Synopsis: Bored New York psychiatrist begins living his life according to the roll of a dice in order to escape the constraints of his personality.  Unpredictable, but ultimately boring.

My Take: There’s promise in the premise of this book. I first heard of “The Dice Man” gimmick via the highly entertaining Discovery Channel travel series of the same name. The concept of someone making decisions according to the roll of a dice certainly adds a healthy dose of conflict and unpredictability to a narrative.  Similarly, a mechanism that allows an individual to explore one’s ‘minority self’, the ‘parts’ of you that might want to do something unusual that are ordinarily repressed by your dominant personality, is also intriguing.

However, I just couldn’t get onto this novel’s wavelength. After finishing it, I couldn’t quite work out whether it was satire (and if so, what the main target was – 70s psychiatry? Society in general?), whether it was intended to be subversive or whether it was simply a comic farce. Of course, it shouldn’t matter what the book’s purpose/genre is so long as it’s engaging, but while it is amusing in parts, the novel’s plot aimlessly meanders for so long that by the end, the appeal of the gimmick is thoroughly exhausted.

And so as I was reading “The Dice Man” I was left wondering “What is the point?”. On the one hand the novel is clearly scathingly and amusingly satirical about 70s psychiatry. However, one the other at times the book seems to come perilously close to genuine advocacy of “dice life” as a response to the repressive absurdities of modern society.  If you think that this is a naïve reading of an intentionally satirical text, consider that the author claims to have actively used ‘dicing’ himself for a decade before writing “The Dice Man” after musing on the nature of freedom while teaching Nietzsche and Sartre as a psychology lecturer.  I may be wrong, but there were plenty of moments while reading “The Dice Man” that my mindset shifted from ‘This is amusing’ to ‘This is absurd’.

While it’s not without redeeming characteristics, unfortunately, I can’t recommend “The Dice Man” to others.

Highlights:

“I shared my office on 57th Street with Dr Jacob Ecstein, young (thirty-three), dynamic (two books published), intelligent (he and I usually agreed), personable (everyone liked him), unattractive (no one loved him), anal (he plays the stock market compulsively), oral (he smokes heavily), non-genital (doesn’t seem to notice women), and Jewish (he knows two Yiddish slang words). Our mutual secretary was a Miss Reingold. Mary Jane Reingold, old (thirty-six), undynamic (she worked for us), unintelligent (she prefers Ecstein to me), personable (everyone felt sorry for her), unattractive (tall, skinny, glasses, no one loved her), anal (obsessively neat), oral (always eating), genital (trying hard), and non-Jewish (finds use of two Yiddish slang words very intellectual). Miss Reingold greeted me efficiently.”

…

“If that dice has a ‘one’ face up, I thought, I’m going downstairs to rape Arlene. ‘If it’s a one, I’ll rape Arlene’ kept blinking on and off in my mind like a huge neon light and my terror increased. But when I thought if it’s not a one I’ll go to bed, the terror evaporated and excitement swept over me: a one means rape, the other numbers mean bed, the die is cast. Who am I to question the dice?’

…

Now the curious reader will want to know what kind of an analyst I was. It so happens that I practiced non-directive therapy. For those not familiar with it, the analyst is passive, compassionate, non-interpretive, non-directing. More precisely, he resembles a redundant moron. For example, a session with a patient like Jenkins might go like this:

JENKINS: ‘I feel that no matter how hard I try I’m always going to fail; that some kind of internal mechanism always acts to screw up what I’m trying to do.’

[Pause]

ANALYST: ‘You feel that some part of you always forces you to fail.’

JENKINS: ‘Yes. For example, that time when I had that date with that nice woman, really attractive – the librarian, you remember – and all I talked about at dinner and all evening was the New York Jets and what a great defensive secondary they have. I knew I should be talking books or asking her questions but I couldn’t stop myself.’

ANALYST: ‘You feel that some part of you consciously ruined the potential relationship with that girl.’

JENKINS: ‘And that job with Wessen, Wessen and Woof. I could have had it. But I took a monthly vacation in Jamaica when I knew they’d be wanting an interview.’

‘I see.’

‘What do you make of it all, Doctor? I suppose it’s masochistic.’

‘You think it might be masochistic.’

‘I don’t know. What do you think?’

‘You aren’t certain if it’s masochistic but you do know that you often do things which are self-destructive.’…

The intelligent reader gets the picture. The effect of non-directive therapy is to encourage the patient to speak more and more frankly, to gain total confidence in the non-threatening, totally accepting clod who’s curing him, and eventually to diagnose and resolve his own conflicts, with old thirty-five-dollars-an-hour echoing away through it all behind the couch.

And it works. It works precisely as well as every other tested form of psychotherapy. It works sometimes and fails at others, and its success and failures are identical with other analysts’ successes and failures.

Synopsis:

My Take: Yes, I admit have particular preferences when it comes to my reading habits. I read more than my share of modern Asian fiction, Kennedy biographies and blokey Australian literature. However, I do consciously try to read outside of my comfort zone on a fairly regular basis. I figure even if it’s not to my tastes, at least I’m broadening my horizons (and have one more topic that I can bullshit my way through a conversation about).

Enter Anais Nin. I remember shortly after reading Annie Proulx’s “Brokeback Mountain” thinking that I really didn’t read many female writers and that I should make more of an effort to challenge my ignorant and patriarchal biases. So I figured I’d dive into the deep end with some of the chickyist femo-lit around – Anais Nin’s semi-infamous diaries of sexual awakening and literary exploration in 1930s Paris with Henry and June Miller.

