You might notice an Upcoming Events tab atop this page. I’ll keep it updated as media events are scheduled for the release of Red Planet Noir.

Tonight, I’m doing a podcast interview for adviceradio.com. The call-in line is 800-405-6425, and the show starts at 7:00pm Central. (That’s 5:00pm Pacific and 8:00pm Eastern.) The host, Megan Willingham, and I will be discussing my book. If your buzzword bingo card has the words Chandler, Heinlein, Editing, and Rejection, you’ve probably got a leg-up on the competition. It’s tempting to launch a scathing assault on the Oxford comma, but that probably wouldn’t be the wisest use of my time.

UPDATE: For those who caught the interview, adviceradio.com was having terrible switchboard issues, which is the reason I was so frequently cut off. The host was unfailingly kind and gracious, but I am disappointed that things didn’t go according to plan. I stumbled on the very first question (the easy one: tell me about your book!) because I’d been disconnected twice before I could answer. Nobody every accused me of grace under fire. Anyway, I did my best under pretty lousy conditions, and I think Megan Willingham and her producer did a fine job covering for me as well. Still, it’s kind of embarrassing to have been placed in such a losing situation.

I’m grateful to Megan and adviceradio.com for having me, and hope we can do this again soon under better circumstances.

Over at The Atlantic, I throw rocks at the C.I.A.

In 1963, Ngo Dinh Diem had been in power in South Vietnam for nine years. The Kennedy administration inherited him from Eisenhower. Former Secretary of State John Dulles called Diem “the best available man.” Diem’s leadership was ever tenuous, his successes promoted beyond their merits, his failures epic in scope. In the end, however, it was his oppressive and corrupt brother that proved his undoing, and the Kennedy administration sanctioned a C.I.A. coup that found Diem and his brother in the back of an armored personnel carrier, and on the business end of semi-automatic rifles.

How the Company has evolved. These days, they reveal allies carefully cultivated, but no longer desirable, to be U.S. stooges, and engineer elections.

Read the rest here.

Google Wave

My tech column for The Times of Southwest Louisiana is up, wherein I discuss my experiences with Google Wave. (No, my account did not include invites. Yes, I will share them when they’re made available.) The article can be found here in an embedded, Byzantine PDF form. Because it was edited for space, and because there’s a lot of interest in the topic, I’ve reproduced it below. A snippet:

Composing messages in Wave, however, is like walking on a tightrope, as the recipient can see your messages as you type them. Every backspace, every deleted clause, every corrected typo, and every toned-down rewrite. (Who among us hasn’t written a stern rebuke to a correspondent, only to delete the letter, and respond with a simple, “Thanks for your suggestion.”)

Real time message streaming is not new. Indeed, it’s very, very old. Hardened computer geeks will recall the BBS days, where such was common place. College students of the 90s will recall ICQ, the first mainstream instant messenger, which operated similarly. But that paradigm died as technology improved and the tension of livewire messaging became obvious. Do you know how much profanity can accidentally be typed from innocuous words? After a week on Wave, I do. Have fun messaging Grandma.

The entire review is available after the jump:

Google Wave: Back to the Future
by D.B. Grady
Published: The Times of Southwest Louisiana, Vol. 14, No. 20, October 15, 2009

Last week, Google released invitations for the first private beta of Google Wave. Described by the Mountain View company as “email, if it were invented today,” Wave is an ambitious attempt at real-time collaborative messaging with full multimedia integration. If ever there were a product with aspirations of completing a buzzword bingo card, this is it.

My expectations were high. It was clear from the earliest version of Gmail that web-based email had been fundamentally transformed. But to transform the very concept of email itself? If any company can do it, it is Google, with its elite stable of Computer Science PhDs and hippie culture of software dreamers.

Note to Google: keep dreaming.

In its present state—and understand that as a beta, it should be considered a work-in-progress—Google Wave is a mess. Putting aside the bugs, which result in frequent hangs, and its proclivity to simply stop working entirely, Wave is a shotgun blast to the face of information. When everything is important, nothing is important, and that is Wave’s greatest weakness.

Here is how it works. Just as with traditional email, there is an inbox and an address book, folders and a trashcan. Just as with traditional email, letters (called “waves,” lower-case) can be composed to one or several recipients at once. Wave takes the concept a step further, allowing public messages to be written for the whole world, a clear nod to the blog concept.

