The Price Of Hunger In The Garden Of Beasts: In Which Three Recent Books Are Lumped Alongside Each Other And Sort Of "Reviewed," Except This Is Not Exactly That

I always liked the type of book review that I think is referred to as an essay review — the kind of critical piece that compares one or more similar or thematically similar books in a way that allows the reviewer to sit above both works in judgement.

There's a great moment in all essay reviews where the reviewer brings the hammer down. It's that moment when a review goes from praising the really wonderful, insightful first book to making you feel badly for the person who had to read the second one. It goes something like this:

The climactic ending of [Insert Title] is as gripping as it is long, as unrelenting as it is buoyant, and as quietly devastating as it is unforgettable.

And then there's [Insert Other Title], which labors to get going, is unenjoyable when you finally get there and ultimately reads like it was written by a committee of monkeys . . .

I would like to do the same thing with Jeffrey Sachs' The Price of Civilization: Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity and Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games. I would also like to throw in Erik Larson's In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin.

I think that I could almost pull this off with the first two. The third would be a stretch, I imagine.

These, I should add, were the last three books we read for book club.

Maybe at the very least I could think of a unifying theme. OK, let's sketch this out . . .

We've read many books in the fantasy/sci-fi/young adult genre (and I understand I'm lazily lumping it all together) and each time I think that I'll finally understand what people like about those kinds of books. And each time I'm disappointed. We've tried some supposedly good ones, too: Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card (October 2007), The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick (June 2008), Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson (May/June 2009), City of Saints and Madmen by Jeff Vandermeer (October 2009) and The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman (January 2011). I feel like I've given it the old college try. (An aside: I finally thought to Google the origin of this phrase; I didn't realize there was an ironic twist to it.)

It's not that I don't like the philosophy or moral underpinnings of these books — on the contrary, they're interesting, or at least interesting enough to build a story around — but maybe too much of the writing is lacking some artistry. Sometimes, as in the case of City of Saints, the fantasy is too unmoored from real life. Sometimes there's a moment in an otherwise perfectly good book that takes me totally out of it, as is the case of the bizarre (no, really bizarre!) sex scene in Snow Crash.

Which is to say, when I started reading Hunger Games, I expected to eventually find something about it that I didn't like. And then that moment never happened. While reading it, I kept thinking that it would make a good movie. I found out later that that is exactly what's going to happen. A friend in book club who couldn't participate that month asked what I thought and I told her. Then I lent her the book.

My only real familiarity with Jeffrey Sachs was through William Easterly, whose The White Man's Burden we read in December 2009. I didn't think I was going to like Sachs' The Price of Civilization but my mind was open. Those who know me would snicker, but I know what I felt and I'm telling you that my mind was open. Even after I started it late in the month, which gave me the opportunity to talk to fellow Club members who reported that the book was tear-your-hair-out galling, I was still open minded about the book.

So then I started reading The Price of Civilization and damn it if the thing didn't come off like an 18-hour-long Bill Moyers episode. It's fine to "polemicize," but reading an academic do it is depressing and hollow; not only simplistic, but cynically so. Maybe he intended to appeal to the mass market, but the bigger sin here is making someone care less, or worse, not at all. Though that in itself is an achievement. I guess.

Civilization is now helping to prop up the baby's "co-sleeper," in the hope that if we angle the crib slightly then the baby will be less likely to spit up. I wish I could say that this was my inspired idea but the truth is that Jen just grabbed a few hardcovers that looked sturdy enough. Now you understand why I don't have any concrete examples of what I disliked (though I do remember one oversimplified explanation of Sun Belt political demographics that made no sense if you stopped to consider that maybe East Coasters move there at least in part because they don't want to pay more taxes, not that they'll bring their tax-happy ways with them — but again, I'm going from memory here).

