Fictional Reading, Non-Fictional Writing

When it comes to writing I prefer non-fiction and easy to compile stuff, like this blog. In reading I go the other way, towards fiction. I find writing stories very challenging, unlike personal stuff and observational content. Current events and opinion always feel like a natural fit for me. I seem to gravitate toward news and politics. This weird FOMO instinct kicks in every time someone says “Hey did you hear about…?” and of course I didn’t. I really hate that. 

When it comes to books though I like novels, mostly. Not sure why. It probably has to do with the adventure or mystery. No one reads a chapter in James Patterson book and goes “Well, that’s enough for today”  With non-fiction I always feel like I need to take notes. I guess it’s a lingering effect of hours spent in the classroom. Like I’m afraid someone might ask me to summarize what I just read. But learning happens in stories as well as with fiction. I make distinctions between non-fiction in story form and the traditional biography or self-help variety. 

 There is a misconception among those who read non-fiction, that it’s the choice of 'learners'. One of my favorite lines from the movie Sideways is from Thomas Haden Church’s father in law, “I think you read something, someone just invented it--waste of time.” It sums up the feeling people have about stories.

The lines get blurred in memoirs, since most of the details are accurate but include a lot of filler to round out the best remembered parts. I read a book called Back to Moscow from a European student getting his Master’s in Russian Literature. He lived in Moscow for a few years while reading the classics (Tolstoy, Pushkin, Dostoyevsky). He mostly just went to night clubs and hooked up with women while ‘trying’ to get work done. His project probably needed a year or less but he lived there for three, partying and boozing hard. He details the city and summarizes the literature throughout, sprinkling the story with digressions on famous characters like “Ana Karenina” and “Natasha Rostova”.

He also covers events in Moscow during the early 2000s, including the Theater hostage crisis which he was there for. I won’t ruin the ending but it ties in perfectly with the tragic lives’ of the heroines he studies. It isn’t traditional fiction where the story is completely whole cloth, he probably embellishes a bit but it reads like a fiction. It isn’t a textbook or a classic (hardly) but I learned enough.

John Grisham novels are pure fiction. He does courtroom and legal dramas better than anyone. He creates rich characters and his stories reflect time and place better than most; he doesn’t overwhelm readers with countless people and unbelievable plot twists. We probably don’t realize we’re learning about the people and culture while also guessing where the story will lead. It’s the best kind of learning too, heavy on personal story and light on facts. In this way his books are fun and engaging. There’s probably a bit of truth in most of his stories despite being technically a fictional account. Scenes from his childhood, nasty behavior from strangers and courtroom experiences all round out his novels.

The most common distinction between fiction and non-fiction is whether something really happened. But this isn’t a great distinction either. Ernest Hemingway supposedly wrote fictional accounts of American expats in France, Italy, and Spain but as a reporter living abroad he must have taken some of it from his own experience. Nearly all of his characters drink excessively, something he was known for. In The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway shows Parisian friends attending the annual bullfighting celebration in Pamplona. His interest in the tradition is obvious by the way he describes the fiesta in the pages. Bullfighting as art is the theme, a pure craft set apart from drunk, partying foreigners. The story is set in the 1920’s and even though the Paris group is hedonistic and out for fun, bullfighting is described technically. There is some criticism that Ernest Hemingway didn’t get it just right, but this is probably where the fictional aspects kick in.

Everyone who loves to read has asked themselves “What’s the point? What do you hope to get from this?” If the answer is enjoyment, entertainment, adventure, than read fictional stories. If the answer is to get better at X, or learn about Abe Lincoln, than read non-fiction. Better yet, surprise yourself, pick up something completely random and see what you think. Same goes for writing. I try to do short stories on occasion for the practice. The dialogue is painful, the tale meanders and the characters are a little wooden, but I try.

So many books are perfect combinations of both genres that distinctions aren’t helpful anymore. Authors or subjects are better ways to break down particulars. A lot of us prefer films to books. Shows based on characters might be a way to explore books for those allergic to reading. Amazon Prime has a series called “Bosch” based on Michael Connelly’s famous Harry Bosch detective crime books. Amazon’s Bosch is a little too clean and fit for what I imagined the middle aged cop to be. That’s a risk we all take when going from film to page though. Images don’t always meet expectations. 

