reading

I finished May Sarton's "At Seventy" a while back. It was a book my mom found somewhere and left at our house one year. She was an omnivorous reading and was always picking up random books. Before starting this book I'd never heard of May Sarton, so I didn't start with any preconcieved picture of her. This journal starts on her 70th birthday and ends a year later.

Her journal was easy to read and felt real, not like a liary where everything has been polished up. As I read, I realized how much I resemble a 70 year old lesbian. She wrote a lot about the birds at the feeders, keeping squirrels from eating all the seeds in the feeders, what she was going to plant in her garden (flowers for her), the weather, the fact she really wasn't accomplishing all she thought she should, and how many letters she needed to write. Although her volume of letters is drastically different than mine, there were some days she mentioned writing 24 letters in one day!

In all it was nice to read about a very normal life at 70. She was still living in her house, by herself. She did need a bit of help to stay caught up on the house and garden, but she was doing the bulk of the mundane functions of keeping house. She was still very active, writing travelling, and giving readings. Even though some of her friends were dying, she had other friends considerably older than her who were still vital and active.

20. May Sarton "At Seventy: A Journal"

21. Asimov's May/June 2020

reading

I just finished Alex Rubens' 8-Bit Apocalypse. It is a book with a split personality, although the author doesn't indicate that's the intention. I'm going to talk about the two halves independently because the difference is stark.

The first 150 pages covers the history of Atari and the creation of Missile Command. I'm not sure I've ever read a more poorly written collection of english letters.

I think it would be about the same if I read a couple of wiki articles about New York, then tried to fill 150 pages talking about a theory of how New Yorker's felt after 9/11. Rubens writes about the '80's and the feelings and motivations of people living in the '80's, but the '80's he describes takes place on a different Earth than the one I lived through. He refers to the Cold War but doesn't seem to understand that how people felt in 1950 was completely different from people coming of age in the '80's. He attributes motivations to the people of the '80's which those people would probably find completely alien. Part of this is because, although he tries, the author can't seem to wrap his head around a time without the Internet and without smartphones. He seems to think that Americans desired 24 hours news in 1980, completely missing the point that most didn't bother to stay up for the 11pm news and those who did only wanted it to get over so they could see the monolog on The Late Show. And as for what the people at Atari smoked and drank at their office parties, dude, that wasn't that unusual at that time.

The other problem with this part of the book is that it is repetitive, wandering back over the same themes and the same few scant facts over and over again. The story of the making of Missile Command is an interesting one. It could be well told in probably 20 pages and it would be compelling. But this wanders this way and that, keeps overstating the author's grand theory and taking away from a good story. I'm sure many people who have worked in startups will recognize bits of the story, I know I certainly did. The things that Rubens thinks unique to Atari and this story really are just fairly common in startup culture. Guy works himself to a frazzle in a startup where everyone is working themselves to frazzle, does amazing things, believes in what he's doing, but gets a bit messed up and burnt out in the process. Derien asked me if the guy had a major breakdown. I answered, "No, the usual startup stuff. No big deal." My cynicism doesn't mean it's not a good story. I think it could be a great story if it was written by a good writer.

The second portion of the book folds in a couple of distinct stories. The writing is much more linear, much less repetitive, and is a considerably better written book. It's not great, but at least you aren't in a dungeon where all doors lead back into the same rooms. Most of this section tells the story of the current high score champion's history with the game. After that there is a side story about a "who's the real champion" drama. Then we wander into the creation of Tempest (so we jump from the early 2000's back to the 1980's for a chapter) and the history of Atari's implosion. Then we are back to a bit of meta-wank. Then there is a chapter about a different game altogether, this one modern, which the author feels echos the same spirit of Missile Command's lesson. Then we conclude with a bit more meta-wank.

Overall, the second half may wander all over the place, but it does feel like the author at least has material to write about and knows what he's talking about. Well, mostly. There are some really bonehead statements that any editor or first reader should have called out. Easy stuff. He lines the fear of North Korea up as a parallel to the Cold War fear of the USSR in the '80's and states, "In the second decade of the twenty-first century, this feeling returned, but with a new and more powerful enemy: North Korea". Wait, North Korea more powerful than the USSR?! Uh, no. Next paragraph down says the Korean War ended in 1953, but if you're trying to bring out the motivations of North Korean, it's kind of important that the Korean War didn't end; hostilities ceased, but there is still a war on.

So yeah, don't read this book. Why don't you just go play a video game instead.

22. Alex Rubens 8-Bit Apocalypse