John Updike reviews Free Life, the new novel from Ha Jin, which earned a starred review from Booklist.

Ha Jin’s description of American life—laborious, money-mad, philistine, and cheesy (there is apparently no cheese in China)—is not apt to trigger a wave of immigration. Asked the difference between China and America, Nan says, “In China every day I wanted to jump up and fight wiz someone. . . . Zere you have to fight to survive, but here I don’t want to fight wiz anyone, as eef I lost my spirit.” To himself, he thinks, “The louder I shout, the bigger a fool I’ll make of myself. I feel like a crippled man here.” Nevertheless, he elects to stay, in this “lonesome, unfathomable, overwhelming land.” The Wus strive less to let America in than to squeeze China out—“squeeze every bit of it out of themselves!” Nan tells Danning, “I spit at China, because it treats its citizens like gullible children and always prevents them from growing up into real individuals. It demands nothing but obedience.”

I wonder how SAP is doing in China. Well, just ask:

The world's largest enterprise software developer SAP's revenue in China is to rise 30% up annually by 2010 and it would also expand its research staff in the country, said Lee Boon Lee, SAP China’s CEO and president. The Germany-based firm hopes its output revenue in China will be quadrupled by the end of 2010, compared with the revenue generated in 2005.

Also:

German software giant SAP brings its toughest jobs to this port city in China's rustbelt northeast.

In a sunny, spacious office at a leafy business park, 200 technicians help run software that manages bank transactions in Switzerland and auto manufacturing in Michigan.

"Nighttime support for a Swiss bank is one of the most difficult things you can do, and we do it in China," said Andreas Reuther, SAP's vice president for global support.

After reading ubernoir's recent observation that "Asian in UK English usually means of Indian or Pakistani descent", I wondered whether the British Asians, like Jin and his characters, are trying to "squeeze the Pakistan out" of themselves.

Nan, American Man

Publishers Weekly:

This impressive anthology of pulp-era crime stories from veteran editor and publisher Penzler reveals not only tales with surprising staying power but also some of high literary quality. To be sure, there are some selections sure to offend modern sensibilities and others whose extravagant prose now comes across as laughable or ludicrous. But aside from questions of quality and taste, these tales laid the foundation for most branches of the crime fiction genre as we know it today. Raymond Chandler's Red Wind is as effective now as it was when published in 1938. An unexpected treat is Faith, a previously unpublished Dashiell Hammett story. Multiple offerings from Erle Stanley Gardner, Hammett, Chandler and Cornell Woolrich add luster. Divided into three sections—the Crimefighters, the Villains, the Dames—with cogent intros by Penzler to each entry, this comprehensive volume allows the reader to revisit that exciting time when the pulp magazines flourished and writers pounded out fiction for a penny a word or less.

Of course, those times have gone ...

Journalism is edging out fiction at The Atlantic Monthly magazine, which during its nearly 150-year history has published short stories by Henry James, Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway.

In a note to readers in the May issue, The Atlantic's editors said they will no longer run a short story in every issue but will produce an annual fiction issue in August that will be available in print form on newsstands and online to subscribers.

Back to the Pulp. Here's Booklist:

Pulp fiction's comeback is so complete that it's hard to call it a guilty pleasure. Publishers are busily reprinting old favorites and issuing new stuff written in the manner of the old ones. And, as always, the covers are surely half of the appeal. Black Lizard has been in this business longer than most; this mammoth compilation of reprints is, paradoxically, a Vintage Books Original. And Penzler's credentials as both editor and fan can't be questioned—although genre loyalists will have fun debating his choices. Using a stringent definition of pulp, he selects mostly works that first appeared in the immortal Black Mask. Divided into three parts—Crimefighters, Villains, and Dames—the Big Book features names both beloved (Chandler, Hammett, Cain) and barely remembered (Booth, Reeves, White). There are firsts of one kind (a claimed first-ever publication of Dashiell Hammett's short story Faith) and another (a novel, The Third Murderer, by Carroll John Daly, the inventor of the hard-boiled private-eye story). It's a little less fun reading these slim things in a groaning compendium, but at least it's a paperback. And good luck finding them all on your own.

See also:

Actress Jessica Biel options the film rights to Edgar-nominated writer Megan Abbott's "Die a Little," a Los Angeles noir novel set in the 1950s with an intriguing character twist.

The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps

“There is more than one way not to read, the most radical of which is not to open a book at all.” Thus begins Pierre Bayard's witty and provocative meditation on the nature, scale and necessity of non-reading.

Economist reviews How To Talk About Books You Haven't Read. People seem to like it. Here's the NYT review:

He wants to show us how much we lie about the way we read, to ourselves as well as to others, and to assuage our guilt about the way we actually read and talk about books.

I seriously doubt that pretending to have read this book will boost your creativity. On the other hand, reading it may remind you why you love reading.

The importance of not reading

America was constructed to foster arguments, not to settle them.

For the new American Republic, “government was not about providing answers, but rather about providing a framework in which the salient questions could continue to be debated.” To transform disagreement from a natural source of strife into a source of stability was a crucial insight, and is arguably the great achievement of the Constitution. What frustrates the passionate about America — its creaky checks and balances, diffuse sovereignties and general aversion to sudden change — is, Ellis argues, what makes possible the triumphs we do manage to pull off.