As for In the Garden of Beasts, it was pretty good. I was hesitant to read another Erik Larson book (we read The Devil in the White City in August 2005) but he's good at pulling you in and getting you interested in stuff — even stuff that you assume you don't care to know any more about. Nazis, for one. In Beasts, he smartly focuses on the one aspect of Nazi Germany that's still interesting, which isn't the pornographic violence but rather the dramatic irony that continues to serve as the best "lesson" of that horrible point in time. And the lens he chooses — an American diplomat — is a smart one for his American audience. It's an interesting quick read, even if it skips around toward the end; it's the kind of popular history that works, as opposed to Sachs' attempt at "popular policy."

Passing The First Test Of Fatherhood: Returning Home On One's Own Volition

I had to go into "the city" for a work meeting this evening. I haven't been in Manhattan for over seven weeks, since before Animal was born.

The good news is that it still looks the same. This is what I saw when I popped out of the subway at Sixth Avenue and 14th Street:

It wasn't until this past Friday that we even left the neighborhood, when we took Squeak on his first subway ride. Part of our reticence is not knowing what we would do if things went wrong along the way — How to change a diaper without a changing table? What if he won't take a bottle? — and part of it was not knowing where to go in the first place. I don't know about going to a restaurant yet, for example. So we've been at home, learning how to manage fussiness in our bathrobes and with an ample supply of baby wipes at hand.

Leaving the meeting — which lasted less than two hours, mind you — I had this feeling, or a conflicted feeling. I clearly couldn't just hang out and walk around or go see a movie (early on I joked about heading out to see a movie) or smoke crack down at the riverfront. At the same time, I wanted to get back to see how Jen and Monkey were getting on. I wasn't worried about them — Jen has an advantage in that she is able to serve him food on demand — but we haven't really been separated from each other for more than a half-hour since we had come home.

But a tiny part of me thought that it might be fun to take a little stroll somewhere. It was like Rabbit, Run except I didn't have a car . . . and I wasn't going to run anywhere . . . and I didn't really want to run anywhere . . . and without Rabbit's annoying "drama" . . . and . . . maybe it really wasn't like an Updike novel at all, come to think of it. I looked at the intersection, marveled at how nimble and fearless the gentlemen making a wide turn onto Sixth Avenue on skateboards were, feared a little bit for the bicyclists riding in the dark and ducked into the subway entrance. My sojourn lasted all of a block, meaning directly from the restaurant to the subway.

What I did do was somehow end up on the L platform when a Brooklyn-bound train was rolling into the station, which worked out well in that I could take it one stop over to Union Square and switch to the N or the Q. It was funny to be on the L among so many people who I'm sure didn't have a two-month-old. They looked so . . . well rested — and this was after work even. Of course nothing puts your life in focus like realizing that some of your fellow passengers could easily be 15 years younger than you. Fifteen years? How did that happen? And do I look 15 years older than them? As Goober would say, "Take it to heart."

Jen and Monkey were doing fine when I got home, though I was slightly happy to hear Jen sound a little bit relieved that I was home.

All Of Which Is To Say, Nice Try But In The End You'll Still Be On The Hook For The Co-Pay

I had to get a cavity filled at the dentist yesterday and while we waited for the anesthesia to take, I zoned out by studying a tooth chart on the wall.

It was one of those 1980s-looking things that you might see in a science classroom and the top half showed a child's mouth, along with the ages at which certain teeth are expected to fall out. I don't know that I realized that the first ones to go are the middle ones, then finally the back ones go last. When you think back it makes sense, but like a lot of things, you don't realize there's an order of things. Like verb endings or whatnot.

But sitting there as my gum numbed, it occurred to me — and I thought to ask the dentist — Why do kids need to get cavities filled? Because if you're going to lose those teeth anyway, what difference does it make whether they rot away? Or, alternatively, why not just pull them out?

It was a good question, the dentist didn't quite say, though he allowed that he didn't totally understand every aspect of it until going to dental school.

Apparently if a baby tooth is missing long before the adult tooth comes in, the adult tooth might come in at a strange angle. Then there's the obvious reason you would get a cavity filled, which is that cavities hurt.

Oh yeah, right. Whoops.

He did add that he doesn't do fancy white tooth-colored fillings for children, "because they're just going to come out." So all that made sense. And now I know.