Talk Cocktail

The Philadelphia Chromosome

Someday, perhaps 20 or 30 years from now, or maybe even sooner, we will look back at the way we treat most cancers today and be shocked at the barbarism of it all. The surgery, the killer chemicals of chemo, all will be looked at the way we view the leaching of the middle ages. At the forefront of this transition is a discovery made in 1959. A chromosomal mutation dubbed the Philadelphia Chromosome, that caused a deadly form of leukemia. Ultimately a drug would be developed that stopped the cancer at it’s source. Science journalist Jessica Wapner has written The Philadelphia Chromosome: A Mutant Gene and the Quest to Cure Cancer at the Genetic Level.  It is both the story of 50 years of the march of science on cancer and also a mystery thriller that lifts the veil on how drugs get developed and make it to the marketplace. My conversation with Jessica Wapner:

How Nonotechnology Will Change Civilization

We face a vast array of global problems. Not the least of which is our environment and the way in which the expanding western industrial model of abundance, seems certain to geometrically grow these problems.

Many think that somewhere, in some abstract way, technology will help of solve these problems. But perhaps the same industrial system that created the problems, is not the place to start looking for solutions. In short, it seems we can’t fix the problems of industrial technology with the same tools that created them.

That’s where the work of K. Eric Drexler comes in. In his new book Radical Abundance: How a Revolution in Nanotechnology Will Change Civilization, he shows us how the world of nanotechnology and Atomic Precise Manufacturing may hold the answers.
My conversation with K. Eric Drexler:

The Last Men on Top

On the surface, it seems that the men of Mad Men have it all. Great jobs, lots of money, smart attractives wives and families, even more attractive mistresses and, as long as the paychecks keep coming, unlimited freedom. But is it possible these men represented the one percent of their day? And that the paradigm and expectations they set up, men with power and money, created a set of responsibilities that made it hard for other men to live up to? And how did this play out against the rising tide of 60’s feminism? Was the landscape for men portrayed by Matthew Weiner and Richard Yates and Cheever and Updike, one that, in the long run, had a very negative impact on the men of the Greatest Generation? These are just some of the questions and ideas taken up by author and cultural seer Susan Jacoby. The author of The Age of American Unreason, Freethinkers as well as books about Alger Hiss and Robert Ingersoll, she has now written a new ebook entitled The Last Men on Top. My conversation with Susan Jacoby:

The Interestings

How many of us think about what you wanted to be as a child? A time when the world was filled with possibility. When your parents told you that you could do or be anything. When you would sit with your friends for hours, talking about what kind of glamours life you were going to have. Sometimes those youthful ambitions would come to define us for the rest of our lives, both in terms of what we achieved and what we didn't achieve. I knew a woman once who was a world renowned ballerina. I once asked her how she achieved that. She said she just did what every little girl does, she dressed up, and got her mom to take her to ballet classes; except , she said, that she never stopped going. How much of her success was family, luck or talent? Who knows? These are just some of the ideas inside Meg Wolitzer sweeping new novel The Interestings. The story of six teenagers coming of age in the 70’s and the 40 years that would follow. My conversation with Meg Wolitzer:

If you are caught or captured the secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions.....

We all grew up with our own impressions of what covert actions were all about. John le Carre talked about the moral twilight in which these activities operated. But never has that line between military, espionage and covert actions been more blurred than it is today. From 9/11 to the bin Laden raid, the CIA has been front and center as the agency of first resort, to carry out difficult and controversial missions. Now Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Mark Mazzetti lays bear much of this activity in The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth.My conversation with Mark Mazzetti:

Bunker Hill

For the past several week all eyes have been on Boston. In some ways it’s a good reminder of the important role that city has played in our nation's history. Boston is the fulcrum from which the revolution was launched. Now, bestselling author Nathaniel Philbrick, author of In The Heart of the Sea and Mayflower, tells the story of Bunker Hill: A City, a Siege, a Revolution. My conversation with Nathaniel Philbrick:

Humanity Beyond Our Differences

Suppose we found out that most of what we know about history and what shapes it, is wrong. That the traditional manichean world view, that history only marched forward on the feet of soldiers, is not the whole story. In fact we didn’t get to our globalized, 21st century world via the battlefield, but through cooperation and a sense of our shared humanity. This is the view of distinguished historian David Cannadine, as laid out in his new work, The Undivided Past: Humanity Beyond Our Differences. My conversation with David Cannadine:

Reimagining American Influence in a New Middle East

There is an old saying that says that if the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to treat every problem as if it is a nail. So too for American policy in the Arab world. If every problem looks like an existential threat, then perhaps it’s because we often see the military as the only tool we have. In fact, as Bill Clinton famously said, “it’s the economy stupid.” Perhaps if we found new ways to deal with the Middle East in terms of its economics, its desire for goods, jobs for the 60% of it’s population under 30, we’d have a better outcome. Few know the region better than two time Pulitzer Prize winning journalist David Rohde. He lays out his ideas in Beyond War: Reimagining American Influence in a New Middle East. My conversation with David Rohde:

Manhunt

The events of Sept. 11, 2001, would set off the ten year search for Osama bin Laden. That manhunt would end exactly two years ago today, on May 1st, 2011. In between, was one of the greatest detective stories of our time.

CNN’s national security analyst Peter Bergen, through his exhaustive research, unprecedented interviews with key players, and exclusive access to the Abbottabad compound in which bin Laden lived his final years, has now been able to tell the full story. In fact, Bergen was the only outsider to tour the compound before it was destroyed by the Pakistani military. Considered the definitive account of the hunt for bin Laden, his book Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden from 9/11 to Abbottabad, serves as the basis for the documentary of the same name, which debuts tonight on HBO.

My conversation with Peter Bergen:

Life After Prison

One of the consequences of the vast numbers of men we incarcerate in America is that over 700,000 people each year are being released from prisons. Many have served long sentences and are woefully unprepared to integrate back into society. Especially a society that has little willingness to receive them.

As changes in society come more rapidly, its harder and harder for these individuals to adjust. The result is often increased rates of recidivism, and a revolving door into the prison/industrial complex.

Sabine Heinlein has taken both a micro and macro look the public policy consequences of this behavior. Her new book is Among Murderers: Life after Prison

My conversation with Sabine Heinlein:

One Photo. Endless Possibility.

When we look at a photograph or a piece of art there are usually two imaginations at work. The artist or photographer, and the viewer whose interpretation gives the work life, energy and meaning. Author and filmmaker Marisa Silver has taken a single, iconic photograph, the “Migrant Mother” by Dorothea Lange, as her inspiration for her own story and her own reinterpretation. It now allows all of us, to bring our own imagination and understanding to her novel, Mary Coin My conversation with Marisa Silver:

The Rebirth of a Great American School System

There is an apocryphal story about the state of education, which tells the tale of a man who falls asleep, ala Rip Van Winkle, 100 years ago. He wakes up today and is totally disoriented. Everything is new and different. Transportation, technology, design, fashion, entertainment....then he stumbles into a school, into a 21st century classroom and suddenly he feels calm, at home....because, well because almost nothing has changed.

Some would argue that this is part of the problem of education today. Others would argue for the value of those fundamentals; that we’ve long had many of the right ideas, but that we just needed to execute them
better.

This is where we join the conversation with UC Berkley Professor and education expert, David Kirp and his latest work Improbable Scholars: The Rebirth of a Great American School System and a Strategy for America's Schools

My conversation with David Kirp:

Death on the Border

In the world of extreme right wing rhetoric, particularly on the subject of immigration, it often seems that the practitioners are always upping the ante in order to get attention. Listen to any hour of talk radio and you get the idea. However, what happens when that rhetoric gets out of control. When the listeners, particularly those that are scared, marginalized or worse yet, psychotic, become easy pray to act on that rhetoric and take matters into their own hands?

Over the years we’ve seen many examples of this, and unfortunately a lot of them, for various reasons, seem to take place in Arizona.

Dave Neiwert, the founding editor of the blog Crooks and Liars, takes us inside one such group of extremists in And Hell Followed With Her: Crossing the Dark Side of the American Border For them, killing women and children in cold blood is just the start.

My conversation with Dave Neiwert:

We are all citizens of Hollywood

Wherever we live, we all, to some extent live in Hollywood. We are shaped and influenced by its messages, its ideas and by connection, to it’s people. Perhaps by having a better understanding of the people that populate and drive that community, we might better understand our culture.

