Doppelganger by Naomi Klein

Doppelganger by Naomi Klein is a compelling nonfiction book subtitled A Trip into the Mirror World. Klein writes about herself and Naomi Wolf, someone she has been often mistaken for, and provides an interesting examination into our society and the extremist beliefs held by many. Klein and Wolf at one time were both writing about individual autonomy and corporate power, with Klein in 2007 publishing The Shock Doctrine about exploitation of large-scale events, and them being mistaken for one other seems understandable.

Wolf began to espouse more conspiracy theories prior to pandemic, and then with it, her statements became much more unhinged. Her anti-vax views went to the level of writing about "vaccine shedding," the idea that vaccinated people could infect the unvaccinated. She also put out videos like "Why Vaccine Passports Equal Slavery Forever" and became a regular guest on Steve Bannon's show. 

Where the book gets particularly interesting is in how Klein points out that Wolf takes ideas and questions that are legitimate and should be asked, but goes so far with them to make any discussion around the topics seem wrong or like binary opposites, basically the legitimate argument gets co-opted by the outlandish one, rendering it moot.

The extremist right argues against governmental controls, and does so in such a wild manner, that normal people can't argue against them also. Basically, government conspiracists take over the argument about government in general. Extremists talk about government spying on us and Liberals react with how crazy Extremists are, and lose the ability to make arguments about privacy from governmental incursion. 

Another example is criticism of the role Bill Gates had in COVID-19 policy and drug companies having patents on COVID vaccines when vaccine development was so heavily government subsidized becomes muted, lest that discussion be confused with people demonizing Gates and vaccines in general. Klein writes that legitimate debate functionally gets killed when you have situations that this, with about Wolf, her noting that it felt like Wolf took Klein's ideas and fed into a bonkers blender, with the  thought-puree then shared with Tucker Carlson. 

Klein raises the concept of diagonalism, or diagonal alliances, where different conspiracy theories or grievances all roll together, or at least align together. The term pipikism is also used, with it from writer Philip Roth and about the idea of inconsequentializing or trivializing things, with perhaps the most dangerous form of pipikism being the make-up possibility that perhaps the Nazis weren't so awful, and also invented idea that vaccine cards are sort of like Star of David that Jews were forced to wear. Equating vaccines with the attempted extermination of an entire race makes the extermination seem less of a big deal, a dangerous and horrifying slope to go down when the actions of Nazis are trivialized. There's a lot to the book that Klein writes. It starts with the idea of Wolf as her doppelganger, but then covers well so much more.

Lab Girl by Hope Jahren

Lab Girl by Hope Jahren was a lyrically written and excellent book from a geochemist, geobiologist, and professor who studies trees, flowers, seeds, and soil. Jahren writes in the beginning how she grew up the daughter of a scientist in small town Minnesota, 100 miles from Minneapolis and how science appealed to her when young, with it being so much about doing and working with things.

The book is about science and Jahren's love of it, but even more so, it's about her life and a friendship and work partnership that she formed while still a graduate student. There's great tales of she and her colleague Bill acting as co-conspirators in life and work, and traveling the world, with after meeting at Berkeley, stops in Atlanta, Baltimore, the Arctic, Norway, and Hawaii. In many ways, the book is like a traveling road trip story featuring two people on the same wavelength, both in how they interacted with each other and with students, teaching them to get into the muck and dive into their work. Jahren describes her work partner as being someone eclectic, loyal, and interesting, and it's really compelling reading on him.

In relation to herself, Jahren writes of how she suffered from anxiety, mania, and debilitating depression and how after meeting her future husband, marrying, and becoming pregnant, how difficult it was to be off medication early in the pregnancy and she notes how a bipolar woman seven times more likely to have an episode while pregnant as when not.

Jahren also details how when her son was about to start school, she and her family moved to Europe for a year, and recounts the story of her partner in crime Bill coming to visit, with him on the heels of dealing with having his elderly father die. It's just a really great story of friendship and Jahren at the end writes of both her family and Bill having moved to Hawaii and she saying goodnight to her son, writing of it with the memorable phrase that "raising a child is essentially one long, slow agony of letting go" and then leaving for the lab to work with Bill, where she'll "use the other half of her heart."

Two additional things I enjoyed from the book were how Jahren uses one of my favorite words in doppelganger, and in the epilogue has an encouragement for people to plant a tree a year, perhaps an oak or something of a similar solid ilk.

Writing on Raising Kids: by Buzz Bissinger, John Jeremiah Sullivan, & Eric Puchner

There's a few pieces of writing I've seen lately that are great individually and which share the connection of having fascinating insight on raising children.

The first was "You Blow My Mind. Hey, Mickey!" by John Jeremiah Sullivan for the New York Times. Sullivan is a ridiculously talented writer (who wrote the book Pulphead that I reviewed here) and this piece on going to Disney World with his family was one of five nominees for Best Feature Writing at the 2012 National Magazine Awards.

Since I brought it up... the category winner was Luke Dittrich for his amazing Esquire Magazine piece on survivors of the Joplin, MO tornado and I probably would have picked the Dittrich story as well with the subject of his exceptionally written piece having more inherent drama than that in Sullivan's exceptionally written piece.

Anyhoo, back to Disney World... the story is highly entertaining, but what really got me from it were two specific anecdotes towards the end. The first was about a huge storm that hit during Sullivan's time at the Park and it reminded me of the fascinating apocalyptic reference he made in the essay "At a Shelter (After Katrina)" from Pulphead. The other anecdote (which was the connection to the other pieces in this post) was the following...

"We don’t need to go crazy with guilt and worry about our children. We’re not responsible for them. For their upbringing, yes, but not for their existence. Destiny wants them here. It uses us to put them here."

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Tremendously interesting few sentences that I thought of after subsequently reading "Buzz Bissinger on Raising a Special Needs Child", excerpted from his forthcoming book Father’s Day: A Journey Into the Mind and Heart of My Extraordinary Son. The part from Bissinger that seemed to parallel Sullivan on kids was his ending to the excerpt...

"But whatever happens with Zach, I know I cannot think in terms of my best interests, even if I think they are also in his best interests. Zach will be where and who he will be. Because he needs to be. Because he wants to be. Because as famed physician Oliver Sacks said, all children, whatever the impairment, are propelled by the need to make themselves whole. They may not get there, and they may need massive guidance, but they must forever try."

Bissinger may or may not be making the same point as Sullivan, but in the vein of "once the words are written, readers will do with them what they may", both concepts seemed to traffic in the idea that (while parents can and should still... you know, parent), children are their own people with their own path for life.

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The final piece related to this concept was one I read a few weeks ago, but just recently saw a link to it posted online. The May issue of GQ Magazine featured "The Cooler Me" by Eric Puchner on time spent with his own doppelganger... the guy he might have become if not for taking on a life of family and associated responsibilities. It's really interesting writing with Puchner (his website here) comparing his life as a teacher, husband and father of two young kids to that of musician Kyle Field. The piece neither bemoans what Field has that he doesn't, nor props himself up in comparison to the singer, but rather takes an almost anthropological view of choices made.

Since the first two pieces had wisdom pulled out for this post, the following two quotes were first from Field in response to Puchner speaking of whether he should have taken a different path in life, and then Puchner concluding his story with an anecdote about time with his daughter...

"There's always something else you could be doing," he said. "We're wasting a life as we speak."

"If someone told me I was going to die tomorrow, I thought, I would still want to be sitting right here. Because it was going to happen someday—very soon, in fact, in cosmological time—and it mattered immensely where I was. There was no time not to waste."

Really great writing in all three pieces and definitely an interesting common thread between them.