Them
Adventures with Extremists
By Jon Ronson
Simon & Schuster

British journalist and documentary filmmaker, Jon Ronson says, "Them," "began life as a series of profiles of extremist leaders, but it quickly became something stranger." Spending time with "those people who had been described as the political and religious monsters of the Western world Ð Islamic fundamentalists, neo-Nazis, etc.," Ronson discovered that for all their differences they held one belief in common: "that a tiny elite rules the world from a secret room."

In "Them," Ronson effectively employs the same method used by fellow Brit filmmaker, Nick Broomfield in "Kurt and Courtney," whereby the interviewer allows the absurdities of the interviewees and situations to speak for themselves with no editorial assistance from a literary laugh track. He spends time with such notables as the survivors of Ruby Ridge; David Icke, who believes that the modern "illuminati" who rule the world descend from an intergalactic race of giant lizards; and underground journalist Big Jim Tucker, who claims to know the location of the next meeting of these shadowy world rulers.

To that end, Ronson accompanies Tucker to Portugal to infiltrate this alleged meeting of the Bilderburg Group, as they are known. In one of the most amusing and chilling chapters of the book, Ronson relates how he was followed, spied upon and intimidated after the two attempt to enter the hotel where the meeting is scheduled. They watch from the gate as the guests, including, David Rockefeller, Umberto Agnelli of Fiat, Vernon Jordan, Henry Kissinger and James Wolfensohn, president of the World Bank, arrive. The more he attempts to dispel the myth of Bilderburg, the more Ronson becomes convinced that there is merit to the story.

In the final chapter, Ronson and three conspiracy theorists infiltrate the exclusive Northern California campground, Bohemian Grove. Here, Ronson notices that the guest list includes Dick Cheney, and two of the speakers scheduled to appear that week are Henry Kissinger (again) and John Major. While inside the notorious Russian River enclave they witness the "Cremation of Care" ceremony, where a huge effigy of an owl presides over the ritualistic burning of a symbolic human body. Afterwards, though there are a conspicuous number of bathrooms, the Bohemians all piss on the ground in some kind of ceremonial culmination.

The anecdotes are hilarious and disturbing throughout the book. In "Them," Ronson seems to have, somewhat innocently, discovered a truth that lies at the foundation of the belief systems of conspiracy theorists, extremists of all stripes and a surprising number of normal, middle-class people: it's us against, "Them." Whoever they are.

Appeared in "Boy, are my arms tired!" January 2002 © Suzanne Rush 2003

Mad in America
Bad Science, Bad Medicine and the
Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill
By Robert Whitaker
Perseus Publishing

Everything the general public believes about the causes and remedies for mental illness — specifically schizophrenia — is based on shoddy science and is likely false. That is the message of noted science journalist and author Robert Whitaker, in his book, "Mad in America; Bad Science, Bad Medicine and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill."

Whitaker's book, based on comprehensive research culled from old patient medical records, historical accounts and government freedom of information documents, paints a harsh picture of the mistreatment of mental patients from the beginning of the 19th century to the care prescribed by today's psychiatrists.

His historical perspective begins with the description of "cures" from the late 1700s and early 1800s like the tranquilizer chair, to which those suffering from madness were strapped, immobilized, hooded and doused with icy water. Drowning therapy was another early favorite. Here the subject "was enclosed in a coffin-like box with holes, [and] was lowered by means of a well-sweep [into water]. He was kept there until bubbles of air cease to rise, then was taken out, rubbed and revived." The presumption about this therapy was that after experiencing near-death a patient could re-evaluate his life and fly right.

In contrast, the York Quakers of Pennsylvania tried more humane methods to alleviate the pain of the mentally handicapped, a philosophy they dubbed, "moral treatment." They saw the mentally ill as "brethren" who needed gentleness, respect and good food. They opened a home in 1796 with beautiful gardens, game rooms and nighttime entertainment. Their success rate in curing those who had suffered psychotic breaks ran about 70%. Moral treatment was a method that lasted for most of that century, but by the end of the 1900s, the general adoption of Francis Galton's (cousin to Darwin) eugenics theory brought moral treatment to a standstill.

