"Bad Blood" by John Carreyrou

Bad Blood traces the infamous story of Elizabeth Holmes and her blood-testing company, Theranos. By now, almost everyone knows at least the basics: young Holmes' superstar rise; her ability to raise millions from prominent investors; her company's utter failure to deliver on any of its promises--and the fraud in which she and the company engaged to hide their failings.

Carreyrou is a reporter who was essential in bringing to light the company's fraud, and Bad Blood faithfully does its journalistic duty. Carreyrou recounts the endless string of employees who were hired full of enthusiasm only to be fired once they voiced concerns about the company's lies. Carreyrou recounts the endless string of enthusiastic investors who were taken in by Holmes' charisma and a fear of missing out on the next tech giant. Carreyrou does all of this recounting well, with precision and detail, though there's so many people covered it's impossible to remember more than a couple clearly.

Still, the book was a disappointment, primarily because Carreyrou assumes the role of a traditional reporter, and the novel is written simply as an incredibly long newspaper article. There's detail and accuracy, but there's no feeling or analysis or depth. 

Most startlingly, we learn almost nothing about Holmes herself. Sure, she understandably refused to grant an interview, but you'd think there'd be some attempt to plumb her intentions, thought-process and motivations. What drove her? Did she intentionally and knowingly lie, or did she truly believe her own hype? Carreyrou notes a number of times that she wanted to emulate tech icons like Steve Jobs, but that's just a statement--not any real understanding. Furthermore, while we're repeatedly told how charismatic Holmes is, we get little real evidence for it or a feel for her personality. She persuaded millionaires and top-level government officials, but how?

We also get only a surface-level understanding of the cultural processes that allowed Holmes and Theranos to get as far as they did. Carreyrou notes two important phenomenon:

1. After the success of companies like Apple and Facebook, many investors had intense FOMO and were almost more afraid of missing out on the next big success than losing money.
2. Investors were eager to see success in someone other than a white man, and were overly willing to embrace a story of a young woman's meteoric rise.

Again, while Carreyrou acknowledges these factors, he gives them little discussion or depth. Consider, for example, why #2 is true--it's far easier to latch on to an exceptional story (a female Steve Jobs!) than consider the systemic issues that made icons on white men--but not women or people of color. But this is never discussed.

Or, even deeper, consider the longstanding myth in American society, the one that serves as the bedrock for the American Dream: if you believe it, you can achieve it. It's been the line behind motivational posters, Instagram memes, and self-help nonsense books like The Secret. If we believe this myth--and there's a lot to suggest many people in America do believe this myth--then everything Holmes did was justified. She didn't accept "no" for an answer. She believed she could solve her company's problems by striving ahead, undaunted. She had thought of an idea, and thus the idea was possible--it just required grit and effort. It's no surprise that such an attitude inherently leads to self-delusion, and it's not hard for self-delusion to justify fraud. 

But, instead, despite some acknowledgment of the culture in which Holmes and Theranos operated, Carreyrou treats Holmes as an individual fraudster, not a natural result of her environment. I don't mean to excuse Holmes misdoings, which are many, but rather to emphasize that no one succeeds like this in a vacuum.

I understand that Carreyrou is not an anthropologist or cultural historian. Still, it seems a waste to tell a story like this without an in-depth probing or why and how it happened. 

2022: Year in Review

Another year where I'm pleased with my reading! I completed 36 books, though I didn't write about most of them. In the fall, I began a self-directed "independent study" on Kentucky writers. I've taught in the state for over a a decade, and yet I know little about the area's literature or history. Since my students live close to Cincinnati, they're in many ways Cincinnati suburbanites, but there are still many historically "Kentucky" elements that shape their identities, whether its the preponderance of fishermen and hunters or a rural conservatism. I suppose my entre into Kentucky writing is meant to probe the area and my students' lives, coming to some sort of better understanding of both. I'm also hoping, eventually, to translate my readings into some sort of unit for my students. 