I promise that I did come to this with an open mind. I was looking for enrichment and broadening of horizons. Unfortunately, what I found was a bit of a mess. Nin is a poetic and whimsical writer, but even in the edited version I read, the internal monologue got tiring pretty quickly. Nin’s frank writing about her sexual awakening and liberation might have been enough to carry the book in an earlier time, but I wonder about its relevance today. I suppose that I should give Nin a leave pass on this one given that she never intended the diaries to be published, but even disregarding the lack of narrative framing for an external audience, there wasn’t much in the diaries that made me think that I would enjoy Nin’s writing/perspectives/insights in a fictional context.

Highlight: I would include a highlight, but a lot of it is NSFW so I think I’ll take the path of discretion…

Synopsis: In/famous Clinton pollster, Burson-Marsteller CEO and Bowser look alike claims that small-scale, niche trends, identifiable through statistical analysis, are the key drivers for societal change. A long bow, stretched WAY too far for its own good.

My Take: Love him or hate him (and let’s face it, most people hate him these days), Mark Penn has played a pretty central role in progressive campaigning in the US over the past 15 years. As on e of the most influential pollsters/strategists of the Clinton wing of the Democratic party, Penn can claim to have contributed to the successes of Bill Clinton (in particular his identification of “Soccer Moms” as a key demographic in the 1996 US Presidential election), and the relative failures Hillary Clinton.

Microtrends is a bit of a microcosm of the good and the bad of Penn’s tactics in particular, but also pollsters and strategists in general (here’s a link to the Introduction). In a narrow sense, the basic principle of the ‘Microtrend’ is both sensible and important, if not revolutionary to any seasoned campaigner.  Penn reasonably defines a ‘Microtrend’ as:

a small but growing group of people, who share an intense choice or preference, that is often counterintuitive and has sometimes been missed or undercounted by the companies, marketers, policymakers, and others.

He similarly quite sensibly identifies the importance of these groups to political campaigning:

The art of trend-spotting, through polls, is to find groups that are pursuing common activities and desires, and that have either started to come together or can be brought together by the right appeal that crystallizes their needs.

…

It is those groups that can tip an election, make or break a business, or trigger a social movement. They make a huge difference, and yet many conventional commentators on society either don’t see them or deny them outright.

All of which I agree with. All too often political analysts confuse popular support for an issue with vote changing support. 15% of voters who are willing to change their vote on a single issue can be far more politically important than 85% of voters with an opinion on an issue,

Further, the 75 ‘Microtrends’ that Penn identifies are both amusing and illuminating. The book is probably worth reading just for these case studies. Incidentally, there’s a reasonably good promotional Facebook app you can run to see what ‘Microtrend’ you’re likely to fall into which is moderately amusing.

However, things start to go seriously astray when Penn begins to apply this sensible observation as a catch-all explanation of ALL social and political movements. For example, Penn claims that:

The whole idea that there are a few huge trends that determine how America and the world work is breaking down. There are no longer a couple of megaforces sweeping us all along. Instead, America and the world are being pulled apart by an intricate maze of choices, accumulating in “microtrends” – small, under-the-radar forcse that can involve as little as 1 per cent of the population, but which are powerfully shaping our society… Small is the new big.

This is where Penn loses me. It’s one thing to say that many people are strongly motivated by niche concerns that are common to few other people. It might even be fair to suggest that as a result of the emergence of a fragmented, ‘new media’, these ‘microtrends’ are more important than in the past.  However, it’s entirely another thing to say that there aren’t equally important, broader, society wide influences on voter behaviour.

In fact, it’s ironic that this book was released in the lead up to the 2008, US Presidential election, an election in which a single mega-trend, the mass voter movement towards the ‘Change’ represented by Barack Obama, largely determined  the outcome. You only have to read his claims in Microtrends that:

There is no One America anymore, or Two, or Three, or eight. In fact, there are hundreds of Americas, hundreds of new niches made up of people drawn together by common interests.

to see how out of touch Penn was with the US Electorate in 2008.  The fact is that electorates are more than just the sum of the individual interests of the various groupings within it. There are common issues (patriotism, justice, change, security) that cut across niches and influence votes across the electorate. Penn makes the fundamental consultant’s mistake of believing his own bullshit in Microtrends and as a result, blows their influence totally out of proportion. Which is a shame, because ironically, in a narrow sense, Microtrends has a lot of small, but interesting points to make.

Highlights: Some of the more interesting Microtrends Penn identifies:

Extreme Commuters

Among the millions of Americans driving to work every day, you’re pushing the limits (with 3.4 million others) by travelling more than 90 minutes each way. Whether it’s out of necessity or desire, you’ve taken discipline to the extreme, waking up at or before dawn to get to work. And you’re a key, niche consumer — you need ways to eat in the car, study in the car, and be entertained in the car. And boy are you interested in comfortable seats!

Caffeine Crazies

Life takes some extra energy, no? Lately you just can’t perform at your peak levels without a little help from those turbo-caffeinated, super-energy drinks. You’re part of a growing group who knows those drinks just fire you up for all the work and fun you’ve got to get done!

DIY Doctors

The biggest trend in American healthcare is DIYDs: Do-It-Yourself Doctors. These are people who research their own symptoms, diagnose their own illnesses, and administer their own cures. If they have to call on doctors at all, they either treat them like ATM machines for prescriptions they already “know” they need, or they show up in their offices with full-color descriptions of their conditions, self-diagnosed on WebMD.