Eugenics was the belief that both desirable and undesirable human traits were bequeathed and not the result of environmental conditions. "By 1914, forty-four colleges in America has introduced eugenics into their curriculums, with the subject taught as a science... Even the august Encyclopaedia Britannica confidently predict that future progress would include 'the organic betterment of the race through wise application of the laws of heredity.'" Hitler would later employ eugenics as a justification for the most infamous human slaughter of the 20th century.

The groundwork had been laid for American society to view moral and physical infirmities from an unforgiving perspective. So begins the litany of modern abuses heaped upon the impotent insane. This was the era that saw the beginning of large-scale asylum building to segregate those who were seen as unfit to participate in society and who must not, at any cost, reproduce. Sterilization, without consent, was a powerful tool to rid society of the impure, and was practiced without regard to the rights or wishes of the confined.

But castration and clitorectomies would not rid the mind of impure thoughts. Once segregated, a number of new methods were employed to "help" psychotics, depressives and those who, by lack of wealth or power, found themselves incarcerated. Insulin coma treatment was one such therapy — one that caused grand mal seizures that would damage the brain in such a way that the patient would become drooling and docile. This led to electroshock therapy, another permanently damaging regimen to subdue the ill. Finally, this line of care found its ultimate expression in lobotomy. Lobotomies of the frontal lobe produced the same effects as the other brain-damaging therapies, but much more quickly.

Psychiatrists in charge of the mentally ill felt justified in using any toxic method to make their wards more pliable for their long-term care. That is probably why, after WWII, neuroleptic drugs that inflicted a whole host of virulent side effects, were introduced, misrepresented and lauded. These drugs, of which thorazine is the most commonly known, cause a blockage of dopamine to the brain, which it was postulated, would help schizophrenics eliminate psychotic episodes.

In reality, thorazine and other neuroleptics caused serious damage to the brain and body in addition to blocking the dopamine receptors. Parkinson-like symptoms appeared in almost all patients who were prescribed these drugs. The list of side effects is long and harrowing. "Evidence of the harm caused by the drugs was simply allowed to pile up and up, then pushed away in the corner where it wouldn't be seen." Still the drugs were touted as "insulin for the insane." It was said that neuroleptic drugs used daily would help schizophrenics maintain mental health, live regular lives and keep them out of state institutions which were increasingly losing government funding as the century came to a close.

If the drugs had actually kept patients free from delusions, allowed them to function, or even kept them pain-free, perhaps the brain-damaging effects could have been justified. But not only did these drugs have low rates of success in returning the insane to society as functioning citizens, they instead turned a whole population into veritable zombies. The ugliness didn't end there. As "Boston Globe" journalist, Whitaker, recounts with evidence culled from the FDA, medical journals, and the records from clinical trials, the drug-makers knew all along that the drugs were not effective.

The stories of corrupted "double-blind" studies, drug money influencing doctors and psychiatrists and the unrelenting disregard of the afflicted, are harrowing. The book brings us up to date with it discussion of the newest "wonder" drugs, the atypicals, notably clozapine. This modern drug, based once again on the unproved hypothesis that psychosis is caused by the dopamine receptors in the brain, produces many neurotoxic effects — "seizures, dense sedation, marked drooling, rare sudden death, constipation, urinary incontinence and weight gain." Try to get a job, or return to normal society with those symptoms.

Ultimately, what the book reveals is that neither doctors nor drug makers know what causes psychosis, their drugs do little but turn humans into incompetent animatrons and that most of what the public has been led to believe about the marvels of modern drug therapy is a hideous sham. Furthermore, studies done during the end of the twentieth century by the World Health Organization in Africa, and others done in California by the National Institute of Mental Health, show that patients who are never given neuroleptics have much higher rates of recovery than those who are medicated.

"Mad in America," exposes and debunks our deepest-held societal beliefs about the mentally ill, which have been fed primarily by the publicity and money machine that is the pharmaceutical industry. As Robert Whitaker says, "The day will come when people will look back at our current medicines for schizophrenia and the stories we tell to patients about their abnormal brain chemistry, and they will shake their heads in utter disbelief."

Perhaps society has been willing to separate and isolate the insane because it has been too frightening to see them for who they are: us, on a very bad day. If even half of what this book purports is true, the time is nigh for the human race to return to the ideals of the Quaker's moral treatment for our mentally ill — and our mentally functioning.

