Hello World

Nolan Bushnell, the creator of both Pong (one of the first video games) and Chuck E. Cheese (one of the most annoying places to get terrible pizza), says that "literally thousands of people have told me over the years that they met their wife or husband playing Pong." He hearkens back to a time when people used to get together around video games. According to this Newsweek piece, he is a fossil:

Bushnell believes that somewhere along its journey toward 10 billion in worldwide sales, the videogame industry he kick-started with Pong has lost its way. Today's games isolate players in front of their computers or TVs, and the typically violent, complex gameplay alienates big swaths of the population, including pretty much all women. Even massively multiplayer online games like EverQuest are ultimately isolating, Bushnell says. "Games have historically been vehicles for socialization, not sitting alone in your underwear."

Obviously, Bushnell doesn't have his finger on the pulse of America (or the rest of the computer-using world, for that matter), and I'd say the same for Newsweek as well, for publishing something so ludicrous as "the typically violent, complex gameplay alienates big swaths of the population, including pretty much all women." I mean, could this be any further from the actual truth, which is that video games are becoming increasingly popular with women, and that most of the best-selling games are fundamentally non-violent (i.e. almost all of Nintendo's games, car-racing games, sports games, strategy games, every single Sim-Whatever game), and that video gaming is extremely social?

What Bushnell and Newsweek mean, of course, is that when you are playing video games you are not sitting next to anybody. Well, first of all, plenty of people get together to play video games. Second of all (and everyone reading this already knows this), it's quite possible to have a meaningful social interaction through the magic of the internet.

This is a great example of why it took The Media so long to figure out what to do with blogs--the old guys in charge don't have a clue, and when they finally figure it out they can make some money off of it they leap on the bandwagon with more enthusiasm than genuine understanding.

But, okay, let's humor them and think about this. Were video games every truly anti-social influences--and are they now?

I'll start with the latter question. No, they are not. Video games these days (starting at least 2 years ago) have included the ability to set up games remotely, with friends or with strangers hundreds or thousands of miles away. In addition to the actual gameplay, there is a messaging capability built into most of these games, so I think it's safe to say there is a social aspect to it. Yes, you're welcome to play in your underwear, but by this logic telephones are also anti-social influences. And I bet when they were introduced, they were proclaimed to be such.

Now, although it has no relevance anymore, the question of whether video games were ever anti-social activities is at least a slightly interesting one. Unfortunately for Newsweek, even this argument holds no water. Video games are no more solitary than reading, writing, skipping rope, or painting. In fact, they are inherently more social than some of these, since it has always been at least theoretically possible to share the activity with another person or persons. And, in point of fact, I remember sitting around, cheating at Duck Hunt by sitting a foot away from the screen, when I was a young man, and I remember playing far too much Madden '96 when I was in high school, and I remember playing far too much Bond 64 when I was in college, and I remember playing far too much Vice City (also Katamari Damacy, which is AWESOME), um, in March. And all of those times, I was with friends.

But back to the subject:

Imagine a Chuck E. Cheese for grown-ups—with booze and Caesar salads instead of balloons and singing animatrons. Bushnell has built "party tables" where six customers can play each other in the same game, and tournaments where diners in any of the restaurants in the chain can compete against each other in a single contest such as Texas Hold 'Em. Bushnell says he will open the first restaurant this fall in Los Angeles.

This isn't a horrible idea for a business, and perhaps the article's bizarre perspective (that video games are solitary, lonely activities for desperate shut-ins) isn't one shared by Bushnell. In fact, a quote of his suggests that he sees it as an alternative to standard adult social activities (you know, getting hammered in smoky saloons): he says that it will be "a more convivial environment for meeting strangers, without all the social risks associated with a bar." And I don't see anything wrong with that.

For a much better and more thorough look at why video games are not Dangerous, read this link, which includes an excerpt from Steven Berlin Johnson's Everything Bad is Good For You.

On my trip, I read these books, in this order:

• Bringing Down the House, by Ben Mezrich
  This was pretty much a disposable but entertaining description of an elaborate scam a bunch of MIT students had going in Vegas in the '90s. They won a lot of money by cheating in clever ways, basically. I think it took me about 2 hours to read, so it's not exactly a challenging work, but if you've got a flight coming up you might want to check this out.
  
  
• A Deepness in the Sky, by Vernor Vinge
  Do you hate science fiction? No? Then you will love this book, because it's terrific. You should also read A Fire Upon the Deep, which he wrote first, and which takes place in the same universe as Deepness, but thousands of years afterwards. The guy is a terrific hard science fiction writer. Highly recommended.
  