A good place to start that process is a new novel by Matthew Specktor entitled American Dream Machine

My conversation with Matthew Specktor:

Overcoming Addiction

Back in 2008, David Sheff wrote a memoir that has become became a landmark in our understanding of addiction. Beautiful Boy was his powerful and personal story of the battle he fought alongside his son Nic, who was addicted to alcohol and various drugs.

The book catapulted David Sheff into becoming one of the country's most prominent and sane voices on addiction — not as a doctor, an addict or an academic, but as a father with real world experience. Now he takes a broader view of what we, as a society, are doing right and wrong in dealing with the still growing rates of addiction in this country.  His new book is Clean: Overcoming Addiction and Ending America's Greatest Tragedy.

My conversation with David Sheff

The Age of the Image

Every hour, 72 more hours of video are uploaded onto Youtube. The moving image has become the literature of our time. Perhaps not since the development of moveable type has the context of our world and our understanding of it, changed so dramatically.

But what do we really know and understand about the “grammar” and the structure of visual communication?  How are stories and our appreciation of them, different when we watch them, as opposed to reading them?

How will this new realm of visual literacy shape our children and how they see and set out to change the world?

These are some of the issues examined by Stephen Apkon, the Founder and Executive Director of The Jacob Burns Film Center, in his book The Age of the Image: Redefining Literacy in a World of Screens;

My conversation with Stephen Apkon:

The Long Walk

Some of our soldiers have come back from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan missing arms and legs. We’ve heard about the phantom pain that often accompanies those losses. The feeling of pain in a limb that is no longer there. In many ways the same is true for mental anguish. For the mind also feels pain. Where once normal life occupied a space, now for many who have long since left the war zone, the psychological pain is all consuming and fills that once peaceful space. This is part of the story of Brian Castner. Brian Castner served three tours of duty in the Middle East, two of them in Iraq as the head of the Explosive Ordinance Disposal Unit. He’s written about his difficult experiences returning home, in his book The Long Walk: A Story of War and the Life That Follows My Conversation with Brian Castner:

Children Having Children

We baby boomers are aging. With all the talk about health care and retirement and 401k's and endless mail from the AARP, the one subject that seems to get skipped, is what it will be like being a grandparent.

We’ve spent so many years doting on and protecting and encouraging our own children, we almost forget that we get to do it again, sort of, with our grandkids.

Fortunately for those of us that do forget, we have Anne Lamott to remind us. Always a powerful and soothing voice for her generation, Anne Lamott, in her new book Some Assembly Required: A Journal of My Son's First Son, takes us on the new and unexpected chapter in her life, her own grandmotherhood.

My conversation with Anne Lamott:

The Central Park Five

1989 New York was a time in which social systems were breaking down. The crime rate was peaking, crack was a serious epidemic, racial animus was strong and it was safer for black and latino teenagers to hang out in Central Park, than to hang out on the mean streets of their own neighborhoods. Amidst this atmosphere the body of a white woman was found in the park; beaten, raped and left for dead. This is the backdrop for what would become one of New York and the country's most infamous crimes, what was dubbed at the time as the Central Park jogger. Sarah Burns has written The Central Park Five: The Untold Story Behind One of New York City's Most Infamous Crimes. Tonight her documentary, produced with her father Ken Burn, airs on PBS. My conversation with Sarah Burns, last April:

Jacob Barnett explains it all to us.

One of the all too many problems with education today, is its relentless focus on what kids can’t do, as opposed to what they do well. This is particularly profound when it come to children with special needs. If we need evidence of this, we need look no further than the story of Kristine Barnett and her son Jacob. At age two experts said Jacob would never be able to tie his shoes. Today at 14 he’s pursuing a PhD in physics. Unfortunately, changing the system is not enough. It takes a mother deeply committed, not only to her son, but to turning the old paradigms on their head, and not caring whose proverbial apple cart she turns over. She tells her story and Jacob’s story in The Spark: A Mother's Story of Nurturing Genius My conversation with Kristine Barnett:

What 4th Graders Teach Us About World Peace

Amidst all the talk about the importance of education, and all the endless debates about public policy, we often forget that at the heart of the debate, is what it means to be a teacher and the awesome power and responsibility that comes with that job.