Composing messages in Wave, however, is like walking on a tightrope, as the recipient can see your messages as you type them. Every backspace, every deleted clause, every corrected typo, and every toned-down rewrite. (Who among us hasn’t written a stern rebuke to a correspondent, only to delete the letter, and respond with a simple, “Thanks for your suggestion.”)

Real time message streaming is not new. Indeed, it’s very, very old. Hardened computer geeks will recall the BBS days, where such was common place. College students of the 90s will recall ICQ, the first mainstream instant messenger, which operated similarly. But that paradigm died as technology improved and the tension of livewire messaging became obvious. Do you know how much profanity can accidentally be typed from innocuous words? After a week on Wave, I do. Have fun messaging Grandma.

Responding to waves is the key to its potential. Instead of replying to an entire letter, correspondents can reply to individual paragraphs, sentences, or even words. The result is a letter that becomes sliced every more thinly from a coherent construct of prose to a series of single-sentence back-and-forths. In a sense, what starts as a letter quickly regresses into fine-grain Twitter posts.

In messages between two or three people, this is not as problematic as one might think. But on public waves, or private correspondence between ten or more people (standard collaborative business emails, in other words), messages tend to self-destruct as everyone responds in real time to different slices of the message. It soon becomes an exponential problem of figuring out who said what, and when, and the “larger message” is lost to details and asides. Ultimately, communication breaks down into brief replies to complete letters, which trends closely to the Gmail model, and defeats the Wave concept entirely.

Google is no doubt aware of this, and will almost certainly address these issues. Because Wave is an open, extensible standard, with the eventual goal of host interoperability, the system will soon break free of Google’s walls and spread to private business servers and public domains. If you work for a big business, the Wave tide will soon be rolling in, dictated by well-meaning corporate types. Remember when Share Point was the imposed panacea for every business communications woe? Get ready for the latest in migraine technology.

As of right now, Google is mad or delusional to think Wave will supplant email, even once the kinks are ironed out. Wave will undoubtedly spawn very exciting extensions and very useful niches, but as a person-to-person method of communication, the sense of permanence and intimacy of email is completely lost. In large measure, in fact, it seems not so much a replacement for email as a replacement for USENET.

But let’s leave USENET six feet in the ground, where it belongs. And since email isn’t dead, yet, let’s not give it a premature burial. When it comes to messaging, I’m not saying Google Wave isn’t the future. I’m just saying it looks an awful lot like the past.

Google Wave: http://wave.google.com

Over at The Atlantic, I discuss what happens if we leave Afghanistan.

At the assessment’s most dire, General McChrystal is unambiguous: “Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near term (next 12 months)–while Afghan security capacity matures–risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible.”

It is a sobering statement in an unflinching report. While nobody ever expected a Taliban surrender treaty signed on some battleship in the Indian Ocean, who would have accepted on September 12, 2001 that we might eventually pack our thermobaric pressure bombs and Ranger battalions and call it a day? Professor Rory Stewart declared Afghanistan “the graveyard of predictions.” How else to explain our $500 billion defense budget bested by an enemy whose weapons are built from rusted Soviet ordinances and empty cans of Coca-Cola? Who would have known that the lessons of Vietnam and Somalia would result in yet another conflict where, at best, we “learned lessons”?

Read the rest here.

Supplementary read: Commander’s Initial Assessment (pdf)

Update: Michael Goldfarb of The Weekly Standard offers kind words of agreement.

Update: Andrew Sullivan offers thoughtful disagreement.

Update: Wherein I spin my own wheels. At the newly-minted Atlantic Wire, Mara Gay compiles essays from David Brooks, Pat Buchanan, Oliver North, and your humble correspondent, as examples of the argument that withdrawal from Afghanistan would “[accomplish] the reverse of the ‘domino theory.’”

Due Date.

A chilling example of civilization rotting from within, from the LA Times:

In a dramatic move, the Philadelphia Free Library System announced today that it will close all branch, regional and central libraries as of Oct. 2. There will be no book loans, no classes, no programs for seniors or children, no outreach to the community, no more community meetings at library locations. Starting today, the library began truncating its loan period.

Why?

Pennsylvania has yet to pass a budget for this year, and the Philadelphia Free Library is just one of the institutions and services caught in the deadlock.

Confirmation from Library Journal.

More stomach-turning details are available on the library website. They are also imploring patrons to take political action.

Philadelphia Citypaper has more.

