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Nancy Pearl Book Reviews for 10/20/2008

Dave Beck
10/20/2008

We hear some of the recent reading adventures of Nancy Pearl: A turn of the 21st century novel set along the China, North Korea border, and some new essays in technology.

Even the most technophobic reader will likely find much of interest in Clive Thompson's "The Best of Technology Writing 2008" (Digital Culture Books/University of Michigan, 2008), a selection of 15 essays drawn from a wide variety of magazines, including Wired, Popular Science, Information Weekly, Columbia Journalism Review, and The New Yorker. Some of my favorites include Julian Dibbell's "The Life of the Chinese Gold Farmer," which describes a specialized job that could only exist in the wired world in which we live: Real workers are hired and paid real money by companies involved in the mega–popular online fantasy game, World of Warcraft to search for virtual gold in the virtual world of the game, which then accrues to the virtual wealth of their employers. There are some interesting philosophical questions to ponder here regarding what's happening to the line between the "real" world and the "virtual" world(s) made possible by increasingly powerful computer technology. Another favorite is "Doctor Delicious," a profile by Ted Allen of Dave Arnold, who is a combination of scientist, chef, and engineer, and the guru of high–tech cooking, better known as molecular gastronomy (the scientific study of the physics and chemistry of cooking). He's the man whom chefs call on when they want to create, for example, a dish that defies the laws of gravity. Emily Nussbaum explores the whole concept of "living in public," through blogging, MySpace, YouTube, Flicker, Twitter, Facebook, and all the other applications available to savvy technophiles today. Other essays — invariably interesting, sometimes mind–boggling, and frequently eye–opening — include Jeffrey Rosen's "The Brain on the Stand," a discussion of the increased use of neuroscience in law; Caleb Crain's elegiac "Twilight of the Books;" and Thomas Goetz on how the new technology of decoding an individual's DNA has entered the business world.

If you were to pick one of the most unusual spots in the world in which to set a novel, the setting of Jeff Talarigo's "The Ginseng Hunter" (Doubleday/Nan A. Talese, 2008) would be a good choice: It takes place in a valley in China located along the Tumen River, which divides the country from North Korea. At the turn of the 21st century, the narrator, a nameless, solitary, middle–aged man who's half Chinese and half Korean, makes a meager living selling the ginseng he digs from the ground — limiting himself, as his father taught him, to picking one root a day. Once a month, except when winter makes the roads impassable, he goes to the nearest city, Yanji, an eight–hour walk away, where he sells his ginseng, buys provisions, and visits a prostitute. But political events in the larger world begin to intrude on his clockwork existence: Chinese soldiers have dug foxholes close to the Tumen, and dead bodies are seen floating in the river; an unfamiliar child steals food from his garden; and a truck driver tells him about how easy it is to earn money by turning North Korean refugees into the local authorities. On one of his visits to Yanji, the young prostitute whom he regularly sees begs him to help her find a better life. What should he do? How involved in another's life does he want to become? Woven into this story is another: The harrowing tale of a mother and daughter facing starvation under the brutal regime of North Korea's dictator, Kim Jong–il. Talarigo's second novel (his first was "The Pearl Diver") is not an easy book to read, because its subject matter (political oppression, loneliness, the madness of grief) is so overwhelmingly sad. Nonetheless, I highly recommend it. The prose is spare and immaculate, the description of life in the narrator's valley is simultaneously vivid and bleak, and the depiction of the best and worst of what mankind is capable can only encourage us to be better people.