Fortunately I began my Kentucky exploration with Wendall Berry's fantastic The World-Ending Fire, much of which I listened to via Nick Offerman's appropriately plainspoken audiobook narration. I followed with novels, short stories, essays, and poems. Some day I'll put it all together. I did mark the Kentucky authors below (eight altogether). 

I found Cloud Cuckoo Land immensely enjoyable. I also really liked Nightbitch, which captures a mother's identity after the birth of a child (though I could empathize with the narrator, I was also able to feel a bit smug now that I'm past the intensity of the baby/toddler years). Other good contenders: The Right to Sex (I need to read more essay collections), Groundskeeping (another KY writer!), Lost Daughter (love the film).

1. Afterparties by Anthony Veasna So
2. Problems by Jade Sharma
3. The Natural Man by Ed McClanahan [KY]
4. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
5. The Right to Sex by Amia Srinivasan
6. Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
7. Intimacies by Katie Kitamura
8. Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
9. Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
10. Mouth to Mouth by Antoine Wilson
11. Passing by Nella Larsen
12. Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
13. Love and Other Thought Experiments by Sophie Ward
14. The Life of the Mind by Christine Smallwood
15. Groundskeeping by Lee Cole [KY]
16. The Candy House by Jennifer Egan
17. The Idiot by Elif Batuman
18. In Persuasion Nation by George Saunders
19. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
20. Lost Daughter by Elena Ferrante
21. The Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead
22. All My Rage by Sabaa Tahir
23. The Copenhagen Trilogy by Tove Ditlevsen
24. Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder
25. Matrix by Lauren Groff
26. World-Ending Fire by Wendell Berry [KY]
27. Midnight Magic by Bobbie Ann Mason [KY]
28. Think Like a Freak by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner
29. The Birds of Opulence by Crystal Wilkinson [KY]
30. Kentucky Straight by Chris Offut [KY]
31. Liberation Day by George Saunders
32. The Hurting Kind by Ada Limon [KY]
33. The Truth about White Lies by Olivia A. Cole [KY]
34. Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout
35. Constructing a Nervous System by Margo Jefferson
36. Bad Blood by John Carreyrou

Other stats: fifteen male writers, twenty-one female; ten books by writers of color. Five short story collections, five nonfiction. Six books published before 2000. Welcome 2023.

"Oh William!" by Elizabeth Strout

I was recently sick--far more than I usually get--and I had to take about a week and a half off from my normal physical routines (rock climbing and a twice-a-week weight-lifting class). When I finally resumed, I was surprised (even though I shouldn't have been) at how sore I was. In just a short period of time, my body somehow lost its conditioning.

I've written about this many times before, but it's funny how my mind does the same with writing. When I take even a little time off (and usually it's a lot of time, not a little), I feel like I lose all skill and eloquence. I fear I've become dull and unable to write. So here's me attempting to resist the pull of inaction. 

Oh William! marked a break in my "unit" on Kentucky writers. It's also my third Elizabeth Strout book, though I only recalled Olive Kitteridge (which makes sense given that I gave a withering review to The Burgess Boys). What I remember most about Olive Kitteridge is the voice Strout gave to her characters--one that was unique and clearly defined.

The same is true--and is, in fact, the hallmark--of Oh William!, in which the voice given to the protagonist and narrator, Lucy Barton, is what makes the novel. On its own, the story isn't particularly interesting. Lucy's second husband has recently passed, and she has a complicated but amicable relationship with her first husband, William, with whom she has two adult daughters. William is in disarray after his third wife leaves him, and he unexpectedly learns that his late mother had a child (unbeknownst to William) with her first husband. Lucy joins William on a trip to Maine to learn about this half-sister.

