Not often in the fiction genre does one find a novel that is challenging and entertaining. The fact that I did not buy this book (D did) is a coincidence that does seem very meta. I absolutely loved The Coincidence Plot – its explorations of philosophy, the layering of its plots and characters, and the fantastic conversations that they have with each other, and sometimes, themselves.
The book is a wandering of sorts, centred around coincidences and the kind of God that exists in such a world. If that smells like Spinoza, it’s not a coincidence. The plots, subplots, and characters are all built around this theme. Starting with Artur, a mathematician escaping Nazi Germany and working on Spinoza’s thesis after his work on the uncertainty of mathematical proofs remains unfinished, to two characters working on novels to bring to existence this mathematician’s life and thoughts – “ontological proof for the existence of God”. In case I made it out to be a mind-numbing philosophy grind, it isn’t. The characters and interesting, and well-written, and so are their relationships.
It’s definitely not the standard linear book. Each chapter has two characters from a finite set, but placed across different geographical settings and time periods. As we go along, the parallels are unmistakeable, and that is not a coincidence. Anil Menon seems to know a bunch of things about a bunch of things. It allows him to create layers and depths, and when you combine that with the twin powers of a fantastic sense of humour, and a poignant sensitivity and empathy towards grief and the human condition in general, it creates a marvel. Sometimes preposterous, sometimes profound, this has been one of my favourite fiction reads in a while!
Remember Aesop’s The Ant & the Grasshopper? The one that is told to teach us the virtues of hard work and the importance of saving for a rainy day. Given the values still hold, most books that have anything to do with money are written for ‘grasshoppers’, but Die with Zero is more for the ants, or in the author’s words, to drag the ant towards the grasshopper.
The basic premise of the book is that we should make full use of our money when we have the capability to enjoy what it brings us. As we age, that capability diminishes, a function of our desires, as well as deteriorating health. While we could still enjoy many things, the yield or utility per dollar goes down with age.
A part of the book is devoted to elaborating on this perspective and proving it with data and anecdotes. Data shows that a lot of people end up over-saving and underspending during retirement and die with a large sum of money still left. Hence the need to temper delayed gratification. Concepts like consumption smoothing – one’s spending not mirroring the variations of income, and transferring money from years of abundance to leaner years. In other words, spend more than your income, if required, early in life for experiences that will give you memories to cherish in your old age, because you can repay it as income increases. To be fair, the author obviously discourages reckless spending.
This also goes for money you wish to give to your near and dear, as well as charity. For instance, better to give the kid money when you’re 65 and he/she is 35, rather than 80 and 50 respectively. The peak utility of money is highest between 35 and 50, when people have the health and the desire. Even within retirement, there are go-go years, slow-go years, and no-go years, and one should bulk up the spending at the top. He also recommends getting a sense of your life expectancy using calculators so you can plan accordingly.
Another useful concept is that of time buckets. Take a duration, say 10 years, and look at 40-50, 50-60 and so on. Now slot the things you want to do, and when you’re best placed to do it. Usually the control variable is money, here it is health and desire. This will help you figure that some things are better when done at certain ages. It’s a perspective shift. The other related shift is seeing your peak as a date (related to biological age) and not a number.
The book also addresses the ‘how’ of implementing this, and overcoming the mental barriers that people commonly have towards this approach, including the not-so-common “I love my job”.
The book does offer a reasonably unique perspective, and at its core, it urges thinking on first principles and making conscious decisions, both of which I support. But I felt that the author underestimates the scarcity mindset, or probably lacks the empathy required for it. The other aspect I didn’t like is the tendency to quantify aspects of life that have multiple dimensions of quality. And finally, the ‘inefficiency’ comment on Sylvia Bloom, who worked as a legal secretary for 67 years, and when she died at 96, bequeathed $8.2m to charity. According to the author, she should have done this earlier while she was alive. Absolute tone-deafness.