Maybe they’re meant as warnings of what’s to come if Mayor Nutter’s taxes aren’t implemented — if Harrisburg doesn’t warm to the idea — and nothing more. Maybe they’re meant as the harbingers of doom they appear to be, and things are as bad as they seem.

Background: The Pennsylvania House has passed a bill. It’s in the Senate’s hands, now.

The saddest statement of all, from The Philadelphia Inquirer: “The notices also say that all material will now be due Oct. 1 and that nothing can be borrowed after Sept. 30.”

UPDATE: Issue resolved. The doors will remain open. But the very thought of public libraries being used as a budgetary pawn should give everyone pause. It is an affront to the egalitarian ideal, if not an outright assault on intellectualism and democracy. Libraries are the vanguards of a free society and the mobility of the classes. This was not and is not a Philadelphia issue; it was a civilizational issue. Now that our politicians have tipped their hand, we must remain vigilant. They will do it again.

George Carlin once spoke very powerfully on the subject, and I offer the video here.

(Photo from Philebrity.)

Bridge of Sighs

First off, in no way is The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao better than Bridge of Sighs. The former is a great book, no doubt, but it’s an order of magnitude less satisfying. I have to assume that the Pulitzer Committee didn’t want to give two prizes to Richard Russo in five years. Yes, I’d start a bar fight over this.

(In my fantasy world, bar fights are, indeed, started over such things.)

Onto the book club discussion questions. These questions came from here, which claims they were provided by the publisher. Just so we’re clear, I didn’t write them, and Knopf, if you want to sue someone, sue them. Not me. I have no money. Seriously.

Also, please note that I answered these questions twice. This weekend, I wrote thousands of words in response to these uncharacteristically good questions (they deserved it, as did the novel), clicked “Save Draft,” and was taken to the WordPress login screen. Yes, all of my work was lost. So these are less-detailed responses written on-the-fly. If you want to really talk about the book, give me a call or buy me a cup of coffee.

Away we go…

1. Bridge of Sighs alternates two narratives: Lucy’s first-person memoir and the story of Robert Noonan. What are the advantages of this structure? How does it affect the way plot unfolds? Does it influence your impressions of the main characters?

Lucy is an extraordinarily sentimental narrator. He is a soft man, and oftentimes echoes his father in naivety. That said, he is, if anything, honest, and coupled with his sensitivity to Thomaston and its inhabitants, he paints a very warm portrait of a town that others might draw in chiaroscuro. (Noonan among them.)

The alternating narratives serve to constantly revitalize the story. It is compelling to watch the dueling points-of-view inch ever closer together, until the novel’s satisfying conclusion. It’s worth noting that the third-person vantage frequently reflects Lucy’s memoir through a glass, darkly, and adds a sinister richness to what might otherwise be a sappy recollection.

I would agree that this style does influence the reader’s impression of the main characters. By Lucy’s own account, he’s intelligent if hapless, while Noonan is saintly and looming. Meanwhile, Noonan’s (and later Sarah’s) viewpoints portray Noonan as deeply flawed and profoundly angry, and Lucy to be an “innocent” (to use Mr. Berg’s term) in need of constant protection.

More after the jump:

2. How does Lucy’s description of Thomaston [pp.9–11] create an immediate sense of time and place? What details did you find particularly evocative? What does Lucy’s tone, as well as the way he presents various facts about Thomaston and its history, reveal about his perceptiveness and his intelligence?

Lucy is a man deeply reluctant to criticize Thomaston. Even when describing the tannery, whose pollutions cast torrential rains of cancer upon the town (to include his father and wife), he can’t help but defend the economic prosperity brought by the factory. It’s hard to question Lucy’s perceptiveness, but his truthfulness about the town isn’t always strictly honest. Again, to quote Mr. Berg, while everything Lucy says is true, it isn’t “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

That said, I never got the impression Lucy was intentionally deceiving the reader or himself. It was as though his mind divided-by-zero on the subject. On a metaphysical level, he simply could not cast aspersions on his beloved hamlet.

3. Lucy says, “I’ve always known that there’s more going on inside me than finds its way into the world, but this is probably true of everyone. Who doesn’t regret that he isn’t more fully understood?” [p. 12]. To what extent does this feeling lie at the heart of his decision to write his book? Does it play a central role in memoir-writing in general? What else does Lucy hope to accomplish by recalling his past? At the beginning, does he see the dangers, as well as the benefits, of examining his life and the people and events that shaped him?