Imagine a teacher who does not lecture, but leads; who teaches world peace by studying war; who respects students enough to instill in them the confidence to make the world anew...even while still in the 4th grade.

This has been the work of John Hunter. John is a teacher and musician and the inventor of the World Peace Game. He is the star of the new documentary and author of the new book World Peace and Other 4th-Grade Achievements

My conversation with John Hunter:

Music Piracy and the Remaking of American Copyright

Today the digital revolution has ushered in a whole new set of concerns with respect to piracy, copying and the very definition of who owns certain intellectual property. In fact, music copying and piracy is as old as recorded music itself.   Moreover today, it’s the desire to share, that has created the world of social media, the very existence of which grows from this idea of sharing and repurposing copyrighted material.

If we understand this, if our legislators understand this, then perhaps we can undertake to redefine modern copyright and envision useful legislation and protection for the 21st Century.

Alex Sayf Cummings, at Georgia Sate University, has been looking at this issues and examines its past, present and future in Democracy of Sound: Music Piracy and the Remaking of American Copyright in the Twentieth Century.

My conversation with Alex Sayf Cummings:

Murder, Money and Mystery in China

In November of 2011, a British businessman by the name of Neil Heywood was found dead in a hotel room in China. The reverberations of that death would reveal both deep and systemic corruption as well as surprising layers of conflict within the Chinese Communist Party. It’s a human story of lust and greed, that also gives us some unique insights into a society and a political system, often cloaked in enigma and mystery. Chinese writer, journalist and translator Wenguang Huang, in his book A Death in the Lucky Holiday Hotel: Murder, Money, and an Epic Power Struggle in China, takes us deep inside a system we hardly understand, but one that still shapes our world and in turn, our lives. My conversation with Wenguang Huang:

Between Man and Beast

Just as the politics our our time, often makes it difficult for science to find its way, so too was this the case in Victorian times. No where is this more in evidence than in the adventurers of a young man who would emerge from the jungles of Africa with evidence of great mysteries. Mysteries that would be co opted by one of the greatest scientific debates of the time; the arguments about evolution. This the the story that former Washington Post reporter Monte Reel lays out in Between Man and Beast: An Unlikely Explorer, the Evolution Debates, and the African Adventure that Took the Victorian World by Storm. My conversation with Monte Reel:

Secrets and Lies

The great French novelist Andre Malraux once wrote that “man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides.” Certainly the secrets we all keep as individuals and as families place a heavy burden on us. Too often we think we are keeping secrets, when all we really are doing is hiding truth them from ourselves.

For a long time this was Michael Hainey story, as he knew that someday he had to find out what really happened with respect to his fathers death. He was only six at the time, by years later he would know that something was not right about what he had been told. As he approached his fathers age, when he died, he would work hard to uncover that secret and in so doing free himself, his mother and his brother.He lays out his story in this memoir After Visiting Friends: A Son's Story.

My conversation with Michael Hainey:

WILD

Back in the 1940’s theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wrote the serenity prayer. You all know it. It tells us to accept those things that we can’t change and the courage to change those we can and the wisdom to know the difference. Over the years it’s been adopted by AA and various other groups. But it might also be the coda for Cheryl Strayed fantastically successful book Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail. The story of her trek on the Pacific Crest Trail, it’s also the story of coming of age and Cheryl's journey out of her own heart of darkness. My conversation with Cheryl Strayed:

Creative Destruction for Dictators

We are always talking about how some area of our lives has been changed by creative destruction. We know that it’s widespread and impactful. In fact, even dictators today have felt the results of this creative destruction. It’s much harder and more complex to be a dictator today. Dictatorships have had to become more sophisticated and savvy. Brutal repression has been largely replaced with subtle coercion. But at the same time, the individuals challenging dictatorships have also evolved. And while popular movements may seem spontaneous and romantic, they are in reality very strategic and organized, sometimes for years before we pay any attention. Journalist William Dobson, foreign affairs editor of Slate and a former editor at Foreign Affairs, Newsweek International and Foreign Policy, has been looking deeply into these changes. He argues in his book The Dictator's Learning Curve: Inside the Global Battle for Democracy, that ultimately dictators cannot learn or adapt as quickly as the forces that oppose them. My conversation with William J. Dobson:

Secrets of Happy Families

Families are a little like snowflakes. No two are exactly alike. That’s why it often seems so ridiculous that so many people think they know what is best for families. The strict structure of the Chinese, the laissez faire of the French, the coolness of the British...all work and all don’t. It seems no one really has the magic formula. Therefore, maybe a little common sense is a good idea.