I always have a bias for Pico Iyer’s writing, and many a time I end up reading his books at times when I need an alternate perspective. In The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise, the search is for what different people define as paradise – a place with no worry or anxiety. Except, for some it is a particular place, for others a moment in time and something that can be accessed if we put our mind to it, and for some others it can only be enjoyed after death.
From Jerusalem to Benaras, and Japan to Ladakh, Pico explores these concepts and the people who believe in the different definitions. As is usually the case with his writing, it is as much introspection as it is travel, and written in wonderful prose. He blends his personal experiences with philosophical musings seamlessly. Through the people he meets, and his encounters with those from varied backgrounds, he reflects on the nature of life, and its many meanings.
In solitude and contemplation, he reaches out to thinkers before him- from the Stoics to William James to Henry David Thoreau, in an effort to decipher the complexities of our existence. Each essay is a meditation, and amidst the noise and chaos of this busy world, I’ll probably pick it up again later in life to get a different rendition of the half-known truths that lie deep inside all of us.
As is the case most of the time these days, I discovered The Master and His Emissary thanks to a podcast. Iain McGilchrist’s concepts seemed extremely intriguing, and now I have to admit (as he mentions early in the book) maybe intuitively consistent with my lived experience, and I had to read the book soon. Turns out that it goes directly to my all-time favourites, and was in my Bibliofiles 2023 list.
As the subtitle suggests, the book is divided into two parts – the divided brain, and the making of the Western World, each with half a dozen chapters. The first part deals with the brain itself – the asymmetry of the right and left hemispheres, their collective and individual roles, how their functioning actually leads to different perspectives, how this affected the evolution of music and then language (which can be seen as a key component in the progression of the species), the primacy of the right hemisphere, and how its emissary – the left hemisphere – has now usurped control.
The heuristic ways of looking at the hemispheres, e.g. left analytical, right creative etc, is replaced by a nuanced view. The differences between them are less about what they do and more about how they approach something. The left’s utilitarian ability to ‘grasp’ (look at how the metaphor applies to thoughts), its ability to provide simple answers and articulate them well, have all enabled it to grab control at an accelerated pace since the Industrial Revolution, and create a world where it prizes precisely these capabilities in individuals, institutions, and culture at large.
This is in many ways opposed to the right, which takes more holistic views, understands ideas and metaphors, perceives emotions better, specialises in non-verbal communication, and is humble about what it knows. The right deals with whatever is implicit, the left is tied to more explicit and more conscious processing. The right is present and pays attention to the world outside, the left re-presents. We need both hemispheres, and the right knows it, but the left thinks it knows everything. The left creates a world, and when it stops communications with the right, will not even accept reality if it counters the ‘truth’ of the world it has created. Its role was to provide a map of reality, it now thinks the map is reality, and if not, it will remake reality to fit the map.
The second part then digs into how this has manifested in the world around. It begins with the concept of mimesis (my favourite part) and how it was the crux of our leap into what we now call culture. The meta-skill that enables all other skills – imitation – possibly explains the rapid expansion of the brain in early hominids. Through the next five chapters, Iain takes us through history – from the early Greeks to the post-modern world, and how, though history has seen a see-saw in terms of the dominance of the hemispheres – Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment, Romanticism, and the Industrial Revolution – the impact of the last one was such that we are now in a world where a swing towards the right seems near impossible. Much like an addict, who is not even conscious that his next dose is not just another dose. ‘There is a vicious cycle between feelings of boredom, emptiness and restlessness, on the one hand, and gross stimulation and sensationalism on the other’.
The research is deep, in both sections, as evidenced by over a hundred pages of notes and bibliography. I especially appreciated the decision of not having same-page notes – it really does help the flow of reading. Iain has painstakingly tried to make a large number of diverse topics as accessible as possible. The first half is based on conclusions from scientific research and experiments across history, and various domains. The second half is itself an accordion of topics across centuries – arts, music, politics, language, and everything we call culture.
