Booklog for Charlotte

Archie and Amelie: Love and Madness in the Gilded Age by Donna Lucey

This is the story of two amazing characters.  Archie was an Astor, heir to his part of a huge fortune who was orphaned at an early age.  He, along with most other men in her orbit, fell in love with a novelist from an aristocratic cash poor family from Virginia who found his money very appealing and agreed to marry him.

They were married for a few years of high drama; Archie experienced great anguish and Amelie who was feted wherever she went, was miserable with headaches and became addicted to morphine.  Eventually they were divorced. 

Archie had the vision of creating a idealistic mill town in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina where the workers had all the amenities; with investments from his many family members, he was well on the way to success in this enterprise.  Apparently because at a critical moment, he was distracted by a scheme to create roadways in Marseille which would have required a great deal of capital, his brother Winty managed to have him committed to an asylum in upstate New York.  He escaped after four years but was unable to regain control  of his assets for many years.  And he died a little crazy.

The circle they traveled in are amazing:  Stanford White (architect of the Gilded Age, and of course, of Cabell Hall at UVa), who was a partner of Archie in his business undertakings; Dr. Weir Mitchell, of the "rest cure" that almost drove Charlotte Perkins Gilman ("The Yellow Wallpaper") crazy and who had the audacity to give literary advice to Edith Wharton; Henry James, who was quite taken with Amelie and her literary talent; and William James, who was one of the few intellectuals to take a scientific interest in the psychology of religion and mysticism.  He admired Archie's efforts to connect with his subconscious and his effort to use his gift of a psychic temperament to further scientific inquiry.

I kept thinking of Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence as I read this; the strength of the social hierarchy to enforce its rules at that time was impressive.  These were the very people that Edith Wharton was writing about.  Archie's Aunt Caroline was the creator of the list of 400 people who mattered socially; this was the number that fit into her ballroom.

Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely

Dan Ariely is a behavioral economist; he looks at our economic (and other) choices the way a psychologist would.  He has devised countless experiments that demonstrate the choices we make are not rational. 

For example, a group of 100 students is given the following three choices for subscriptions to the Economist:  an online only subscription for $59, a print-only subscription for $125 or a combination online and print version for $125.  Given these three choices, 16 students chose online only, 0 chose print-only, and 84 chose the combination version.  If you remove the decoy (which no one chose), the numbers change so that 68 chose the online only and 32 chose the combination version. So, the clever Economist publishers only had to give us a decoy to get a significant number of people to pay more to receive a print version.  We are so dumb (or irrational as Dan Ariely would say)!

Here's an experiment that shows another way we are very suggestible.  Asian-American women are divided into two groups and each group takes an objective math exam.  Before taking the exam, the women in one group are asked questions related to their gender such as questions about preferences relating to co-ed dorms.  The second group is asked questions related to their race, such as the languages they knew and their family's history in the U.S.  The results of the two groups matched the stereotypes of each group.  Those whose questions reminded them they are women did worse than those who were reminded they are Asian-Americans.

I never tired of these great stories that illustrate various points so well, but if I had, then I could enjoy other amazing bits in this book.  Below is a quote from a 17th century recipe for a cure-all medication that relates to a section on placebo effect:

Take the fresh corpse of a red-haired, uninjured, unblemished man, 24 years old and killed no more than one day before, preferably by hanging, breaking on the wheel or impaling....Leave it one day and one night in the light of the sun and the moon, then cut into shreds or rough strips.  Sprinkle on a little powder of myrr and aloes, to prevent it from being too bitter.

Another great story involves attracting someone of interest romantically.  Because we are drawn to making comparisons, as illustrated by the Economist story, if you plan to meet a man in a bar, it's a good idea to take along a friend who is not quite as attractive as you are.  In a follow up to the initial publishing of this book, he adds an important moral he learned from the daughter of a colleague who used this technique to her advantage, but told the decoy friend one night when she had had a few too many drinks:

Never, ever tell your friend why you're asking him or her to come with you.  Your friend might have suspicions, but for the love of God, don't eliminate all doubt.

He says that rational economists base their models on a false premise.  The rational economic model assumes that man is self-interested, calculating and able to weigh the costs and benefits to optimize the outcome.  Once you've read this book, you are keenly aware that is not the case. 

Fingerprints of God by Barbara Bradley Hagerty

Audiobook.  The former NPR reporter explores her research for the science of spirituality.  She lets us know right away that she grew up in a Christian Science home and her grandmother was a widely known practitioner.  It was when she was miserable with a cold that she abandoned Christian Science for Tylenol, but her faith is always in evidence in this book.

She writes about her interviews with people who have had a life changing mystical experience which most often occurred when they were at a very low point and she interviewed many people with temporal lobe epilepsy, a large number of whom report religious experiences resulting from their epileptic events.  She puzzles about the possibility of a God who gives some people better access to receive his wisdom.  (Of course if you think very long about God handing out assets, there are lots of questions you might ask.)

Clearly she was looking for evidence of God in scientific studies; ultimately it doesn't happen.  Her bias was there; she refers to some scientists as "materialists."  My understanding is that science is fundamentally materialist, and that is its great strength.  If you believe that might not take in all the possibilities, that is its shortcoming.  

The Secret River by Kate Grenville

This is my second book by Kate Grenville and the one that won the Orange Prize.  It begins with the description of the child Will Thornhill in the desperate slums of London and his redeeming connection with his childhood girlfriend, whose situation was much better than his.  He eventually does well, with the help of his father-in-law until a long freeze shuts down his work on the river.  He is caught stealing and spends months in Newgate prison awaiting his hanging.  He is miraculously saved and sent instead to New South Wales along with his wife and children.  Their existence is better than the bad times in London, and he becomes a free man.

The heart of the story is Will's discovery that he could claim land along the Hawkesbury River by cultivating a plot of it.  While he worked on a boat on the river, he spotted a point that he came to view as Thornhill Point and eventually was able to move his family there from Sydney.  From the outset it was clear the land was inhabited by aboriginals; it was Will's hunger for land of his own that blinded him to the falseness of his position.  And our view of his willingness to take the land is tempered by the horror of his childhood and the adversity he had faced as a young man.  He is contrasted with other settlers, especially the truly dispicable Smasher Sullivan, but in the moment of decision, he will not leave his land and he joins the bloodthirsty crowd seeking retribution for a murder committed by the blacks.  Ultimately the settlers prevail, and Will becomes the rich Mr. Thornhill with a fine house and servants.  

We see occasional indications that Will and especially his young son Dick recognize and value the aboriginals they encounter.  The heartbreak is that they are no match for the endless tide of settlers coming their way.