That's what best selling author Bruce Feiler set out to discover. He set out on a three-year journey to find the smartest ideas, cutting-edge research, and novel solutions to make his family happier. Instead of the usual psychologists and family “experts,” he sought out the most creative minds from Silicon Valley to top negotiators at Harvard. Feiler then tested these ideas with his own wife and kids and writes about it in The Secrets of Happy Families: Improve Your Mornings, Rethink Family Dinner, Fight Smarter, Go Out and Play, and Much More.

My conversation with Bruce Feiler:

Truth, Lies and The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards

We’ve talked often about the obligations and responsibilities of memoir and the way in which our memory, more than our truth, shapes our past. Imagine if fiction took on this confusion. If even in the context of fiction, we would lose sight of the truth, in favor of memory, experience and peer pressure. That's some of the backdrop for a new novel,  The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards, by Kristopher Jansma. My conversation with Kristopher Jansma:

What makes Buzz?

Why do certain products and ideas become so popular? Why are some stories and rumors more infectious than others, and what makes some online content go viral?

These are just a few of the questions that Wharton marketing professor Jonah Berger takes up in his new book Contagious: Why Things Catch On.

Berger has spent 10 years studying social influence and according to Berger, the key to making things really popular happens long before it’s discussed at the water cooler, or “liked” online. It starts with the message.

My conversation with Jonah Berger:

Dollars & Sex

The song says "money can’t buy me love." But we know that’s not really true. The fact is, the same market forces that drive our economy, also drive our search for sex and love. Issues like abundance, scarcity, the price of commodities...like beer, all contribute to who we choose and the success and failure of those relationships.

In 2008 Marina Adshade launched an undergraduate course, at the University of British Columbia, titled Economics of Sex and Love, which invited her students to approach questions of sex and love through an economist's lens. The class was an immediate hit with students and, by the time the first term started, had generated international media attention. Now the book, Dollars and Sex.


My conversation with Marina Adshade:

Creative Intelligence

No one questions that we are going through a period of dramatic change. The world, the nature of work and relationships are changing faster than at any other time in human history. Succeeding and managing in this environment, will require a degree of nimbleness and creativity in order to sustain or create any economic value.

But how creative are we, and do the old paradigms of education, work and leisure allow us to foster and bring out that creativity? Bruce Nussbaum, a Professor of Innovation and Design at Parsons The New School of Design in New York City, and a former Managing Editor at BusinessWeek thinks we have to reset our approach to creativity. He outlines it in Creative Intelligence: Harnessing the Power to Create, Connect, and Inspire.

My conversation with Bruce Nussbaum:

Why do we always get it wrong?

Forty plus years ago, in Vietnam, we saw how the best and the brightest could ignore history, ignore truths and facts and conduct one of our nation's most disastrous wars. Ten years ago this month, we saw how lies, inept personnel and poor and corrupt execution destroyed any hope of success in Iraq. These decisions still plague us today. Four years ago, back into 2009, we thought that the Obama administration was fighting "The Good War," when it decided to surge US troops and civilians in Afghanistan. Yet again, we ignored history, didn’t send the best personnel, engaged in bureaucratic infighting and thought money could buy our way out. It did not. Why do we keep making these same mistakes? Is it that the fault is not in stars, but in ourselves? These are some of the issues examined by esteemed and award winning journalist Rajiv Chandrasekaran in his book Little America: The War Within the War for Afghanistan. My conversation with Rajiv Chandrasekaran:

The Fog of 10 Years of War

All the talk about drones lately seems to miss the larger point. What compels us, what disturbs us, is the sanitized way in which we conduct warfare today. The disconnect from death, violence and the human suffering that is war.

