Positive Positions Perhaps

“Think, men, think.” — Prof. Harold Hill, The Music Man

New Year’s Resolution No. 1 for 2010 is modest: Keep a book list. Then in a year there’ll be a better best books Brick.

One could say that if the books I read were memorable then I’d remember ’em. It’s not as if I read that much, a couple of ink volumes a month at best, and about 1.5 recorded books a month heard while commuting. Quantity though measurable is relative. So this isn’t very many compared to either of my late parents, who read two or three novels or mysteries a week. All from the library, like me.

My Beloved prefers books on faith and spirituality — serious ones not glib pop — while I tend toward comic novels or Stephen King. It may mean I’m not deep anymore, but I’d rather claim that my mystical curiosity is on sabbatical because my set of live-by philosophies is working right now.

So when called upon to recall my favorite volumes of 2009 — and I’m the only one who’s asking — I recall King’s Duma Key (fun with great craftsmanship) and Nick Hornby’s Juliet, Naked for its wit and character development. Those were absorbed via audio; I read Financial Lives of the Poets by Jess Walter because of good reviews. I’m hard on comic novels and this one did succeed but it still was on the frothy side. Hornby’s still the contemporary writer to beat on making a reader giggle and think.

Some nonfiction titles hit me so strongly that this roundup is really about them.

Zeitoun by Dave Eggers, is A micro look at Hurricane Katrina, featuring a paint contractor, residential but some commercial, and his family and friends. Its twist is that the fellow is Syrian so the post-Katrina Keystone Kops operation naturally takes him for al Qaida. Zeitoun brings home how the leadership high in Washington is interpreted and made gospel on the ground. Turns out the Bill of Rights can be a luxury when it should be obvious how it’s most needed in crisis. The founding fathers knew this (Franklin: “Those who sacrifice liberty for freedom deserve neither.”) Long-form journalism is tricky, but Eggers paddles smoothly between all obstacles. This book should be required reading in high school.

Mainly, though I want to shout out Free: The Future of a Radical Price by Chris Anderson, read in the summer, and Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America by Barbara Ehrenreich.

The main thing about Free is that it explains the different kinds of free goods, from samples given away in hopes of making sales to shareware, computer applications distributed in the hope that a few offer a donation. The computer age turns sales into absurdity. How can Google give away nearly everything it does and make apparently buckets of bucks? Free explains. The cost of electronic information distribution and storage is approaching zero. I can’t see how businesses and consumers can proceed into the next decade without understand how inevitable this concept is.

If I had read Free before Brick’s attempt last year at explaining news distribution, I would have let Anderson do the explaining. My analysis is observational, without the benefit of an MBA, but my 2003 master’s in journalism from the University of Arkansas helped. I don’t have the access to experts or the time to do the extensive research that Anderson executed. His post as editor of the technology and culture magazine Wired gives him perspective as well. Still, I’m not deleting my essay.

While Free continues to inform my thinking on the Good Depression and beyond, Bright-Sided informs my overall perspective. I’m not summarizing it, though at 250-something pages it’s not too long, just focusing on a point or two.

Ehrenreich says her being treated for breast cancer inspired the book. She uses both history and current reporting to make points. The history doesn’t start with Norman Vincent Peale but decades before, to 19th-century Protestant trends, mainly the American approach to Calvinism (yes, Johnny was a 16th-century theologian) and the development of theological opposition to it. Her reporting includes taking in worship services of prominent evangelists and talking with them, as well as interviewing prominent psychologists and the like.

Ehrenreich isn’t a propagandist trying to manipulate readers but an arguer. I am persuaded, because she revealed something to me I never quite grasped before.

An extreme form of positive thinking is materialistic. If you want something bad enough, want it completely with no reservations, you can have it. For the religiously minded, wanted isn’t enough, you have to pray for it. It might be for a better job; it might be a car you can’t afford. These aren’t hers or my examples, just check out Oprah Winfrey or  pastor Joel Osteen.

Therefore if you’re stuck in your job or lose it — or are turned down for the car loan — then it’s your fault. Yes in some way, you failed. People who every day believe that with a little more “umph,” they can get something, then night falls without success, feel like losers.

The general form of positive thinking might best be Ehrenreich’s personal example. You can’t wish away cancer of course, but repeatedly she was told how a positive outlook helps. There is a little science, that a good disposition helps one keep to the course. But a pasted-on or even a sincere smile does absolutely nothing to stop the growth of cancer cells nor make therapy more effective. Chemistry and biology are at best indirectly advanced by pink household appliances. Sure, money for research helps, but what about all the other body parts cancer attacks?

No woman, Ehrenreich says, should ever think that breast cancer is her fault for not radiating good thoughts or memorizing affirmations. Cancer happens, and it’s fought conventionally, experimentally and with alternative approaches. People age and get sick. They need to learn their options with clear eyes, not lose time, focus or realistic hope with diversions, she writes.

The author didn’t say this, I don’t recall, but there’s lots of criticism and jokes about the me-me-me, it’s all about me attitude that’s prevalent. The Secret concept, and a too-broad application of Positive Thinking by definition is self-centered. I want X, nevermind the world. Y happened to me, nevermind genetics or toxins. Z struck this person I know, she didn’t fight hard enough, of course that won’t happen to me. What about compassion?

Ehrenreich sure didn’t mention Meredith Willson’s mid-20th-century musical The Music Man, where Prof. Harold Hill sells River City, Iowa, band instruments and uniforms with “The Think System,” where children don’t need any musical training, saying, “You don’t have to bother with the notes.”