In a sense, Lucy is inseparable as a character from Thomaston itself, and I suspect the memoir was written largely as a defense of the town. To the rest of New York, Thomaston is known only for its extraordinary cancer rate due to the tannery’s toxins. The sentence, “I’ve always known that there’s more going on inside me than finds its way into the world” might have been rewritten as “There’s more going on inside Thomaston than finds its way into the world.” As for the second and third parts of the question: “Sometimes” and “Yes.” (Although I’m not sure he realized just how psychologically perilous writing the memoir would be.)

The Bridge of Sighs

4. The horrific prank the neighborhood boys play on Lucy [pp. 21–30] triggers the first of many “spells” he will have throughout his life. What is the significance of his spells? What do they reveal about the emotional attachments, anxieties, and doubts that define him both as a child and as an adult?

The whole book is about Lucy’s attachment issues and anxieties, so this question is mostly academic. I’m not interested in typing for the sake of typing.

5. Lucy makes many references to the pursuit of the American Dream and its implications within his own family and in society in general [pp. 52–55, 78, 92–93, for example]. In what ways did American attitudes in the postwar years embody both the best parts of our national character and its darker undercurrents? What incidents in the novel illuminate the uneasiness and enmity that results from the class, racial, and economic divisions in Thomaston? Do Lucy’s beliefs, judgments, and achievements (as a businessman and as a happily married husband and father) color his reconstruction of these events?

I would argue that Lucy sees his successes later in life as validation of his father’s view of the American Dream. Work hard, and the rest will follow. Mr. Berg, on the other hand, is the obvious counterpoint to this. He, too, worked hard, and ended up a failure. (One might argue that Lou Lynch is a better man than Mr. Berg, and they would be right, though I would disagree that Mr. Berg is a bad man. Quite the opposite, in many ways he was extraordinary, and certainly a genius.) Mr. Marconi is the dark version of Lou, a man who also worked very hard, found professional success and financial security, but was by nearly every measure an evil man.

To the second part of the question, I submit only the assault on Three Mock. There’s no sense in describing the anthills at the foot of Mount Everest.

6. Unlike Lucy’s story, Noonan’s story is told in the third person. Is the change of voice a literary device, a way of adding variety to the novel, or does it serve another purpose? In what ways does it help to convey the basic difference between Lucy and Noonan and the way they see themselves and their place in the world? Compare the tone and language Russo uses in creating Lucy’s voice with the style he uses in his portraits of Noonan. What aspects of Noonan’s character and personality come to life in his conversations with his art dealer and his mistress [pp. 35–51]; his reactions to Lucy’s missives [pp. 131–134] and to Mr. Berg’s class in high school [pp. 310–314]; and, ultimately, his thoughts and behavior on arriving in New York [pp. 500—508].

Mostly, see question 1. I could also make up some kind of “Noonan’s story is told in third person because he’s of the world, but not in it,” but we all know it would be posing. The style Russo uses when writing about Noonan is certainly evocative of an untamed man, a man of tremendous talent and success not used to being told “no.” But there’s little doubt that he is an incomplete man, and an unhappy man, and an innately good man (even if the goodness is wrapped in sandpaper).

Early in the novel, he is dismissive–almost scornful and pitying–of Lucy, the first obvious hint that Lucy’s narration might not necessarily be reliable. And yet as the novel continues, we discover a deep well of love and respect not only for Lucy but for all the Lynch family, and most notably, for Sarah.

The question of Mr. Berg is too obvious to type. Read the book.

As for the final part of the question, just as “Sarah” illuminated “The Bridge of Sighs” (the paintings, both), Sarah illuminated, healed, and somehow elevated Noonan by the final pages.

7. Lucy and Bobby [p. 130 and p. 141–142 respectively] attempt to explain why their lives—and Sarah’s—have turned out they way they have. Do you agree with Lucy that “To see a life back to front, as everyone begins to do in middle age, is to strip it of its mystery and wrap it in inevitability, drama’s enemy”? To what extent does Bobby share this view? Why does Bobby see himself as being in control of his life in a way that neither Sarah nor Lucy is? Is this a result of his background and the circumstances that forced him to prepare himself for a second act? From the evidence in the book, is it accurate to describe Lucy as a passive participant in life, and Bobby as a man who actively responds to events, rather than becoming a pawn—or a victim—of things beyond his control?

“Is it accurate to describe Lucy as a passive participant in life?” is almost an insulting question. Of course it is. Aside from moments of great kindness (as Lucy is, indeed, a very kind man), I can’t recall him taking a single proactive step, ever. He simply flows through life like a cork in a stream, reacting, watching.

Bobby, on the other hand, is the essence of self-determination. From early childhood on–defying his father to retrieve his abused mother’s clothes from the streets, getting a job and his own dilapidated apartment, changing his name and leaving the country, stealing a kiss from Sarah–Bobby is bold and willful, hardened by a monstrous father and fearless in word and deed. The punctuation to this is his final encounter with his father, when he nearly makes good on his promise to kill him, brutally collapsing the man’s skull. It is never clear that Bobby’s father is, indeed, responsible for the pregnancy, but Bobby is determined, with methodical, thoughtful, almost Zen-like focus, to follow through on his threat. Everything that follows is a result of Bobby’s childhood and later decisions; Europe is simply the other side of the equals-sign.

8. Tessa is the practical, steady member of the Lynch family. In what ways does her behavior reflect her own choices, needs, and desires, and in what ways are these determined by the time and place in which she lives? What qualities make her stand out, not only in Lucy’s eyes, but also within the community as a whole?

Tessa is both the brains of the operation and the glue holding the family together. She is never really given her due for the sacrifices she made and hardships she endured on behalf of the naive Lynch men. Enlightened in a small-minded town, shrewd in a guileless family, she is a thoroughly modern woman born several decades too early.

9. Does Lucy’s identification with his father distort his image of his mother and his understanding of her strengths and her weaknesses? Beyond her immediate anger, what drives her to tell Lucy, “I never wanted you to not to love your father. . . . I wanted you to love me. . . . Did it ever occur to you, even once during all those years, that you might have taken my side? That I might have needed a friend?” [p. 217]? Is this a valid criticism, or is Tessa herself responsible, either inadvertently or intentionally, for the differences between Lucy’s relationships with each parent?

The New York Times review of this book wrote that Tessa “does her best to keep [Lucy] firmly planted in childhood, even when he is 60 years old.” Never once did I get that impression. If anything, she seemed determined for her son to grow up, to mature, to break away from her husband and his hopeless credulity. (To this I submit the bicycle.)

To answer the question, yes, Tessa is rightfully hurt that Lucy never got the credit she deserved, and no, I don’t think it’s her fault.

10. Sarah comes from an unconventional family, especially in the context of Thomaston. Is her ability to deal with the eccentricities of her parents and the summer/winter living arrangements they established unusual? In what ways does she not only adapt to but also benefit from the very things that set her apart? Is her attraction to the Lynches in part a reaction to her dysfunctional family?

At the time, I suppose the two-household living arrangements might have been considered unorthodox, but it’s hardly unusual today. Sarah is uncommonly mature, but not wholly understanding of the trials her parents are enduring. (This applies to Lucy and Bobby, as well.) That said, that she is living in a post-nuclear family environment certainly gives her a keen eye with regard to Bobby, and it makes perfect sense that she might settle for Lucy and the stability he and the Lynch family represents.

11. Are Mr. Berg’s obsessions—with perpetuating his image as a rebel, with the “great” book he is writing, and with his failed marriage—sympathetically drawn? What is the significance of the fact that he is Jewish? What biases, both good and bad, do the people of Thomaston (including Lucy) have about Jews and what impact does this have on Berg and his reputation within the community?

I disagree with the insinuation that Mr. Berg is obsessed with perpetuating his “image as a rebel.” On the contrary, I think he was, indeed, a rebel at an atomic level. But yes, I believe Mr. Berg is very sympathetically drawn, a man trapped in a town he hates, with a novel he cannot publish, with a wife he cannot hold on to. He’s a giant, looming figure, an asteroid blazing through Thomaston, but trapped within its boundaries.

As for the second part of the question, I have no idea what the people of Thomaston think of Jews (though it doesn’t take much imagination to hazard a guess). I never thought his Jewish heritage played much significance to the story, except to say that he found Thomaston’s Jews to be generally inadequate when compared with those of New York City. If the people of Thomaston thought ill of Mr. Berg, it was for his generally bizarre mannerisms and palpable distain for their township.

Richard Russo

12. What role does her mother play in Sarah’s sense of self? What are the implications of her views on marriage [p.326]? Do they influence Sarah’s feelings about her own marriage and that of her in-laws? Why is Sarah drawn back to the home she shared with her mother when she faces a crisis in her relationship with Lucy [pp. 464–499]? What does she learn by revisiting the past?

By the end of the novel, it appeared that Sarah’s mother’s views on marriage might finally prevail, that marriage is a foolish decision at best, and a dreadful, crushing mistake at worst. I’m not sure even Sarah knew what she was searching for when she returned to her childhood home, aside vaguely from “answers.” Meeting Kayla, I think reaffirms her commitment to family, and ultimately the stability and tranquility of life in Thomaston.

13. What traits do Tessa and Sarah share? In what ways do their marriages mirror one another? Do you think either—or both—foolishly gave up their own dreams and desires, sacrificing a life of adventure and sexual passion for the love and security of a “good” man? Behind their apparent contentment, are there indications that they regret the choices they made?

Tessa and Sarah are both strong-willed, highly intelligent, liberal women with superhuman patience for their husbands, town, and family. And yes, I do think that until she visited her mother’s old apartment, Sarah regretted the choices she made, the life she lived, and the love she passed over.

As for part B, I don’t answer speculative “Do you think…” questions.

14. The Bridge of Sighs in Venice connects the Doge Palace to an adjacent prison, and, as Lucy relates, “Crossing this bridge, the convicts—at least the ones without money or influence—came to understand that all hope was lost” [p. 320]. How does the historical function of the bridge, as well as the myths surrounding it, relate to characters’ lives? Why has Russo chosen it as the title of the novel?

The Bridge of Sighs can be said to apply to Lucy as a symbol of the railroad bridge, and the horrible childhood prank from which he never recovered. To Sarah and Tessa, it was choosing the confining, if loving, life as wife of a Lynch man. As for Bobby, it’s hard to find a detail where it doesn’t apply to him.

Why did Russo choose it as a title? Because it sounded good and fit well? Because Left Behind was already taken? I have no idea. Ask Richard Russo.

15. Does the ending bring the various threads of the novel to a satisfactory conclusion? What would have happened if Lucy, Sarah, and Noonan had met again after so many years? In what ways are their memories and imaginings a more powerful—and truer—version of reality?

First part: yes. The second part of the question is too stupid to dignify. As for the third, I’m sure there is a nicely-wrapped answer based upon the philosophy of solipsism, but I’m not interested in conjuring such an answer.

16. In an interview Russo said, “The future and the past are repeatedly getting mixed up in people’s minds. They think that which is gone is going to come back” (Powells.com). Which characters Bridge of Sighs are particularly prone to getting the past and the future mixed up? Do any of the characters fully escape this way of thinking?

Lucy, obviously. Sarah until the very end still pines for Bobby, and secretly, I think, awaits his dramatic re-entrance into her life. Until Noonan paints “Sarah” as a companion to “The Bridge of Sighs,” I think he sees in his self-portrait his father, and/or vice-versa. Ultimately, “Sarah” frees him, and Kayla frees Sarah and Lucy.

17. Richard Russo has written about small towns throughout his career. What are some similarities between Bridge of Sighs and previous novels like Empire Falls and Nobody’s Fool? In what ways does Bridge of Sighs enhance and expand the portrait of America that is so central to Russo’s writing?

This is my first Richard Russo novel. “Reply hazy. Ask again later.”

But it should be noted that Russo does a masterful job portraying American life as it is actually lived, where, as a friend described, in retrospect some obstacles seem insurmountable, but at the time, between paying the bills and going to work and just simply living, people simply drive though and overcome. No one ever broke down in Bridge of Signs; nobody’s psyches collapsed. Nobody self-destructed. They endured, the way people endure. That is the power and genius of Richard Russo. That is why this is such a remarkable novel. Because it rings so true.

Over at The Atlantic, I discuss General Stanley McChrystal’s long awaited assessment of the war in Afghanistan. A snippet:

General Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan, seems to think likewise. His much-anticipated assessment of the campaign does away with the counterproductive strategies of old, of bombing runs and door-kicking–”disruptive operations”–and emphasizes a sort of armed humanitarianism built upon strong relationships with the local populace. In large measure, the operation becomes a civil affairs mission, and focuses on the doctrine of Military Operations Other Than War. As McChrystal states in his recently issued ISAF Commander’s Counterinsurgency Guide, “Earn the support of the people and the war is won, regardless of how many militants are killed or captured.”

Read the rest here.

Highly recommended supplementary reading: ISAF Commander’s Counterinsurgency Guidance (pdf)

If you own a Mac, you need Snow Leopard.

If you’re out of the loop and don’t pray five times a day toward Macca, Snow Leopard is the newest version of the Mac OS. (It only costs $25, so we’re not talking a major investment here.)

Because it’s been covered to death elsewhere, I’ll offer only a few general feelings and a couple of warnings.

The installation could not be easier. Insert DVD. Click “Install.” Wait. Done. (I recalibrated my external display upon completion, though this is mostly habit, and possibly the sign of a deranged mind. [It can be found at: System Preferences / Display / Color / Calibrate])

Prior to installation, I had 81.73GB free on my hard drive. After installation, I had an astonishing 96.33GB free. This is because Snow Leopard strips away vast swaths of legacy code. I’ve been installing operating systems both mainstream and obscure for twenty years; this is the first time I’ve seen one narrow the footprint. It’s a remarkable achievement that should be trumpeted at every opportunity.

The operating system itself runs faster. The experience echoes the first time I used the iPhone. It flows and ripples and springs and sparks. It’s very impressive.

Expose is fixed! (I have it hot-cornered to the top right of my screen.) Unlike before, where Expose displayed all open programs but only sporadically accepted a selected window, it now works 100% of the time. That’s worth $25 right there.

The dock is more organized, now offering scrollable stacks to reduce clutter, and additional features upon right-click.

Safari now blazes–even the “Top Sites” screen. Stupidly, they continue to ignore the mousewheel-click auto-scroll feature present in every single Microsoft Windows application and most good Mac programs. As a result, I remain devoted to Firefox. Sadly, Firefox appears to have taken a performance hit. I cannot qualify this with hard data, but I’m telling you: it’s less snappy.

Finder is way, way faster.

All of my critical programs work well, to include:

• Microsoft Office 2008
• Adobe Photoshop CS3 (Power users report minor issues, but I’ve yet to run across a problem.)
• Picasa
• Transmission
• Burn
• Toast Titanium
• Evernote
• MacTheRipper
• Espresso (Note: everything offered by this year’s MacHeist seems to work without issue.)
• Google Notifier
• Dropbox
• Jing

That’s the good.

The bad:

My printer is currently unsupported. I use a dirt-cheap HP LaserJet P1006 connected via my Time Capsule. HP is supposedly working on a fix. Wide printer support isn’t so much a feature as a categorical imperative. I cannot for the life of me figure out how Apple could make such a stupid, arrogant mistake. The P1006 isn’t even a sophisticated printer! Lesson learned: before upgrading, verify that your printer is supported.

Some of my minor software does not work, to include:

• iStat (Update in the works.) Update: Fixed with 2.0.
  
• Cyberduck (Update expected any minute now.) Update: Working beta now available.
• Flip4Mac (The current beta DOES work.)
• Growl (Technically it works, except for the System Preferences element. But this is a pass/fail test. Growl fails.) Update: Working beta now available.
• Disc Inventory X (Requires Rosetta, which I’m not willing to do.)
• Xscreensaver (Jamie Zawinski, Xscreensaver’s programmer, vents his fury at Apple in this thread.) Update: Fixed.
  
• Boinc / SETI@home (Again, this is a screen saver issue, though the administrators are acting willfully clueless. In every discussion forum I’ve visited, the powers that be seem to stick their heads in the sand and say “Everything is working fine!” I’m here to tell you it does NOT work.) Update: Fixed with beta release.
  

Aside from the Boinc team’s general obstinate stupidity, I expect all of these software issues to be resolved in the coming days. In the mean time, here is a beautifully comprehensive Snow Leopard compatibility list that will assuage your deepest concerns. Don’t be dissuaded, though. Snow Leopard is well worth the upgrade, and a tremendous value by every conceivable measure. It can be purchased here.

I’m getting a distressing lack of angry feedback over this piece I wrote for The Atlantic.

Eight years on, the operation [in Afghanistan] often appears moribund with little in the way of progress. Afghanistan has a forty percent unemployment rate and no economy to speak of. In opium poppy, many farmers have found salvation–a high-yield, high-profit crop. The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime peg Afghanistan’s share of the global opium market at a staggering ninety percent, making opium to Afghanistan what oil is to Saudi Arabia. Such an agricultural success story is unlikely to bolster public opinion.

Update: USA Today summarizes my piece on their “Smart Insights on News of the Day” page.