Celebrity Gossip: Does The Object Matter?

So somebody gave me The Nine for Christmas, which is one of the new Supreme Court books, and one that I was pretty eager to read. But one of the reasons I was so eager to read it was that a friend who had already read it told me it had all kinds of dirt about the justices, including the fact that David Souter eats a yogurt and an apple for lunch, which is kind of a striking fact.

David Lat has made a career out of collecting this stuff -- the fact that it's out there isn't news, nor, I guess, is the kind of hand-wringing I'm about to engage in.

Why the hell do I care what David Souter eats? Do I care because he's a justice of the Supreme Court, or do I care because I like collecting facts about other people, especially facts that seem weird? Is there any difference between my interest in David Souter and Britney Spears? How about the guy across from my apartment who yells at his girlfriend?

It's always fun, although I guess maybe it used to be more fun, to pick the perfect subjects of the New Yorker Talk of the Town piece. The stained glass restorer, the last maker of hand-crafted bricks, the person who tracks the migration of some particular kind of bunny rabbit. And then you could do your best to mimic the New Yorker style of discussion, the bland presentation of personal eccentricity. But there's some of the same thing there -- what's the point of knowing these things about these people? Is it that there's some particular merit to the stained glass profession? Is it another way of contemplating human variety?

Or is it just some kind of drive to know what's going on with other people, whoever they may be? We want to be behind the scenes, we want to wrap our hands around some kind of vision of who these people are, really.

If You Liked Tristram Shandy, You'll Love . . .

Last week I read a funny, weird, good book called When to Walk, by Rebecca Gowers.

I bought it in a kind of book-buying-binge last weekend, during which I spent about 100 dollars (Canadian!) buying also: a novel by a Lebanese woman about the Middle East, a collection of the best American comics of 2007, and another small graphic novel by Julie Doucet, called The Madame Paul Affair.

I picked out When to Walk knowing nothing about it, but the truth is I was heavily swayed by the fact, mentioned on the cover, that it had been nominated for some book prize.

I find when I am shopping for new novels I pay close attention to prizes and good reviews from serious newspapers. It doesn't always result in a book you like, but it almost always results in a book worth reading.

One reason I have to rely on things like this -- things on the cover of the book -- is that I seldom have a book in mind when I go novel-shopping. And one reason I seldom have something in mind is because I don't read reviews of novels. I don't read movie reviews, either, except for movies I'm never going to see.

This might seem funny (or "ironic," as we say nowadays), because I am obviously relying heavily on reviewers' judgments to decide what to read, but I refuse to read the reviews. But the thing is, as I've mentioned before, I am way into narrative. And I love being caught up in a narrative, not knowing what's going to happen. Reviews just ruin the narrative, ruin the experience.

I always read things in order. Absurdly, I even read magazines from cover to cover. I know this is nuts -- I know there's no "narrative" in the placement of New Yorker stories and that I can perfectly well skip ahead to the Television Review and then skip back. But the impulse grabs me: I think, well, maybe if I skip ahead I *won't* skip back. And then what?

Anyway, with novel reviews, you also have the problem that the subjectivity of novel-reading is so intense. Even if I agree with some reviewer that some book is great, I can almost guarantee you that the reviewers opinions will annoy me, or disturb me, or leave me feeling something like, "You thought that, about this book??" What is wrong with you?

All in all, I'd be just as happy with a novel review system that was just a list of stars. "Lucy Ellman says: 5 stars!" works for me. Better than ". . . this is Moby-Dick female-style: more of a whimper than a whale," which is what Ms. Ellman actually says in her Guardian review of When to Walk. Just tell me what to read, guys. "Read this book" is about all the information I need.

The other thing on the cover of Gowers' book says, "Tristram Shandy meets Bridget Jones. . ." Ugh. Even though I've never read Tristram Shandy or Bridget Jones's Diary, and even though I have nothing against either of them, this blurb made me almost not buy the book. Why do things like that have to be so stupid?

I'd tell you all about When to Walk but it's the kind of book that's hard to talk about without ruining the experience. So. Read this book. It's good. 5 stars.

Genetic Tests Offer Knowledge, Not Wisdom

It was a few years ago, and the blood test for herpes had just come out. I was all excited. I am normally a champion sleeper, but every now and then I get anxious and find myself up and petrified at 2 a.m., stranded in an unsafe and frightening world. One thing that occupies my mind during those times is the fear that I've unwittingly passed on STDs. It seems like such a crummy thing to do.

So at my annual check-up I tell the doctor that I'd like to be tested. He talks me out of it. He says, "Look, you're in a relationship, there's nothing really to be done about it, so many people have this, better just to leave it alone."

I went along, more being a passive moron than out of any conviction by his arguments.

The title of this post is the front page headline for this Los Angeles Time story this morning.

The second paragraph in (almost) its entirety: "One-quarter of fetuses found to have Gaucher disease were aborted over an eight-year period, even though half of all children with the metabolic disorder will never experience any symptoms . . . The rest can lead normal lives with treatment."

Eugenics is, obviously, creepy, but I will note that in the twenty third paragraph we learn that four abortions out of sixteen pregnancies made up that one-quarter figure.

So one of the responses to this is that testing shouldn't happen, or, from the L.A.Times's paraphrase of one doctor's response, "given the ambiguity inherent in some genetic tests, they should not be given for diseases that are imminently [sic?] treatable."

It strikes me as such a funny message, and one that only really gets put forward in the medical and national security contexts: You can't be trusted with this information. It, in fact, says nothing good about you that you want this information. You, given this information, will go buck-wild.