Appeared in "Boy, are my arms tired!" November 2001 © Suzanne Rush 2003

More Now, Again
A Memoir of Addiction
By Elizabeth Wurtzel
Simon & Schuster

The 8th step of the 12 suggested steps of Alcoholics Anonymous reads: Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

Elizabeth Wurtzel has a lot of amends to make according to, "More Now, Again", her tiresome account of her recent bout with drug addiction. According to her story she has managed to subject everyone within her neurotic grasp (both literal and literary) to her abusive brand of cocky egotism. She has lied to her publisher, editors, mother, friends and psychiatrists; subjected the staff of this same publisher to her selfish needs and tirades; had an adulterous affair; used friends and acquaintances to acquire drugs; and lived, in general, like an over-indulged, peevish teenager. Plus, by publishing this tell-all, she has now subjected the book-buying public to more of her vain self-indulgence.

Wurtzel is a former "Rolling Stone" critic and best-selling author of, "Prozac Nation," another autobiographical tale centered around her bad behavior, at that time due to mania and depression. In this latest book, "More Now, Again," she reveals the "real story" behind the years she spent writing her follow-up book, "Bitch." During this couple year interval she developed an all-encompassing addiction to cocaine and prescription Ritalin, to which she attributes her new bad behavior. Though many have written moving tales about addiction before her, Wurtzel has virtually nothing of merit to add to this body of stories. The tedious descriptions of drug paraphernalia, obsessive tweezing of leg hair, and lack of consideration for all within her ken is exhaustive yet almost thoroughly devoid illuminating epiphanies.

Amusingly, the acknowledgment section at the back of this book is the most illustrative portion of the story. We are supposed to believe, after forcing ourselves through the previous 300 pages, that Wurtzel has gotten clean and changed her ways with the help of 12-step programs. Yet, when one reads the following passage: "How lucky was I when Marysue Rucci became my editor. She is astonishingly acutely smart, and turned a bloated mess of text into a sleeker, smoother modelÉ. And I am eternally in her debt for every time my obsessions and confusions made this process more complicated than it needed to be," one can only think, that despite her adoption of sanity and sobriety, Wurtzel is still nothing much more than a giant, albeit talented, pain-in-the-ass.

When she is finished making amends to her friends, co-workers, family and acquaintances for her behavior she can begin to write letters of apology to everyone who buys this book. Because $25 is just too much to pay for the privilege of joining her in gazing at her supremely commonplace, pierced navel.

Appeared in "Boy, are my arms tired!" January 2002 © Suzanne Rush 2003

Snow Mountain Passage: A Novel
James D. Houston
Harvest Books

The westward migration of the hardiest Americans during the 1800s continues to be a fascinating interlude in the history of our country. No story of wagon trains that braved the trek has attracted more interest than the grisly tale of the Donner Party. In "Snow Mountain Passage: A Novel," James Houston revisits this doomed group of travelers from the fictional first-person perspectives of seminal party members James Reed and his daughter, Patty.

Exiled from the party after an accidental killing, Reed departs from the group and makes it through the Sierras into California before the first winter snows. As we know, his family, and the 80 other members of the party, including the Donner family, was not so fortunate. The short cut they took, at Reed's suggestion, left them stranded in a spot in the mountains, difficult to access, as an early blizzard descended. Makeshift cabins were erected and the group hunkered down for the duration.

From Reed's perspective, we follow him on his journey into verdant California, the Promised Land, to find help to extract his friends and family from the mountains. His tale is one of countless frustrations. He arrives during the battle for California with Mexico and is conscripted to join the fight. As it turns out, this war is almost non-existent, but this does not stop him from being waylaid in numerous useless actions for almost four months.

Meanwhile, as Patty recounts, things at what would later be named Donner Lake, are dire. The first unexpected freeze has killed most of the cattle, and the meat cannot be extracted from the 15-foot drifts. As the months pass, the Reeds and others are forced to eat little more than shoe leather and cow hides. The descriptions of hunger, cold and what starvation does to the human mind and body are compelling.