Again, none of this should be particularly interesting, but somehow Lucy, with all her faults and insecurities, is a fascinating character. Oh William! is a sequel of sorts to My Name is Lucy Barton, which details Lucy's upbringing in an abusive home. Lucy references that book and her traumatic upbringing a number of times throughout Oh William!. I think it would be easier to long for the first novel (which I haven't read) and its more sordid tale, but somehow I didn't. Instead, I was engaged with Lucy's attempts to understand her ex-husband, and her attempts to understand her strengths and faults. As she notes, she's a rare success story as a woman who escaped an awful childhood and became a famous novelist, but Lucy hasn't shed the fear and anxiety of her childhood. She still feels invisible and often becomes unreasonably frightened. She realizes that a large part of why she married William was because he exuded the strength and confidence that she lacked. She admires William, but in doing so, she also makes excuses for him (notably from his many affairs). Part of the novel's trajectory is Lucy coming to terms more honestly with William's strengths and weaknesses.

Late in the novel, William tells Lucy that what drew him to her was her joy--a particularly unexpected joy given where she came from. Despite Lucy's fears and anxieties, her joy also permeates the book: her adoration for her children; her care for William and her second husband; her appreciation for the small details in her life. 

Though I wish I'd read My Name is Lucy Barton first, I'm not entirely sure I want to go back and read it now. I prefer to see Lucy not as a battered youth but as an adult woman who has managed to get through--not unscathed, but not destroyed.

"Matrix" by Lauren Groff

Matrix is an odd book stylistically, even though its material seems solid fodder for contemporary fiction. The novel follows Marie, a young noblewoman sent by the queen to become prioress over a ruined and starving abbey. Through Marie's strength of will and ambition, she grows the abbey into immense prosperity and wealth, defying the patriarchal standards of the day (even, at the end, delivering communion and confession as a priest would). The story is very loosely inspired by the real Marie de France, a 12th century writer and poet about whom little is known. 

But though this is sufficiently juicy backstory for a novel that works to reclaim historical women into feminist idols, Groff resists such a narrative. Instead, she's created a dreamy, hazy novel about love and ambition, the body and the soul. The novel covers most of Marie's life, from her arrival at the abbey at age 17 until her death in her seventies. And while Marie is clearly the protagonist, much time is spent on Queen Eleanor (whom Marie is deeply infatuated with), other nuns, and the abbey and its lands. Marie's successes do not come off as stunning victories, but rather the result of wisdom, planning, and team-work. Her failures, likewise, arise from luck as well as foolhardiness.

Thus perhaps what's most surprising about the novel is that Marie's incredible ambition and success, unheard of for most 12th century women, is attributed to many things, the least of which is girl power. Towards the end of the novel, Marie's former maid, Cecily, recounts the many opportunities--including Marie's unattractiveness--that allowed her the success she had. Such opportunities don't diminish Marie's successes, but they do contextualize them. And her successes do not come without real costs to the land, the nuns, and the other women who serve under her. 

In the end, it's an unusual novel, one that sometimes annoyed me (I really wanted Marie to stop mooning over Eleanor) but that nonetheless kept me reading. 

"The Copenhagen Trilogy" by Tove Ditlevsen

The Copenhagen Trilogy is a collection of three short books by the Danish poet and author Ditlevsen, who was famous in her home country in the mid-20th century and died by suicide in 1976. Like most Americans, I had never heard of Ditlevsen, and though she acknowledges her success as an author in Trilogy, her professional success is not the real focus of the book. Instead, the book provides unusual insight into a complicated figure. She was extraordinarily ambitious and felt most at home when writing. We know she lived for her art, but of her art, we hear little. Instead, but most of the book focuses on her intimate relationships--her ambivalent relationship with her mother; her four husbands; and, finally, her drug addiction.

