartic thrill when the villain meets a particularly grisly end in a movie. My adrenaline doesn’t pump. It’s boring and unimaginative. We know what’s going to happen.

My movie dissociation could be because of the many shootings that fill our papers and screens. The violence in the news and in our neighborhoods is more than numbing; it’s scary and sad. The change may be me – age and it’s possible that I could be seeing the wrong movies. Whatever the cause, it is definitely affected my movie going. I am too aware of the movie habit of solving any and all conflicts with a bigger boom. There’s no suspense in that.

I’m going to hold out for better. Older movies that rely on character, dialogue, and imaginative plotting could do it. Resolution through cleverer means.

Or I might go see a film.

David Potash

November 6, 2017 American Culture Today

Opioids – America’s Killer

An epidemic of opioids, opiates, prescription drugs and illegal narcotics, is killing record numbers of Americans. This isn’t news – it is a massive public health problem that has been getting worse for several years. The statistics are staggering. A New York Times article highlights that overdoses are the leading cause of death for Americans under the age of 50. Nearly 100 Americans die every day from these drugs, prescribed or purchased illegally. It is having a disastrous effect on hundreds of thousands of families, communities across the country, and our economy.

We are getting a better sense of the how of why of this crisis. I count myself among those who did not comprehend its scope or causes. I knew that drug addiction was a continuing issue. But I had little sense to the pervasiveness and devastation stemming from opioid addictions and heroin use. A host of new reports and government actions has informed and awakened broad attention across the country. Even with the attention experts predict that numbers of deaths will continue to rise for the next few years.

Several factors have led this disastrous state of affairs. Pain management became a focus within healthcare, and cost concerns have led to more and more “pill” solutions to chronic pain. The economics of healthcare, in other words, propelled certain kinds of prescriptions and certain kinds of business to profit from these changes. An increase in cheap heroin – coupled with new drug selling techniques – provided more fuel, as did a host of new synthetic opioids. Knowing the root causes is important if we are to effect long-term, meaningful change. We need to address this as a nation and in our communities: opiates are ending and ruining lives.

One of the best accounts of how this crisis came to pass is Sam Quinones’s Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic. Quinones is a journalist who has researched in the US and Mexico. Familiar with both cultures, he brings an on-the-ground feel to his reporting as well as a love of story-telling. He is a relentless journalist and a captivating writer. Dreamland won a well-deserved National Book Critics Award and is on many “best book of 2015” lists.

Quinones weaves together many narratives to make sense of this complicated epidemic. His perspective is through the eyes and words of people connected to the issue: doctors, addicts, parents, children, dealers, community leaders, and police. One thread is about how middle, rust belt America became the ground zero for black tar heroin. “Dreamland” was a swimming pool in Youngstown, Ohio. Long-ago it was a place of joy, family leisure, and a representational shared good among the town’s many residents. Gone for many years, its memory hovers as a far away time when life was better and more optimistic. Changes in the economy and culture, marked by job loss, fewer prospects, and the proliferation of prescription painkillers, highlight the Youngstown of the 2000s.

Quinones explains how our more recent world set the stage for increased drug use. The massive increase in the how and why of prescription pain-killers – in particular Oxycontin – is another thread. He takes us to medical conferences, doctor’s offices, and the pain clinics that sprung up in middle America. The development, marketing and distribution of heroin from the “Xalisco Boys” of Mexico. These young men, born in poverty in a small Mexican town, sought a better life. Often relatives or neighbors, many came to the United States to take part in the lucrative drug trade. Organized into small cells, they first sold heroin in the smaller towns and cities away from the established organized drug trade. The Xalisco Boys model was different. They only carried small amounts of the narcotics, never used the drugs, and were drilled into customer (addict) service. They had a growing market, an increased number of Americans who had an opioid addiction.

The American communities’ responses to the crisis forms another narration. Many parents never admitted that their sons or daughters were addicted. Deaths from a drug overdose was rarely reported and not often studied. Only when the numbers began to add up did families, communities, and public health officials begin understand the scope and massive spread of the problem. The journey of analysis and comprehension is another thread, as is the work of police in figuring out what was happening to their towns and cities. Fighting this spread of heroin called for different kinds of policing and prosecution.

