As the nation emerges from its obsession with the Monica Lewinsky affair, DeSalvo reflects on adultery’s positive and negative effects on marriage. Given her obvious narrative and literary drive, her academic interests, and her personal history, DeSalvo (Writing as a Way of Healing, 1999; Breathless: An Asthma Journal, 1997) seems destined to have written a book on adultery. An advocate of creative writing as a means of recovering from trauma, a memoirist, a Virginia Woolf scholar, and a wife whose husband, Ernie, committed adultery in the days following the birth of their first child, DeSalvo brings the right stuff to her latest book. Adultery is more of an extended essay on the subject, from the perspective of literature and from personal experience. Literary examples of how adultery drives both an author’s relationships and writing dominate the book’s beginning—with ample but not especially revealing references to Virginia Woolf, Henry James, Edith Wharton, and D. H. Lawrence. Soon the tone turns chatty and intimate, with breathy passages like this: “You feel caged. You feel suffocated. You need to find a way to get out of this cage. Soon. Now . . . “ Shifting from one story to another, DeSalvo fleshes out her different perspectives on adultery—her childhood fantasies of her grandfather’s mysterious solo trips back to Italy, her own adolescent form of adultery, and her husband’s adultery. By the book’s end, the source of DeSalvo’s irrepressible enthusiasm for the subject grows clearer. Rather than remain bitter—forever a victim of another’s transgression’she performs a Hegelian twist and turns her husband’s adultery into a positive growth experience for herself. With decades of hindsight, DeSalvo concludes that Ernie’s affair was in part exhilarating and liberating for her, allowing her to think about herself and her life in a fresher and more meaningful way. A compassionate and level-headed book. Given DeSalvo’s unbending belief that adultery is the critical experience in many people’s lives, it might resonate most with those who have a personal stake in the subject.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-8070-6224-3
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A lively and well-written survey, spiced up with incidents from recent headlines.
It isn’t only computers that have memory problems. Just ask anyone over a certain age—or take a look at this entertaining new book.
As the title indicates, Schachter (Psychology/Harvard Univ.) describes seven generic failings to which everyone’s memory is prone. Transience is the loss of details over time; everyone remembers last night’s dinner better than that of a week ago, and that of a year ago is often entirely forgotten. Absentmindedness is the familiar inability to remember where you left your car keys or whether you took your medicine. One of the most frustrating is blocking (the “it’s right on the tip of my tongue”) phenomenon, in which a familiar word or name refuses to emerge from memory (often coming back in the middle of the night). Also common is misattribution, for example crediting Sean Connery for a role played by some other actor. Suggestibility is the tendency to adopt and hold onto false memories suggested by some other outside influence (such as a leading question) or to recall feeling at the time of a past event an emotion only experienced much later. A variety of biases lead us to reconstruct the past to match current beliefs, or to place ourselves at the center of events in which we were minor participants. Finally, there is persistence, the inability to forget even years later some traumatic event such as a rejection or a faux pas. For each of these traits, the author suggests causes as well as potential remedies: gingko biloba for transience, for example. In a summary chapter, Schacter argues that each of these failures is in fact an aspect of some positive trait without which memory would be far less valuable.
A lively and well-written survey, spiced up with incidents from recent headlines.Pub Date: May 7, 2001
ISBN: 0-618-04019-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2001
To exorcise the demons of irrationality, turn to this rigorous—if overzealous—study of everyday logic. Cognitive illusions—like optical illusions—hold us in their thrall, says Piattelli-Palmarini (Cognitive Science/Institute San Raffaele, Milan). But theoretical breakthroughs in cognitive science provide revolutionary new avenues for thought. Addressing everyone who wants to make more rational decisions, Piattelli- Palmarini unveils the ``discovery'' of the ``cognitive unconscious.'' This term, with its nod to Freud, refers to the reflexive patterns of reasoning in which we engage unreflectively, even though counterintuitive but logically correct thinking would serve us better. Asked, for instance, which outcome is more likely in a coin flip, ``heads-heads-heads'' or ``heads-tails-heads- tails,'' most people use incorrect logic to conclude that the latter is more likely (in fact, ``the longer the sequence, the less probable it is''). Piattelli-Palmarini explores the ``tunnels'' of cognitive illusion, showing how familiar problems, (drawn from the realms of medicine, demography, economics, and gambling) flummox most people. Then he corrects common misapprehensions, mapping the rational terrain that lies outside these tunnels, even making an arcane but crucial fact about statistics clear to the general reader. By revealing how most respondents err in, for instance, guessing someone's profession based on a personality profile, Piattelli-Palmarini rigorously defines the rules of probability and deduction. Some will object that what he calls ``irrationality'' is itself a function of the abstraction of such problems, but he vigorously defends cognitive science against such arguments. Perhaps less defensible is his pretense that its ideas represent a revolutionary breakthrough; the issues he raises are, after all, part of a 2,000-year-old philosophical debate. Whether or not his grand claims are justified, as a primer for problem-solvers, this book has great merit.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-471-58126-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Wiley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
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