  
• Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer
  The sophomore effort from a guy who's, like, my age, this book is splendid. He takes on 9/11, which can get a little iffy, but at its heart this is a book about grief, death, and memory, and despite some gimmicky writing I found it extremely effective and powerful. Foer is a skilled story-teller, capable of wry humor and surprising emotional depth; reading his stuff makes me very jealous (as a writer) and happy (as a reader). I felt similarly about his first book, Everything is Illuminated.
  
  
• A Long Way Down, by Nick Hornby
  A heart-warming tale about four depressed losers who meet at a famous suicide spot, each intending to end it all. Echoing Seinfeld's mantra of "no hugs, no learning," Hornby does his best to avoid a trite happy ending without driving his readers to their own Final Solution, and I think he does a decent job--this is certainly the most cheerful book based on hopeless existentialism I've read in a while. I thought it was hilarious and honest, and when I temporarily ran out of books I read it again (3 days after reading it for the first time). If you've read and enjoyed his earlier books, especially About a Boy, I'm sure you'll like it. If you have never read his books, it's about time you gave it a shot.
  
  
• The Unconsoled, by Kazuo Ishiguro
  This book, which reminded me in some ways of Haruki Murakami's work (especially The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle) was the toughest read of the trip, by a wide margin. It's pretty hard to sum it up, but I guess an annoying movie exec might describe it as "Twin Peaks meets The Pianist." The plot is basically this: one of the most accomplished pianists in the world has been invited to an Eastern European town to perform in a concert that is, for various reasons, extremely important to the town's residents. As soon as he arrives, strange things happen and it seems like his memory and/or conscious mind are not functioning in a normal way.
  
  Beyond that, it's hard to really say what's going on in the book (although having read some reviews, I'm beginning to form some ideas and opinions). Right now it's like waking up from an intense dream, with flashes of cogent scenes and emotional response (an apt simile for this book, I think)--it's gonna take another read or two before I know what to make of it.
  
  
• Fever Pitch, by Nick Hornby
  Hornby's memoir of a life of obsession with "football" (you know, soccer) is pretty great. It was sort of odd, because it reads like a book about sports, except it's about Britain's pro-football leagues, about which I knew approximately three iotas before picking up the book. So I had to use my keen sense of context to figure out what he was talking about from time to time. Still, it's a very interesting work, touching on the relationships between "sport" and dating, parenting, working, violence, perspective, and utter hopeless irrationality. This book isn't as funny as Hornby's fiction, and is (pretty much by design) limited in scope, but I liked it nonetheless.
  
  
• Five Points: The 19th Century New York City Neighborhood That Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections, and Became the World's Most Notorious Slum, by Tylern Anbinder
  Five Points is the Manhattan intersection that synecdochizes the nineteenth-century strife and squalor fictionalized in the Scorcese blockbuster, Gangs of New York. This book is a pretty dry and historically-accurate look at the area, exploring the accuracy of earlier historical research and showing how the neighborhood changed over the decades.
  
  There were some great nuggets in the book (like the fact that squads of firemen fought over turf, and that the police/fire departments were the proving grounds for future politicians including Boss Tweed), but it's pretty statistic-heavy and redundant--several points are made over and over in numerous chapters. I'm not sure it was worth wading through the boring/repetitive stuff to get to the interesting stuff (although it was close enough that I can't decide). I don't really read a lot of books like this, so I don't know where it fits in within the genre, but generally speaking it was like a twinkie without quite enough creme filling.
  
  
• Natural Selection, by Frederick Barthelme
  Barthelme's dialogue and subject matter are simultaneously "realistic" and extremely ideosyncratic--in the same way that Tim Burton's movies all have a certain look and feel, so do Barthelme's books. The characters are awkward and strange, like real people tend to be, but they are all awkward in the same way. It strains belief that every man and woman, from rubes to cool dudes/dudettes, sees through the glossy surface of life and down to the gristle and muck of Truth, or that they all know what each other is saying in their halting, bizarre conversations. But if I can put up with Kevin Smith's dialogue or Beck's falsetto, I can deal with Barthelme's disaffected victims of mass media.
  
  Anyway, about the book. It's the story of a father/husband going through some depressiony stuff--he's relatively accomplished, successful, healthy, etc, but is still going through what appears to be a mid-life crisis--and how he tries to fix it. The plot sort of meanders and strays, but that didn't bother me. The characters, including the protagonist, all seem a bit "off" for lack of a better term, which I think is pretty much the whole point of the book. It's not exactly a carefree romp that teaches the reader the meaning and value of lovingkindness, but I thought it was a good book. And it's short, so you've got to appreciate that.
  
  Barthelme's writing reminds me of Speedboat, a great book by Renata Adler, so if you're familiar with and like one of them you will probably like the other.

I think that's all of them. Seven books in fifteen days is pretty good, considering I was travelling that whole time (and I even read one of them twice!).