The bulk of the book, unfortunately, follows Mr. Reed in California and is bogged down with lush descriptions of the landscape. The battle for survival in the Sierras, which is far more interesting, is given short shrift. Let's face it, we want to know who was eating whom and when, so what gives with the endless portraits of orchards and green hills? The reader is given a truncated look at the insanity and cannibalism that eventually took over the mountain clans. Though Houston may have hoped to present a tasteful representation of these events, his lean portraits of horror only leave the reader hungry for more.

Appeared in "Boy, are my arms tired!" June 2002 © Suzanne Rush 2002

Her Own Woman
The Life of Mary Wollstonecraft
By Diane Jacobs
Simon & Schuster

British author, Mary Wollstonecraft, is best remembered for two accomplishments. The first is the publication, in 1792, of her book, "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman," a groundbreaking, eighteenth century, feminist manifesto. The second is giving birth to a girl child, also named Mary, who would later wed Percy Shelly and write the gothic novel, "Frankenstein."

In the recently published, "Her Own Woman: The Life of Mary Wollstonecraft," author Diane Jacobs presents an entertaining history of this indomitable woman. One of five children, Wollstonecraft was born to a ne'er-do-well, alcoholic father and an indifferent mother. Raised in an era when the best that a well-born woman could expect from life was a wealthy husband who didn't beat her too much, young Mary longed for a path other than that proscribed by her circumstances of gender and station. When her father lost his money, she knew that the education she had long fostered on her own would be her salvation from the only three jobs open to lowly women: servant, teacher and governess.

In her youth, she worked as all three. But tired of this life, and in a flamboyant act of daring, she moved to London and struck up a relationship with publisher Joseph Johnson that changed her life. "She was determined to become the Ôfirst of a new genus,' a female who wrote not as a housewife's hobby, but to avoid the enslavement of marriage and to support a life of the mind." Johnson advanced her money on a novel and put her to work as a reviewer. It was during this time that she wrote her seminal feminist work, "Vindication." That bestseller would launch her into the public realm and turn her into an international figure at the age of 30.

Suddenly successful, and hungry as always for new experiences, Wollstonecraft next moved to Paris, where she would act as a witness to and chronicler of the French Revolution. During those heady and dangerous times, while cooler heads than hers were lost, she met and fell in love with an American, Gilbert Imlay. Her physical and emotional union with him would eventually leave her mentally broken and with an illegitimate child at the age of 35.

Through letters Jacobs has retrieved, Wollstonecraft emerges as a woman who could no more take no for an answer in love than she could from a society that was designed to keep her down. Though Imlay abandoned her, she remained obsessive about the relationship, dragging it out for several years, stalking him, making various suicide attempts and debasing herself tirelessly.

Finally, back in London, her passion wore thin and she met and began an affair with aging bachelor and philosopher William Godwin. Godwin also impregnated her, and though Wollstonecraft had as little use for marriage then as ever, she loved her domestic arrangements well enough to wish to solidify them. She married Godwin, bore his child, and through complications during the birth, died less than five months after tying the knot. As she suspected, marriage did not agree with her.

Wollstonecraft lived life on her own terms and often paid a harsh price. She was willful, intelligent, bossy, stubborn, but open-minded, original and above all determined. This biography is a vibrant record of her ideas, her times and her singular life.

Appeared in "Boy, are my arms tired!" April 2002 © Suzanne Rush 2002

One Book, One City: Los Angeles
Fahrenheit 451
Ray Bradbury
Ballantine Books (1953)

"Fahrenheit 451" begins as an unremarkable piece of writing that makes you wish you had read it in Jr. high school when it would have seemed wondrous by virtue of the "big ideas" it contains. However, half-way through, then-youthful, author Ray Bradbury's dull prose suddenly turns pleasingly lyrical and, in terms of skill and style, almost catches up to its grandiose theme.

The story takes place in a future where firemen no longer put out fires, they set them Ñ specifically, they set fires to books. The society in which this takes place is one where most people have become so deadened by the vacuous mass media television which pervades their existence, that they don't notice the absence of genuine thoughts or emotions in their lives. They are so numb that even their acts of suicide are committed absentmindedly.