Kurtz understood war by journeying into its Heart of Darkness. Today, it’s from 30,000 feet. It’s a different view of war. It’s also a metaphor for how we as Americans have witnessed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In neat, pre-packaged sound bites. Disconnected from combat, body counts and the horror.

Now, ten years after the start of these wars, were beginning to hear the real stories of what went on, from the men and women who were there.

Matt Gallagher and Roy Scranton, two veterans of the wars, have written for and edited a new collection of stories entitled Fire and Forget: Short Stories from the Long War.

My conversation with Roy Scranton and Matt Gallagher:

Wall Street, Gambling and Baseball

What do you do if you are a veteran Wall Street trader who worked for Lehman Bros. when the collapse came?  To make matters even worse you were struck down by an ambulance and had to go through months of recovery.  Then when you finally returned to work, you were fired. What you might do is turn to a new job in the 380 billion dollar industry that can return profits even bigger than Wall Street....sports gambling.  That's what Joe Peta did, but with difference. He used his skills as a Wall Street trader to bring discipline and metrics to sports betting. Riffing off the work of Bill James and Nate Silver, he would turn his dark days into a 41% profit and in the process, shares his story in Trading Bases: A Story About Wall Street, Gambling, and Baseball. My conversation with Joe Peta:

The Myth of Christian Martyrdom

We live in a culture where victimhood is too often embraced. Usually, because we seem to lack internal motivation, we look to it to galvanize our actions. Buy why is this culture of victimhood so pervasive now?

Perhaps it springs from the early Christian myth of martyrdom, and the degree to which that Christian mythology and those who subscribe to it, are trying to shape our politics and our culture.  This is the heart of a provocative new book, The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom,by Notre Dame Professor Candida Moss.

My conversation with Candida Moss:

Big Data

We know that companies like Amazon have vast amounts of data on our purchases and that they use it in order to recommend other products to us; just as Netflix can recommend our movies. But imagine aggregating millions of pieces of medical data, all with their genomic information, so that our generic profile can, with a high degree of probability, tell us what diseases we might get and how to treat them.    Think about how Google was able to head off a worldwide flu pandemic by aggregating vast amount of search data about flu. This is the kind of data that can tell when we will be sick, even before we know it; or when our car will need service, even before it breaks down. Or, as in the movie Minority Report, data that can predict who will be a criminal, even before the crime is committed. These are just a few of thing we should be thinking about with respect to what’s referred to today as big data. Ken Cukier is the data editor of the Economist and takes a look at these issues in Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think. My conversation with Ken Cukier:

Baseball as a Road to God?

This past week saw the pageantry of religion in the selection of a new Pope. Next month we will experience a different kind of pageantry, as the baseball season opens and for many it will be a kind of religious experience in its own right.

Long the national pastime, baseball has a special place in the pantheon of sports and entertainment. But with all of the competition these days, does baseball still have the same kind of appeal? Has it’s superstitions, streaks, luck, and it’s sense of “you gotta believe," been flattened by metrics? Has William James been replaced by Bill James, and has the inspiration fostered by a father and son praying at the altar of driveway catch, given way to Nate Silver and Billy Bean?

This is part of the story told by controversial NYU President John Sexton in Baseball as a Road to God: Seeing Beyond the Game. A book based on his wildly popular class at NYU.

My conversation with John Sexton:

Song Without Words

Remember, as a kid, playing the old game of telephone? Someone says something, and passes it on. After it goes through 5, 6 or more people, it often comes out very different on the other end. Well imagine if everything you heard had to go through that kind of process.

That’s just part of what Gerald Shea went though; dealing with partial deafness since he was six. He still managed to sing, play football and get through Andover, Yale and Columbia Law.

Gerald Shea has written about his experience in Song Without Words: Discovering My Deafness Halfway through Life.

My conversation with Gerald Shea:

Raising Oenophilia

Often we associate writers with a particular place and their unique abilities to capture the essence of that place. Steinbeck with Monterey and Salinas, Frances May with Tuscany, Pete Hamil with New York, and James Conaway with the Napa Valley. The author of two international bestsellers, about the Valley, Napa: The Story of an American Eden and The Far Side of Eden, now turns to fiction to tell a story of wine, land and good & evil. My conversation with Jim Conaway about Nose: A Novel: