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Author du Jour: Elizabeth Blackburn & Elissa Epel

05/18/201705/17/2017 by Frederic Colier

The-Telomere-Effectfinalcover-small “The Telomere Effect: a Revolutionary Approach to Living Younger, Healthier, Longer,” by Elizabeth Blackburn, PhD and Elissa Epel, PhD

(Grand Central Publishing, pp 399, $28.00)

Whoever came up with the subtitle for this fascinating book did an excellent job creating a strong hook. Who indeed would not want to live longer? Contrary to what you may consider, that life is just a game of roulette, with molecules moving one way and DNA reacting in another, the authors claim that you can certainly influence your longevity. To entice you into their secret, they ask: why some people at 40 look like 60, while others at 60 look like 40? The story narrated here deals with telomerase and, more precisely telomeres, which are the capstones at the end of the DNA, whose states mirror the way we treat ourselves. Good telomeres will keep you disease free longer. Translation: your lifespan will be elongated.

Here, as in diet books, we find that the main culprits for premature aging: quality of sleep, frequency of exercise, types of diet, and chronic stress, all of which deeply impact our telomeres. Over the book, Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn (Nobel Prize winner) and Dr. Elissa Epel clearly demonstrate the mind-body connection. Having recurring negative thoughts for example will affect also your telomeres, and your appearance. Telomeres shorten in repeated adverse conditions. People looking healthy have long telomeres. So the main question you should ask yourself, and it should make you want to pick up this book at once, is whether a body who has been exposed to all types of unhealthy habits and physical and self-inflicted mental abuses can reverse damages done to the capstones of its DNA? In other words, are frayed telomeres irreversible? The book goes at great length to provide answers. Particularly fascinating are the chapters discussing the impact of early trauma during pregnancy and income inequalities to show the relations between depression and schizophrenia . . . which logically would mean that we may pay the price for circumstances that we do not control and that, in turn, impact our appearance. But nothing is set in black and white, and life choices still play their part. One thing is certain, reading this book will not age you.

Author du Jour: Lawrence Weschler

05/15/201704/10/2017 by Frederic Colier

“Waves Passing in the Night,” by Lawrence Weschler

(Bloomsbury, pp 176, $25.00)

If you wonder what “Apocalypse now, “The Godfather,” and “The English Patient,” have in common, you may scratch your head for a while. Or maybe not. Yes they are all films. Congratulations. But think harder? The first two films would have been an easy guess, but when introducing the third title, the Kubrick-Coppola connection falls apart. The connection is what this engaging little book, half memoir half critical conversation, that Lawrence Weschler wrote with bravado, is about. Its subject? The celebration of the great Walter Murch, the nine-time nominee for the Academy Awards and three-time its winner. Murch was much more than a sound and film editor. Listen careful Lucas’s very first film “THX 1138,” (his most futuristic and thought-provoking by far) and you will understand that at the time of its release, the soundtrack was destined to contribute to its cult masterpiece status. In case you care to know, he also co-wrote the script with Lucas.

Still, the sophistication of sound editing hides Murch’s other passion. He was for much of his life a devout amateur astrophysicist, chronicling long forgotten connection between the Titius-Bode theory and musical harmony in the universe. For a long time, it was believed that each planet of our solar system emitted its own frequencies . . . I would spare you the details, but in this case the law was supposed to have a progression ordered very much like the Fibonacci numbers, and based on planets’ positions and rotations, one could deduce whether cosmic organization was subject to universal mathematical rules. As you can imagine a sound editor advancing long discredited physics theory did not go down too well. But at the heart of this quixotic quest, Murch questions the nature of knowledge. How do we know what we know? And who is to decide what we should know? The questions may seem a bit of a stretch. Not everyone agrees that we should accept universal order in specific examples. But if these sorts of questions are something you are not used to face, you are in for a seductive compelling read.

Author du Jour: David Morrell

04/05/201703/22/2017 by Frederic Colier

“Ruler of the Night,” by David Morrell

(Mulholland Books, pp 342, $27.00)

If you go down the street and ask anyone who David Morrell is chances are you will be met with blank stares. And yet, there is not a soul on earth who does not know “Rambo,” the iconic character Morrell created more than 45 years ago. In “Ruler of the Night,” Morrell spruces up another dormant icon of the 19^th century British literature, the troubled soul, Thomas de Quincey, here turned detective. De Quincey has remained on bookstores’ shelves through the ages for writing “Confessions of an Opium-Eater,” a substance, which himself relied on to soothe his aching existence. Quite à propos in our age of cannabis legalization.

“Ruler of the Night” is first and foremost a locked-room mystery, where a crime is committed in a train compartment even though no one, but the victim, has access to it. The setup reminds at once of Agatha Christie’s Orient Express. But here, de Quincey happens to be in the train when the crime occurs, and he sets up to find the murderer. Unlike in Christie’s, the “Ruler of the Night” carries a strong metaphor. It is not simply the darkness of the murderer. The title also evokes the monstrous machine that de Quincey perceives as a degradation of humanity. The invention of the train itself, which was to transform the fabric of societies beyond recognition, redefining time and the shrinking notion of space, which ultimately, by extension, gave rise to the British Empire. An achievement accomplished not without substantial numbers of victims along the way.

The attraction, beside the plot, here is the prose itself. More layered than many of his peers’, Morrell’s prose tastes of crimson velvet and blood. It carries the whiffs of the inescapable texture of Victorian era when the most horrific murders took place with disarming realism. One can touch both Baudelaire’s flâneur who wanders aimless through the streets of Paris, and E. A. Poe’s bedroom drama in the “Purloin Letter.” The novel, the plot and its prose . . . will turn you into an addict, even against your will.

Author du Jour: A. Scott Berg

03/09/2017 by Frederic Colier

“World War I and America: Told by the American Who Lived It,” edited by A. Scott Berg

(Library of America, pp 896, $40.00)

Besides the inviting silky quality of the paper, this volume from the Library of America offers an impressive collection of articles, essays, personal stories, and declassified documents from WWI, from both participants and observers. The volume aims at providing a never-before kaleidoscope view of the “never again” war, that is the French-German butchery which supposedly was going to be the war that ends all wars.

I can only imagine the headaches A. Scott Berg, the supreme editor of the book, must have experienced to decide what to include and exclude. The wealth of the materials is just staggering, spanning the beginning of the war to the ratification of the infamous “Versailles Treaty.” Lots of names will be recognizable to the modern readers, Edith Wharton, John Reed (who proceeded to go to Russia), Willa Cather, W.E.B Dubois, and of course Woodrow Wilson. But there are many others to whom history has not been so kind and who nonetheless made important contributions. Charles Lauriat is one of them. His telling of the sinking of the “Lusitania” reads like a novel, a first direct personal account of the tragedy during the swift German Torpedo attack. The sinking of the luxury liner was pivotal, for it signaled an important escalation towards the eventual US entry into the WWI conflict in 1917. The major lessons to be learned here come from the abundance of testimonies left to us as vestiges of the past, from which we are still trying to make sense. Given that in our new millennial age the past seems to carry less and less weight, the publication of this volume offers an in-depth ballast to anchor ourselves with the understanding that where we stand today is not so random. Especially in the light of the upcoming 100-year anniversary. Time for reflection is never wasted.

Author du Jour: Alan Jacobson

03/02/201703/02/2017 by Frederic Colier

March 2017. Only six weeks have elapsed since Trump took power, and what a contrast with the previous administration. The country seems to have been seized by the invisible hand of hysteria and neurosis. In recent memory, never a concentration of angry and vocal citizens has been so strident and quick to gather. In this time of uncertainty, it is always wise to take a deep breath and step to the sideline to better understand what is happening. Are we deluding ourselves with this new administration? Is the threat real? Or are we just venting the seething resentment that has been cementing since the beginning of the Great Recession and, why not, the costly Iraq War? This month’s selection provides reflections on our national and chaotic mental states.

“The Darkness of Evil,” by Alan Jacobson

(Open Road Integrated Media, pp 488, $16.99)

Sanity can be regained in many ways. While there are those who go to great lengths to analyze a person’s psyche to better penetrate it and spend a great deal of time to suggest curative solutions by trial and error, there are also those who advocate the more expeditive fire-by-fire approach. Divergent psychologies imply different perception and understanding of humankind. This is where Alan Jacobson (a truly underrated author) situates himself. Not that he necessarily believes in the latter approach, but in terms of thriller writing, his willingness to throw his characters into the darkest recesses of the human mind makes his story feel like boarding a hell-train from page one. His new Karen Vail’s novel, “The Darkness of Evil” is beautifully layered for this reason.

Think for a second if you woke one morning and found out your father was a serial killer. What would you do? What would you say? This is what happens to Jasmine Marcks, one of the protagonists. Is it possible to love a father who tortures innocent young women? Can a sadistic killer be a good father? Whose allegiance should a daughter have in mind, the community or her father? No easy answer, no matter who we are. But here the novel addresses the question in an original way. Jasmine, who turned her father in to the police, has written a book about him. But the incarcerated serial-killer father manages to escape and now seeks revenge. Karen Vail must protect Jasmine from her own father. But what is Jasmine now going to do about it? . . . “The Darkness of Evil” is a brisk, surprise-filled twisted ride, which will drain every ounce of darkness out of you and make you feel like a sober angel.

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