The novel follows a few days in the life of one fireman Guy Montag. One day, Guy, who has thusfar led a hollow life, has an emotional epiphany when he meets the first person who actually connects with his humanity. In a life otherwise devoid of such encounters, this sets him aflame with feelings heretofore unknown. Feeling eventually sets him to thinking and it's all downhill from there for Guy.

While there are sections in the book where characters give majestic, pontificating soliloquies about the theme of book-burning which verge on Ayn Rand's literary bludgeonings in "Atlas Shrugged," there is plenty of suspense and action to offset the grandstanding. Bradbury, known for his futuristic novels is actually more adept here at rendering beautiful descriptions of nature than he is at depicting a three-dimensional futuristic world. When Montag views the destruction of his city by atomic blast, it is less compelling that the simultaneous image of him smelling the leaves and dirt in the forest from where he watches.

In some ways "Fahrenheit 451," chosen by Los Angeles Mayor Kenneth Hahn, as the first selection for this city's participation in the "One Book, One City" reading promotion, was an odd one. The book is, in many ways, a running indictment of the cavernously empty entertainments that many local residents produce on a daily basis. But it's okay, they won't have time to read the book anyway. They're too busy making "reality" shows about adulterous couples on cruiseships which are surprisingly like the stupefying television shows depicted in the book. Maybe someone did read this after all. On second thought, they probably just watched the movie.

Appeared in "Boy, are my arms tired!" June 2002 © Suzanne Rush 2002

A Memoir of No One in Particular
In which our author indulges in na•ve indiscretions, a self-aggrandizing solipsism, and an off-putting infatuation with his own bodily functions
By Daniel Harris
Basic Books

When a youthful Daniel Harris, intellectual elitist and underachiever, was planning the great literary works he would one day put forth he could not possibly have foreseen the autobiography he has produced. "A Memoir of No One in Particular" consists of equal parts fascinating exploration of human egotism, and bloody, emotional train wreck. This combination has produced a work simultaneously repellent and hard to put down.

Harris is an erudite writer who, as he tells it, seems to have spent the greater part of his adult life mired in unfulfilled potential. The intellectual life he might have had, as an academic, novelist or biographer eluded him. Instead he dissipated his literary gifts writing caustic reviews of low-brow books, cruising for one night stands, laboring in lowly jobs and reading, reading, reading. (A life much like my own.)

Written in a mocking tone, this navel-gazer is divided into chapters chronicling the most excruciatingly mundane aspects of his life, including making faces, cleaning the house and pooping. While it is clear, at times, that this is partially a parody of the glut of memoirs published during the last decade, it also appears to be an earnest attempt to finally create a distinguished tome. In this respect it fails, because as fascinating as the interior of his apartment, head or underarm might be to him, they lose their ability to captivate an outsider with alarming frequency.

Harris puts it best, himself. "When I look back at the self-mutilation that I performed in the course of a chapter in which I have dragged all of my skeletons out of my closet and stood eyeball to eyeball with the entire crew of my past selves, a comment comes to mind that Arthur Koestler made in his memoir, ÔThe Invisible Writing.' Here, he warned the autobiographer that the impulse towards sincerity easily degenerates into exhibitionism, so that all of the Ôepisodes that should be embarrassing and painful to tell are told with wallowing gusto.'"

There is a raw honesty to Harris' self-flagellating revelations about his more-than-adequately-examined life, that creates a sensation similar to the one experienced when looking into an open wound. However, any empathy this may produce is regularly mitigated by his subsequent overlong bouts of glib pomposity. Harris takes the stick out of his ass long enough to beat himself over the head with it, yet in the end, he seems too self-satisfied with this disingenuous act.

Appeared in "Boy, are my arms tired!" March 2002 © Suzanne Rush 2002

The A-List
The National Society of Film Critics
100 Essential Films
Edited by Jay Carr
Da Capo Press

It was during the early 1980s when, among a certain black-clad set of folks, the word movies was generally replaced by the word film in conversation. "Did you see the new David Lynch film?" as opposed to, "No, I saw the Terminator movie." It was a subtle acknowledgment in the nomenclature that the kinds of exploratory and issue-oriented movies made during the 60s and 70s had been replaced, in the main, by big budget, violent, special-effects encumbered, car chase-filled blockbusters. As the entertainments became fluffier the insights became more convoluted, and movie reviewers became film critics.