The first book in the trilogy, Childhood, has a foggy sense of helplessness. It reminded me intensely of the young narrators in Elena Ferrante novels, and I had to laugh when I read two reviews that both said the same thing. Youth is focused on her pursuit of romantic and professional success, though Ditlevsen doesn't separate the two much, as her first marriage is a sexless one to a much-older publisher. Dependency is the most affecting part of the novel, as her third husband Carl turns her into a drug addict and her life spirals. Ditlevsen describes this descent dispassionately. There's no attempt to turn herself into a victim or to ask for the reader's sympathy. Instead, she neutrally describes the absolute primacy of drug addiction in her life. It superseded everything, including her children and her work. She undergoes a needless surgery, which leaves her deaf in one ear, in order to secure more drugs. She has all the help money, fame, and love can provide, and none of it matters. Ditlevsen and her fourth husband have to flee Copenhagen to try to save her. On the last page she writes she was finally "rescued from [her] years of addiction," but even without foreknowledge of her suicide five years after the book's publication, the reader knows the assertion is hollow. Ditlevsen does too. After all, the book ends not with the generic absolution, but instead with this grim declaration: "the shadow of the old longing still returns faintly if I have to have a blood test, or if I pass a pharmacy window. It will never disappear completely for as long as I live" (370).

It was this chilling awareness that made the last third of the book so powerful for me. I've read a number of novels about addiction, but none with total clarity of Ditlevsen. She knows the destruction of the drugs. And she also knows she will not resist them if given the opportunity.

Ditlevsen is a complicated figure, and it's often hard to be sympathetic to her. She easily switches from one husband to the next, and she seems to care little for others, including her children. It would be interesting to hear, from an outside point of view, what made her so famous in Denmark, as there's nothing in the book to endear her to the reader. Yet The Copenhagen Trilogy is still a captivating read of a deeply troubled woman.

"All My Rage" by Sabaa Tahir

It's been awhile since I've read YA fiction, and there's some pleasure in sinking into the trials and tribulations of being a teenager. Of course, like a lot of YA these days, All My Rage isn't about simple issues like high school gossip or first crushes. In fact, it grapples with a huge range of issues: immigration, racism, alcoholism, drug addiction, sexual assault, and domestic abuse. Its two protagonists are Noor and Salahudin, children of Pakistani parents who have been best friends since childhood. Their tumultuous backgrounds and current trauma intersect throughout the novel amid their love for each other. 

One of the elements the novel does best is acknowledge and take seriously its characters' anger. It can be easy to dismiss the strong feelings of teenagers as frivolous, but Noor and Salahudin have a lot to be angry about, suffering within structures outside of their control.

There are some things the novel does poorly. Like a lot of teen fiction, it get most about the college admissions process wrong and furthers the idea that the only colleges that exist are the top-twenty elite ones. Its primary villains--Noor's uncle Chachu and racist classmate Jamie--are broadly defined and one-dimensional. It has a pat ending, with villains getting comeuppance and heroes getting the happy ending.

But to be fair, I don't think the novel would have been improved with a grim ending. In fact, I was so anxious I skipped ahead a hundred pages and read the end to be sure all would be okay. Even with a reassuring ending, Tahir is still able to address a number of issues thoughtfully and with nuance.

"The Great Circle" by Maggie Shipstead

I enjoyed The Great Circle quite a bit. I rooted for Marian Graves' happy ending, even when all seemed dim (I didn't care as much about actress Hadley's parts of the story). But I've been thinking about the novel's protagonist--a lone wolf who never says goodbye (or hello, really). Her aloofness and reticence to discuss her feelings are key elements of her personality, something those who love her--her brother Jamie, her neighbor-turned-lover Caleb--are forced to accept. In some ways this stoicism, in a woman, in the early 20th century, feels a little heroic. But in the end I'm left feeling how not-heroic it is. Her lover Ruth dies never hearing Marian's feelings for her. Her lover Caleb pines after her his entire life. Her niece doesn't even get to know her. Obviously an individual has no obligation to another. But ignoring those who love us, and whom we love, does make us a jerk. Shipstead certainly acknowledges Marian's many failings, and I don't think authors must or should write entirely admirable characters, and yet... 

For what it's worth, the Marian-Barclay-Caleb triangle gave me a lot of Twilight vibes.