Life at the Bottom

By Theodore Dalrymple, 2001, mostly read by 1/12/2011

This is a collection of essays that first appeared in The City Journal.   According to the book jacket, Dr. Dalrymple is a “British psychiatrist who treats the poor in a slum hospital and a prison in England.”  Chapter titles like “Choosing to Fail” and “Do Sties Make Pigs?” might make you think that he is a heartless elitist who blames the poor for their plight.  There is certainly blame assigned in this book, but it is not only or even primarily the underclass who are blamed.  Rather than being a polemic condemning the poor, this is a dispassionate description of that which defines and perpetuates the underclass.  Dalrymple chides those politicians and academics who blame society, poverty, or class consciousness for the problems of the underclass, while refusing to consider the evidence that the underclass’s very own habits might be a major determinant of their condition.  Most of his ire is reserved for the intellectual elites whose nihilism and moral relativism has corrosively seeped down to the lowest levels of society, where it has begotten a set of behaviors that couldn’t be better designed to guarantee failure.  Disdain for education, widespread illegitimacy, glorification of thuggishness and the uncouth, all these are detailed for us. 

Dalrymple’s book doesn’t seek to offer solutions so much as to describe symptoms.  As a clinician, he believes that we must first see clearly before we can act wisely.  This book will certainly help anyone who reads it to see “Life at the Bottom” clearly.

Songs for the Missing

By Stewart O’Nan, 2008, finished 1/11/2012

First book of the year!  This is the second book by Stewart O’Nan that I’ve read.  The first was Last Night at the Lobster, which tells the story of the manager of a Red Lobster on its closing night.  I was impressed by his eye for detail, and his ability to flesh out his characters on such a small and seemingly unimportant stage.  O’Nan brings that same talent to this story.

The characters are Kim Larsen, 18 soon to depart for college; her little sister, Lindsey, 16; her parents, Fran and Ed; her boyfriend J.P., and her best friends Nina and Elise.  Kim works at the mini-mart at the Conoco station with Nina, and can’t wait to get away from small town Kingsville, Pennsylvania, and go away to college.  She hangs out with her friends down by the river.  Here O’Nan sets the stage:  “July, 2005.  It was the summer of her Chevette, of J.P. and letting her hair grow.  The last summer, the best summer, the summer they’d dreamed of since eighth grade, the high and pride of being seniors lingering, an extension of their best year.”  Then, three weeks before she was to leave for college, Kim goes missing.

What follows is an exploration of the lives of those left behind: her parents , her friends , her sister.  As a dad, I’ve often wondered how I’d manage to survive if it happened to me.  This book is a sensitive, caring look at the private lives of those who are dealing with such an unthinkable tragedy.  Someone once said that the purpose of fiction is to teach us empathy.  This book achieves its purpose.