Call them what you like, but these amusements, that have been captured on everything from celluloid to digital video, are the most accessible and widely viewed art form of the past 100 years — next to advertising. Despite all the tripe produced during the past century, there have been a number of films that, for reasons of theme, cinematography or acting, remain notable. Many of those have been reviewed in The A List; The National Society of Film Critics 100 Essential Films, available in January 2002 from DA Capo Press.

The book is a collection of elucidating essays by the foremost commentators of the American press, many of them written expressly for this volume. Their choices, sometimes obvious, sometimes surprising, are all provocatively examined. The list includes films such as the seminal D. W. Griffith classic, "Birth of a Nation," Warren Beatty's "Bonnie and Clyde," the quirky Jane Campion film "The Piano," and the Cohen Brother's masterpiece, "Fargo." While many will not need reminding why these are great films, the eloquent discourse about less-known movies like, "A Touch of Evil," "Closely Watched Trains," "The 400 Blows" and "Pandora's Box," will send some out to the video store with a long list of new recommendations.

Though no one really needs another litany of things to do or see, this book with it's 100 essential films, is a lively read by any standard. Both for long-time cinema-lovers who just need a reminder that there is something to watch besides, "Who's Got Mail," and for those without an extensive motion picture background who need a place to start their education, "The A-List," with its delicious descriptions, is the book to help transform you from a movie-lover to a film-goer.

Appeared in "Boy, are my arms tired!" Septmber 2001 © Suzanne Rush 2002

Jonny Bowden's Shape Up!
The Eight-Week Program to Transform
Your Body, Your Health and Your Life
By Jonny Bowden, M.A., C.N.
Perseus Publishing

Reading about dieting is a national obsession second only to eating packaged, high calorie, denatured foods while sprawled inert before the TV. Ask almost anyone about losing weight and they can brandish a paperback listing the specifics of a low fat diet, all-meat program, or no carbohydrate plan. The labeling okayed by the FDA, allowing 100% sugar candy bars to call themselves "non-fat" is confusing enough. But the types of contradictory nutritional and weight loss information one gleans from the ever-increasing inventory of books on the subject, could drive any normally lazy North American to a menu designed exclusively by Frito Lay.

Since the national media can never reach a consensus on whether or not broccoli is good for you, it is no wonder they can't be counted upon to do more than lament overweight in America, before cutting to the next Sarah Lee commercial. The message that fewer calories and more exercise make one healthy and trim would have captured the forefront of the news by now if there were more corporate sponsors for exercise than for bundt cake.

Jonny Bowden, the iVillage fitness guru, cuts through the mixed-messages to provide the kind of data missing from corporate sponsored information in his book, "Jonny Bowden's Shape Up! The Eight-Week Program to Transform Your Body, Your Health and Your Life." The book is a compendium of common sense ideas, easy-to-digest science and a psychological and physical regimen.

His program is based on a few sound ideas. One, eating processed foods, whether or not they have calories, will not make you lean or healthy. Taking in fewer calories without exercising will not make your lean or healthy. Finally, using a diet plan that works for someone else will not necessarily work for you. Give up the Hollywood Miracle diet, the fruitarian plan and the food pyramid and discover the needs of your specific emotional and physical type and you will become lean and healthy, he attests.

To do this he promotes the concept of keeping a journal, starting your life plan with small, achievable goals, and learning the benefits and detriments of different foods. The book is notable for its comprehensive lists of "good" and "bad" foods, the side-effects of additives and processing, and generally competent, science-based nutritional advice.

Did you know, for instance, that "if you think you aren't eating sugar when you're eating 'health' bars, it's time to take another look at those labels." Or that "fully more than half the world's population is lactose intolerant." How about, "eating some fats may even help you to lose fat." Or, "the base of the food pyramid consists of foods that will cause many people to gain weight." And "Attention Deficit Disorder is not a Ritalin deficiency."

Even if one never followed the simple exercise program, they could not help but learn the rudiments of nutrition and forfeit every excuse they had to visit the Entennman's rack. Written in a breezy style, chock-full of vital information and good advice, Bowden has produced the only dieting book you may ever need.

Appeared in "Boy, are my arms tired!" November 2001© Suzanne Rush 2002