American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic

Earlier this month I mentioned OpenSocial, and Decius replied:

If the same people show up in every social networking website, doesn't that defeat the individual value of each community? Do you really want to "import" your linkedin connections to facebook? Sometimes its useful to maintain different sets of associations in different contexts.

On that thought, here is Tim Berners-Lee:

People running Internet systems had to let their computer be used for forwarding other people's packets, and connecting new applications they had no control over. People making web sites sometimes tried to legally prevent others from linking into the site, as they wanted complete control of the user experience, and they would not link out as they did not want people to escape. Until after a few months they realized how the web works. And the re-use kicked in. And the payoff started blowing people's minds.

Letting your data connect to other people's data is a bit about letting go in that sense. It is still not about giving to people data which they don't have a right to. It is about letting it be connected to data from peer sites. It is about letting it be joined to data from other applications.

It is about getting excited about connections, rather than nervous.

Giant Global Graph | Decentralized Information Group (DIG) Breadcrumbs

A tribute to the pleasures of treasure hunting.

At a time when the planet has been plotted down to the last square inch, dreams seem badly out of date. Get a global positioning system and eliminate the ratty maps in the glove compartment. Click a mouse and get a satellite picture of your own driveway. Terra incognita no longer exists. For the romance of the unknown — ancient Mesopotamia or Florida before the Interstate highway system — you have to go to the old charts.

I previously recommended this book.

A pull quote from the review:

In “Algiers” Charles Boyer looks deep into Hedy Lamarr’s eyes and tells her that she reminds him of the Paris subway. Were more romantic words ever spoken?

This article mentions a handful of other delightful map books, as well.

Cartographia: Mapping Civilizations

Here is the Washington Post review:

Of late we have been blissing out on books and other material about the Revolutionary period, and of course the Civil War years are of inexhaustible fascination to millions, but the years in between are pretty much ignored. Yet as Daniel Walker Howe makes plain in this exemplary addition to the Oxford History of the United States, this was the time when the United States was transformed by a series of revolutions, the most important of which were in transportation and communications, that "would overthrow the tyranny of distance," which until then had "remained for Americans 'the first enemy,' as it had been for inhabitants of the Mediterranean world of the sixteenth century."

...

"In a broader sense ... the spread of the electric telegraph effectively decoupled communication from transportation, sending a message from sending a physical object. The implications of this alteration in the human condition unfolded only gradually over the next several generations. But contemporaries fully realized that they stood in the presence of a far-reaching change. They valued not only the shortening of time to receive information but also the speed with which an answer could be returned; that is, conversation was possible.

Among a wealth of praise, "What Hath God Wrought" also earns a starred review from Publishers Weekly:

In the latest installment in the Oxford History of the United States series, historian Howe, professor emeritus at Oxford University and UCLA (The Political Culture of the American Whigs), stylishly narrates a crucial period in U.S. history—a time of territorial growth, religious revival, booming industrialization, a recalibrating of American democracy and the rise of nationalist sentiment. Smaller but no less important stories run through the account: New York's gradual emancipation of slaves; the growth of higher education; the rise of the temperance movement (all classes, even ministers, imbibed heavily, Howe says). Howe also charts developments in literature, focusing not just on Thoreau and Poe but on such forgotten writers as William Gilmore Simms of South Carolina, who helped create the romantic image of the Old South, but whose proslavery views eventually brought his work into disrepute. Howe dodges some of the shibboleths of historical literature, for example, refusing to describe these decades as representing a market revolution because a market economy already existed in 18th-century America. Supported by engaging prose, Howe's achievement will surely be seen as one of the most outstanding syntheses of U.S. history published this decade.

WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848

Consumer and corporate use of the Internet could overload the current capacity and lead to brown-outs in two years unless backbone providers invest billions of dollars in new infrastructure, according to a study released last week.

Pull quotes:

"We think the exaflood is generally not well understood, and its investment implications not well defined."

"We think it's a mistake to treat telecom like a luxury and tax it like a sin."

Internet Could Max Out in 2 Years, Study Says

“I think it will be a great program, Dr. Carlat,” he said. “Would you like to come?” I glanced at the invitation. I recognized the name of the speaker, a prominent and widely published psychiatrist flown in from another state. The restaurant was one of the finest in town.

I was tempted. The wine, the great food, the proximity to a famous researcher — why not rejoin that inner circle of the select for an evening? But then I flashed to a memory of myself five years earlier, standing at a lectern and clearing my throat at the beginning of a drug-company presentation. I vividly remembered my sensations — the careful monitoring of what I would say, the calculations of how frank I should be.

“No,” I said, as I handed the rep back the invitation. “I don’t think I can make it. But thanks anyway.”

Dr. Drug Rep

Noam Baumbach ("The Squid and the Whale", "Margot at the Wedding") in The New Yorker.

So what if she thought the movie was “pretentious and contrived” and you felt it was a “masterpiece” and are dying to inform her that “she doesn’t know what she’s talking about”? Remember, you were looking for a woman who wouldn’t “yes” you all the time.

The Zagat History of My Last Relationship