I think my bias for this book and its argument is based on my own experience. As a person and a professional who has to balance both hemispheres, I have been pulled to the left for the longest while. And in many workshops, the recommendation to me has been to let my right side ‘play’. It is only very recently that I have been able to start doing that, and I have to say that I am much happier. The Master and His Emissaryis a book I hugely recommend. It is not the easiest of reads, and I deliberately slowed down my reading speed so as to not gloss over it (though I still did in some of the arts discussions!) but it will open up how you think – the narrative you have made about yourself, and the world around you.
Quotes and ideas from The Master and His Emissary There are four main pathways to truth – science, reason, intuition, and imagination “The question is not what you look at, but what you see” ~ Henry Thoreau Attention changes what kind of thing comes into being for us : in that way it changes the world. Whether they are humans (say, employer vs friend) or things – a mountain is landmark to a navigator, a source of wealth to the prospector, and a dwelling place of gods for another. There is no ‘real’ mountain which can be distinguished from these, no one way of thinking which reveals the true mountain. Manipulospatial abilities may have provided the basis for primitive language. Function gestures become manipulative, syntax developed to form language, expression of our will. (p 111) Even in left handers, grasping actions controlled by left hemisphere, thus right hand. Language’s origin in music. Language originates as an embodied expression of emotion, that is communicated by one individual ‘inhabiting’ the emotional world of the other. A process that could have been derived from music. Grooming – music – language, all picked up by imitation. (p 123) Adam Zeman’s three principal meanings of consciousness – as a waking state, as experience, as mind (p 187) The river is not only passing across the landscape, but entering into it and changing it too, as the landscape has ‘changed’ and yet not changed the water. The landscape cannot make the river. It does not try to put a river together. It does not even say ‘yes’ to the river. It merely says ‘no’ to the water – or does not say ‘no’ to the water, whatever that it is that it does so, it allows the river to come into being. The river does not exist before the encounter. Only water exists before the encounter, and the river actually comes into benign the process of encountering the landscape, with its power to say ‘no’ or not to say ‘no’. The idea that the ‘separation’ of the two hemispheres took place in Homeric Greece. (voices of gods) (p260 -275) Gnothi seauton – know thyself In sooth I know not why I am so sad, It wearies me, you say it wearies you; But how I caught it, found it, or came by it, What stuff ’tis made of, whereof it is born, I am to learn. ~ Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice The difference between reason and rationality. The former depends on seeing in things in context – right hemisphere. Latter is left, context-independent. Kant described marriage as an agreement between two people as to the ‘reciprocal use of each others’ sexual organs’ ‘Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment’ ~ Sam Johnson Modern consumers everywhere are in a ‘permanent state of unfulfilled desire’ Certainty is the greatest of all illusions: whatever kind of a fundamentalism it may underwrite, that of religion or of science, it is what the ancients meant by hubris.
The Devil and Sherlock Holmes is a fascinating book, but how much it interests you depends on how curious you are. Grann mentions in his introduction that all the ‘stories’ are true, but I thought it was a gimmick to add to the effect. (like say, The Bridges of Madison County) When I got to the third chapter, I actually got really curious and googled. He wasn’t bluffing.
The book begins with the death of a Sherlock Holmes (or rather Conan Doyle) expert, the mystery surrounding it, and the existence of a ‘curse’. The last chapter is about ‘Toto’ Constant, a Haitian warlord, who founded a death squad, terrorised a democratically elected president’s supporters, and when the chapter starts, is a real estate agent in the US! He was nicknamed ‘The Devil’. That is as far as the connections with the title will go.
The book is divided into three parts. The first is made up of mysteries, ranging from arson investigation to a grown man who masquerades as a child, to a Polish detective trying to figure out whether an author has written a post-modern novel based on a crime he himself committed. The second part is about ‘a strange enigma is man’ – people (and in one case, generations) who are devoted to a specific calling and just won’t quit. The last part is about the ‘wicked in the universe’ – organised prison gangs that are practically beyond the reach of law, a city in love with the Mob and yes, Toto.
This is actually a superb work of investigative journalism. It exposed me to people, lives and worlds that seem so out of the realms of possibility that it is difficult to believe that they exist. A thoroughly interesting read if you’re so inclined.