In any case we could all probably read more.

  

NATO: Worth the Fuss

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is an alliance of nations built on the idea the Soviet Union needed to be contained militarily. There was genuine concern among Western European countries (Germany, France, England) that the Soviets posed a threat to a weekend Europe after World War II. NATO tied together these concerns, along with the United States and Canada, in a defensive pact to deter Russian aggression.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 a lot of people question the overall goal of the pact. Is it still essential now that the Soviet Union is gone? What is the strategic objective for the alliance? NATO is just as important today because Russian is just as determined to gobble up weak nation states. It has some problems though and lack of European commitment to spending is chief among them. President Trump was right to point it out, but he is wrong to disparage the idea of a unified front.

 NATO countries agreed to 2% of GDP spending requirement from each of its 29 member countries. So far only Greece and Estonia have ponied up. President Trump was in Brussels last week for a summit on the future of the organization. Most of what is getting attention is his dressing down of Angela Merkel for her country’s lack of spending and indebtedness to Russian energy companies. Trump criticizes NATO members as often as he can, either in Tweet form or in speeches. His complaint reflects commonly held views that alliance members are shirking their payments at the expense of domestic goals. NATO acts as a type of military welfare for European members that don’t want to pay for a standing army. It’s easy to avoid payments when the bulk of the money is being spent by the U.S. But by focusing on the spending only, we miss the secondary benefits of having so many sovereign nations on our side. 

After 911 the coalition supported the invasion of Afghanistan and later the invasion of Iraq. It might seem like a small offering but considering NATO members support others who’ve been attacked, it was a big ask. Iraq in particular cost Tony Blair a lot of support at home. It wasn’t a traditional war either in which country A needs help from an invading country B. It was more preemptive, remove Saddam before he attacks. Also, when the US needs votes at the United Nations it’s often the NATO countries that vote with us. If the United States insists on taking votes at the U.N. and NATO for military incursions (Iraq, Libya) it will need partners along the way.

How many military bases could we keep in Italy without an agreement? Germany? Spain? Chances are, not too many. There may be a time when we aren’t able to house bases inside other countries. When that happens cooperation between nations is even more important for any conflict or peacekeeping mission, not to mention more expensive. Even the reluctant Turks have a U.S. Air Force base.

   

Despite the problems among members, the threat posed by Russian incursion into Eastern Europe is more real now than it was in the 1990’s. President Putin annexed (a nice way of saying “stole”) Crimea from Ukraine and went to war in Georgia a few years before that. It’s dangerous to oppose Putin if you live in the former Soviet bloc. Since the Soviet Union fell apart under Gorbachev in the late 80’s, a lot of diplomats assumed Russian was finished. Communism proved unable to hold together the disparate countries that fell under their control. It wasn’t in a position to expand; it lost former territories like the Baltic states and Georgia and Armenia. But Putin regained a lot of power that was lost in the chaotic 90’s. Mostly through energy contacts, he is exerting control over much of the former soviet bloc countries.

The roots of cooperation between Western Europe and the United States started after the war. A battle weary continent might have fallen under Stalin if not for that cooperation. After World War II the allies essentially made a bet, rebuild Western Europe and hold off Soviet expansion. By shoring up businesses in West Germany and reinforcing democratic norms, the influence of Communism would be restricted to Eastern Europe and the West under Capitalism. In this way, they kept a potential problem (Soviet aggression) contained and prevented another massive European war. This is like two fighting brothers drawing a line down the center of their shared bedroom and labeling their stuff. Over there is your side, here is my side. It helps to prevent major conflicts but practically guarantees the minor ones that characterized the Cold War.

 Communism feeds on desperate people who have neither rule of law nor freedom of movement. It’s an absolutist form of government that rewards brutality, crushes opposition and restricts religion. And it’s much easier to install in poor countries than wealthy ones. In other words the allied gamble was for prosperity. It worked. People know it the Marshall Plan because that was the where the big spending on infrastructure and aid happened. But NATO was an outgrowth of the same spirit of cooperation among democratic allies after the war. The U.S. was in the best position to offer aid as a bulwark against the chaos of Communism.