Orson Scott Card, who has written a ton of science fiction (I consider a few of his books to be among my favorites in the genre), has also written an ugly and disappointing article with an extremely stupid URL. Basically, he argues that the idea of gay marriage is harmful to society in general, and part of a larger campaign waged by... um, goblins maybe?... a campaign to destroy the institution of capital "m" Marriage in America.

I understand (though I don't agree with) many of the arguments against gay marriage, but I do not get how anyone can seriously argue, as Card does, that "Marriage Is Already Open to Everyone." Yes, a gay man is allowed to marry a woman, and a gay woman is allowed to marry a man, but in order to consider that a legitimate option one must ignore the idea that married people should actually want to be married to each other. To clumsily make a comparison that many people have more deftly made before me, it's like arguing that, years ago, black people and white people were allowed to marry... Oh, except that they couldn't marry each other.

Card suggests that society thrives based on stable and supportive families, and I certainly agree with him there, but he also asserts that only a household comprising a mother and father is suitable for raising a child. He argues that, because most men want to marry their mothers and surpass their fathers (hasn't our analysis gotten more sophisticated since Freud?), and because it "takes conscious effort to break away from this pattern," well, it's obviously Right. Because struggling against our natural limitations is un-American. That's why our national motto is "Status Quo Means Good Enough."

He says, 'We've already seen similar attempts at redefinition. The ideologues have demanded that we stop defining "families" as Dad, Mom, and the kids. Now any grouping of people might be called a "family."' Well, good heavens, first we define a group of people who care for and love each other as a "family." What's next? Legal file-sharing???

Things became more or less farcical when Card broke out this rhetoric:

Since the natural reproductive strategy for males is to mate with every likely female at every opportunity, males who are not restrained by social pressure and expectations will soon devolve into a sort of Clintonesque chaos, where every man takes what he can get.

Yes, "Clintonesque chaos, where every man takes what he can get." I'm starting to think Mr. Card may not be a Kerry supporter.
Card degenerates into a lot of talk of "mating" and "civilization" and generally comes uncomfortably close to eugenics as far as I'm concerned.

It's pretty clear, at least to me, that Card thinks being gay is icky and doesn't want to think about his own sexuality (see such comments as "Already any child with any kind of sexual attraction to the same sex is told that this is an irresistible destiny, despite the large number of heterosexuals who move through this adolescent phase and never look back"). I think this, the "ick factor," is at the heart of the great majority of people who oppose gay marriage. The image of two guys making out in tuxedos sends an involuntary shiver down their spines and they reach for the nearest bible passage or oversimplified theory that asserts the superiority of heterosexuality, thus banishing from their conscious mind any need to consider and accept someone else's differences as acceptable or even valuable.

I'll close with the most condescending, insulting, arrogant, and despicable part of his hateful diatribe. You just tell me whether you think this is a measured, rational, and mature response to a complex issue:

They steal from me what I treasure most, and gain for themselves nothing at all. They won't be married. They'll just be playing dress-up in their parents' clothes.

Full disclosure: I oppose heterosexual marriage.

There's an interesting article in today's Washington Post about Stephen King's somewhat silly speech on the podium after winning the National Book Foundation's lifetime achievement award. He basically said "thanks for the award, but it's not enough to make up for how you guys look down on those of us who actually sell books." He wants writers like Tom Clancy to be seen as equals to authors like Jhumpa Lahiri. I'm pretty conflicted on this point, because in theory I agree with him on the point that popularity shouldn't be a reason to dismiss the intellectual value of a book prima facie. That said, I've read Interpreter of Maladies, and I've read Rainbow Six, and I enjoyed reading both--and I find it hard to put them in the same category. I guess the only way to resolve this, in my mind at least, is to keep an open mind where popular culture is concerned, but to be reasonable about making judgments with respect to artistic value. These days, when you can get a degree in media studies by studying the Freudian Implications of the TeleTubbies' Sun-Baby (for example), it's possible to plumb the interests of the hoi polloi for things of deeper value--for better or for worse--and it's important to acknowledge that, both in academic and cultural contexts.

This is, of course, an ongoing argument in any kind of art, be it music, dance, painting, sculpture, or literature. While it's possible to be both popular and critically acclaimed (Dickens, for example), you have to overcome the elitism of the elite and Joe Schmo's instinctive distrust of "high culture." Even having achieved some measure of success on both sides, there's a mutual backlash as well--"my formerly obscure favorite band is popular now? they sold out!!!!" "the New York Times Book Review likes Harry Potter? It must have secret witch messages in it meant to corrupt our youth!"

I guess what I'm saying is that Stephen King kind of has a point, but he's being a jerk and most of his peers really don't deserve the attention he thinks they should get.

King, of course, gets plenty of attention, and some of it is even (to a degree) the type he wants.