The cautionary chronicle of Lot, elaborately embroidered: his sojourn in Sodom, his nick-of-time escape aided by Abraham and the two angels, his wife's well-known transformation, and his subsequent stay in the desert with his two daughters who "found a cave. . . and lived like savages. . . in filth and sin." Lot initially breaks with Abraham not after a dispute, as in Genesis, but with the words "I do not wish to remain a burden to you." More jarring is the deviation from the spirit of the original in Abraham's description of his God to the people of Sodom: "He is all merciful and provides for all that lives." Admittedly, Singer gives a particularizing fictional dimension to the story and the characters. Lot, for example, is a lawyer well known for his defense of criminals, "very shrewd" but with "little feeling for justice." He thrives in Sodom, where there is great demand for his services, becoming (as crime and its defense is officially sanctioned) "Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Sodom." When Abraham comes to visit, Lot resists the urging of his more ruthless wife to kill the old man and talks her into leaving town with their guests just in case they speak the truth. (They don't bother to lock the door behind them, because in Sodom "lock breaking was even studied by children in school.") Such a depiction of the city verges on the comic — its Topsy Turvy legal system makes no sense otherwise — but Singer also seems to expect us to take the evil and its destruction in dead earnest; certainly Fisher's brooding, dark wine prints underline the somber import of it all as they document Lot's progression from cunning and greed to wild-eyed depravity. Altogether, this is no more outrageous a violation than, say, Hawthorne's Tanglewood Tales, but Singer's uneasy blend of the mythic and the colloquial make it hard to swallow whole, even with all those grains of salt.
Pub Date: March 15, 1972
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1972
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A cosmic straw man is vanquished in the fight against dangerous ideals such as social justice and equality. This is not the place to look for original ideas or honest analysis. Presumably, Sowell’s (Migrations and Cultures, 1996, etc.) goal is to entertain those who share his convictions rather than convince open-minded readers, and this audience will be pleased. “Cosmic justice” is presented as a fundamental departure from the “traditional” conception of justice, which Sowell claims has the “characteristic of a process,” rather than of a particular outcome. He conveniently forgets to mention that this “tradition” dates back only to the emergence of liberal-democratic states and that contrasting notions of procedural vs. substantive justice remain the subject of lively debate. Admitting legitimate disagreement over even something as slippery as justice would soften the blows he aims at those who think inequality and any associated oppression raises concerns a just society should address, and Sowell is not one to temper a political argument simply to maintain intellectual integrity. He is not straightforwardly defending inequality, of course, but rather is pursuing the familiar strategy of attacking measures that could alleviate it. Sowell, a fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, boldly asserts that those who believe equality should be pursued through public policy “assume that politicizing inequality is free of costs and dangers.” No names are mentioned, and it is indeed hard to imagine that anyone would believe there are no costs or dangers. By stating the issue in terms of extremes, however, he ducks the real issue—the challenge of weighing costs and benefits—and avoids the need for incorporating any subtlety into his discussion. Confronted with such disingenuous blather, readers may find Sowell’s criticism of others applies well to Sowell himself: “To explain the levels of dogmatism and resistance to facts found in too many writings . . . it is necessary to explore what purposes are served by these visions.”
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-684-86462-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The acclaimed author of My Own Country (1996) turns his gaze inward to a pair of crises that hit even closer to home than the AIDS epidemic of which he wrote previously. Verghese took a teaching position at Texas Tech’s medical school, and it’s his arrival in the unfamiliar city of El Paso that triggers the events of his second book (parts of which appeared in the New Yorker). His marriage, already on the rocks in My Own Country, has collapsed utterly and the couple agree to a separation. In a new job in a new city, he finds himself more alone than he has ever been. But he becomes acquainted with a charming fourth-year student on his rotation, David, a former professional tennis player from Australia. Verghese, an ardent amateur himself, begins to play regularly with David and the two become close friends, indeed deeply dependent on each other. Gradually, the younger man begins to confide in his teacher and friend. David has a secret, known to most of the other students and staff at the teaching hospital but not to the recently arrived Verghese; he is a recovering drug addict whose presence at Tech is only possible if he maintains a rigorous schedule of AA meetings and urine tests. When David relapses and his life begins to spiral out of control, Verghese finds himself drawn into the young man’s troubles. As in his previous book, Verghese distinguishes himself by virtue not only of tremendous writing skill—he has a talented diagnostician’s observant eye and a gift for description—but also by his great humanity and humility. Verghese manages to recount the story of the failure of his marriage without recriminations and with a remarkable evenhandedness. Likewise, he tells David’s story honestly and movingly. Although it runs down a little in the last 50 pages or so, this is a compulsively readable and painful book, a work of compassion and intelligence.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-06-017405-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1998
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