The best option today is to scale back the mission of NATO resembling something closer to the founding principle, by laying down markers to prevent too much Russian meddling. The Trump administration approved the sale of some weapons to the Ukrainian government at the end of last year. Sending weapons (although a small amount) is a signal to Putin that NATO opposes his incursion into that country. It's a good start at least.

President Trump should make sure U.S. ambassadors hold the line on spending. It is part of the original agreement after all. I’m sure the European leaders hate Trump’s brutally honest assessment. He needs to direct some of that bluntness toward the Kremlin. This Atlantic treaty should survive despite the problems we have with the lack of commitment from some of the members. The alternative is a strong Russia and a diminished role for the U.S. It may come to that, but it doesn’t have to.   

"Artemis" Book Review

 Weir wrote the book “Martian” which most people know as the blockbuster movie with Matt Damon. I never read it but imagined how difficult it would be to create a story on an environment which we know so little about. Weir is not “us” though; he is more engineer than novelist and sometimes gets lost in the science.

What I found interesting about “Artemis” is the economy that develops on the moon around the citizens. It’s similar to any small country or homogeneous society where one or two big companies dominate and everyone else works to support them. I’m a bit deficient in science so I had to take most of his descriptions at face value. Especially details related to oxygen in the atmosphere, what is required for welding in space and how to deal with fires on the moon.

At its core this is a story about protecting a colony from invaders. Not aliens invaders from another planet, just the usual corporate interests hoping to expand their holdings and crush the competition.

Imagine a small town with a steel mill in pre-World War II America and Artemis as an economy starts to make more sense. The mill employs most of the people in the town, they’re able to buy on credit and they exist as a community, with their own standards and laws. Artemis is the name of the moon city with around 20,000 people who call it home. Any self-sustaining group needs hospitals, banks, schools and anything required for living. Artemis has tradesman like welders and iron workers, retail employees to sell trinkets to tourists, and bartenders to help folks forget where they live.

One way it isn’t like a mill town is the tourism that keeps the place going. Tourists pay for once in a lifetime visit to see the city and see the famous 1969 landing spot where Neil Armstrong stuck a flag. The earth tourists stay in hotels and eat in restaurants like any other other vacation trap. The city itself is largely underground. The obvious lack of oxygen on the moon makes venturing out in EVA suits the purview of professionals, in this case a guild of trained astronauts.

The hero of the story is a Saudi girl (by birth) who has lived on the moon with her dad since she was six years old. Jasmine (Jazz) is a porter, skimming small amounts for herself and smuggling in contraband for wealthy residents. One day she gets a request from one of the city’s rich entrepreneurs to destroy some equipment owned by the only functioning aluminum plant. Apparently the moon is rich in bauxite which can be broken down to make aluminum. As a trained welder Jasmine is perfect for the sabotage; she can move around easily and access the pressure locks unsuspectingly and walk on the surface of the moon in her EVA suit. I won’t give too much else away but the basic plot involves locals (Atemisians?) fighting off the encroachment of crooked interests.

Andy Weir is a geek, so he is best when describing how to spot weld in a vacuum or how to rig a copper safety in an aluminum smelter so it malfunctions and boils the container (sorry, spoiler). He isn’t great at dialogue though and his heroine (Jazz) is a bit too selfish for someone concerned with the general welfare of the city she lives in. She holds grudges and is on bad terms with nearly everyone including her dad. Readers need to relate to the protagonist, sadly she wasn’t likable.

   

I could tell right when I started reading this would soon be a movie. Not because the characters are rich and entertaining but because of possibilities presented by a moon city. Think all the cool tech Hollywood will create for this. It’s exactly what made the “Martian” such a readily adaptable story for the screen. Take all the problems of a regular heist movie and put it on the moon. Add airlocks and pressure chambers, some cool rovers that can climb hills and tell a great “against all odds” tale.

Weir is the perfect writer to walk us through the technical glitches of working on the moon and explain the why’s of structural design.  I am betting this film is better than the book however. It’s a rare thing when anyone can say that but in this case the movie should at least be fun. The last few chapters of the book are perfect for action sequences.