Dreamland offers much to digest. It is wonderfully written but it is hard to read: so much sorrow, so much sadness, and so many tragedies. We learn who is profiting and who has avoided responsibility for the crisis, but the aim here is not blame. Quinones does not moralize. He explains with sympathy and patience. The better understanding he gives us is a window into the powerful forces that reshape lives. He also writes about compassion, cooperation and the many ways that people have worked to fight addiction and this crisis. Dreamland is also about everyday heroes who save lives and give us hope.

We need more books like Dreamland.

David Potash

September 25, 2017 American Culture Today, Reviews

Derailleur

My apartment opens to a busy Chicago Avenue. At night, the street is loud with hipsters, tourists, buskers and custom car stereos. Young men and women Whoo and Whoop and the bars clink with bottles and glasses. Sounds are continuous, a constant roar punctuated by thumps and yells, with engines rumblings and street musicians jamming.

Mornings are different. Sound is episodic. Single cars and trucks, conversations, the barking of a dog. I hear people, not crowds.

The bike lane is full. More and more people are cycling downtown to their jobs. Some take their bicycle commute seriously, kitted with panniers, reflective tape and extra mirrors. Others are more spontaneous. They pass by in a steady stream.

A difficult intersection is up the street, a hundred feet or so from my door. When halted by a red light, the they start together as a mass, a morning peloton.

I like to linger – not watching but listening. I want to hear shifting, the sounds of gears changing. The sound of a well-tuned bicycle is extremely satisfying: silent with perhaps the quietest of hums, depending upon pavement, save for the changing of gears.

A gear change announces itself with a small but purposeful rattle. It is a hiccup, a deep breath before starting something strenuous, a machine readying itself before picking up a piece of work. The pause is brief, less than a second. And then, with a decisive click, the gear engages.

Silence.

David Potash

August 31, 2017 American Culture Today, Chicago

Another Look at the Data

Steve Lohr, a journalist for the New York Times, knows how to explain. He has written about technology for decades and his book, written with Joel Brinkley, on the federal antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft is outstanding. Lohr is not a “gee-whiz” technology enthusiast. He is also not a Luddite, crying for the return to a simpler, earlier age. Instead, he brings solid technical knowledge to the table and explains how technological change and innovation impacts business, society, and culture.

Data-ism: The Revolution Transforming Decision Making, Consumer Behavior, and Almost Everything Else is Lohr’s account of the rise of data science and analytics. He started the project in 2012, finished it three years later – and I would expect that the field has changed since. Change in technology, and especially this kind of work with its endless applications, is constant. I would still recommend Lohr’s book. It mixes theoretical and real-word information, painting a picture of how things are being transformed as well as the thinking and rules that will lead to more change. It is accessible, memorable, and very interesting.

A host of different technologies contribute to “big data,” Lohr explains. The amount of data from various points is increasing exponentially. New and better systems are making better sense out of it – especially on the artificial intelligence front. The book wisely focuses on people leading in their fields. Lohr has written a narrative, not an abstract. He profiles Jeffrey Hammerbacher, whose journey from Harvard to Facebook to Mt. Sinai hospital and entrepreneur captures the many possibilities of data science. From the business side, Lohr gives a quick history of how developments in data analytics changed IBM from within. He visits McKesson, a company in Memphis that is responsible for a third of the pharmaceutical products in the United States. Sensors, analytics, and smart computing – along with help from IBM – have radically changed its operations. From hotels to vineyards to hospitals (the work of Dr. Timothy Buchman, who heads Emory University Hospital’s critical care unit, is very instructive), smarter and better use of data is leading to small changes and big reworks of organizational structure, processes and decision-making.

Concerns are woven through the book. Lohr asks hard questions about context, about how data is used, and about privacy – and its erosion. His curiosity leads him to businesses, government officials, scientists and business leaders. He has worries about discrimination and the potential loss of agency of any one individual. People are much more than a collection of data points. Technology is not waiting for us to sort out the rules. The future, Lohr opines, will increasingly be shaped by those who have access to more and better data and the ability to analyze and act on it.

David Potash

April 4, 2017 American Culture Today, Reviews