“The Blue Fox” takes readers on a 19th-century journey through a vast, glacial landscape as a hunter seeks out the eponymous blue fox — a mysterious and elusive creature. The novel then shifts gears as it focuses on Fridrik B. Fridjonsson, an Icelandic man who discovers a young girl with Down syndrome aboard an abandoned ship and decides to care for her.

The novel itself is a quick read (pages often have only a small, centered paragraph), but the book’s opaque quality of time and wildly imaginative descriptions prove it to be a complicated piece of literature.

“The Blue Fox” is not merely a work of fiction. It delves into the very heart of the adaptable nature of modern literature. A heroic saga and fairy tale all at once, it questions traditional storylines and time frames. Though it is set in the 1800s, there is an element of modernity within the pages. Perhaps the inclusion of Abba, the 14-year-old with Down syndrome, lends a hand in characterizing the novel as contemporary, or maybe it is the jumbled time scheme, which is reminiscent of the modernist and post-modernist literary movements.

Though whiffs of modernity are traceable, the novel for the most part reads like an epic poem. Set in the all-consuming, spellbinding Nordic landscape, “The Blue Fox” holds a mysterious, fable-like quality, causing the book to linger somewhere between legend and fairytale. Its moving message about the power of kindness is executed through beautifully crafted sentences.

One example is a description of the sky during the fox hunt: “In the halls of heaven it was now dark enough for the Aurora Borealis sisters to begin their lively dance of the veils.” The magical quality that saturates the sentences is rhythmic and steady, like quietly falling snow on Icelandic peaks.

This poetic nature of the novel is not surprising. Previously, Sjon has worked alongside Icelandic singer-songwriter Bjork to write lyrics to many of her hit songs including “Isobel,” “Joga” and most recently “Virus,” which was released on 2011’s album Biophilia.

Lyrics in “Joga” include the hauntingly beautiful phrases: “You don’t have to speak / I feel emotional landscapes.” These lyrics can be applied to “The Blue Fox.” Like Bjork’s songs, the novel is highly atmospheric and imaginative, combining indie cred with truly talented storytelling.

It is interesting to note that while Sjon remains relatively unknown in America, he is quite famous in Iceland. Besides working with Bjork on lyrics for her personal albums, he also wrote lyrics for songs featured in the film “Dancer in the Dark,” in which Bjork and Catherine Deneuve starred. He worked on “I’ve Seen It All,” a single on the movie’s soundtrack, featuring Thom Yorke which was nominated for an Academy Award in 2000.

Success with “The Blue Fox,” which has been translated into 25 languages, can also be attributed to Victoria Cribb, who translated Sjon’s work from Icelandic to English. Though it is impossible to tell exactly what is lost in translation, the ethereal and magical elements of the text remain.

The compelling novel reads like a Sigur Ros song: melodic and supernatural. It takes on lilting forms, rising and falling harmoniously like the snow-clad Icelandic mountains in which the novel is set.

Contact Addy Bhasin at abhasin@dailycal.org.

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“Bun B’s Rap Jumbo Coloring And Rap Activity Book” will contain 42 pages of line drawings, connect-the-dots, rap lyric ad-libs and paper cutouts. Serrano, who established a friendship with Bun B after interviewing him on a number of occasions, came up with the idea after doing a similar project for his young sons using Texas rappers. The actual book will showcase images of 45 different nationally recognized rappers, including Drake, T.I., Rick Ross and Queen Latifah.

Rather than bring the idea directly to publishers, the two started a Tumblr last October to use as a marketing tool. “I knew I wanted to pitch it as a book,” Serrano said. “I thought it would be easier to do if people saw it and saw some of the pictures, so I started the Tumblr.” Bun B’s Jumbo Coloring And Rap Activity Tumblr includes free, printable PDFs posted weekly. Among the page’s most popular posts are an ad-libs activity using the lyrics to Ice Cube’s “It Was A Good Day” and a drawing that instructs readers to fill in Drake’s eyebrows. With the help of Bun’s 700,000 Twitter followers and 400,000 Facebook likes, the Tumblr went viral very quickly. Within a month, the book companies came calling.

While Serrano handles all the illustrations, Bun B serves as the book’s curator. “He just lends some credibility (to the book),” Serrano said. “I’m not black, and I didn’t want people to think, ‘Oh, he’s just making fun of black people.’” It also doesn’t hurt that many of the rappers to be featured in the book are his friends. Bun is essentially the liaison to hip-hop’s finest, having collaborated with everyone from Jay-Z and Lil Wayne to upstarts like Kirko Bangz and Machine Gun Kelly. “Everybody loves him, so it sort of worked out,” Serrano said.

Bun is also a perfect representative for the book, considering his comfort with the music. In recent years, the rapper has acted as a guest on comedy podcasts and has even partaken in rap-based comedy sketches. “He wanted to do a project to show people that rappers, in private, were a funny group of people,” Serrano said. “They just had to be so serious all the time. He wanted to do something silly to sort of juxtapose with that seriousness they had.” He understands how to view hip-hop in a comic light and is able to do so with a sense of insider wisdom without intentionally offending anyone.

The book isn’t actually catered to children, though. “It’s for adults,” Serrano said. “Kids shouldn’t listen to rap music and definitely shouldn’t listen to the rappers that we (include). There was, however, a conscious effort made to keep the book, unlike the Tumblr, which occasionally incorporates some raunchier themes, completely clean — there is no cursing or middle fingers — so that it is not inappropriate for children. “If it lands in a kid’s lap, then cool; he’s going to like it,” Serrano said. “But we’re kind of making this for rap fans.”

Ol’ Dirty Bastard preached that Wu-Tang is for the children. Bun B and Shea Serrano’s rap coloring book is for the cool kid who understands that reference and maybe even his parents and really anyone feeling nostalgic enough to break out his or her old box of crayons. Rap music deserves the chance to be fun from time to time, and with this book, everyone is allowed to participate.

You can find their Tumblr at:
http://rapcoloringbook.tumblr.com/

Contact Rahul Pandya at rpandya@dailycal.org.

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This is stimulated saliva. It neutralizes pH levels, dissolves starches and fats and rather effectively clears away food stains with an aggressive determination far beyond any of your mother’s leading brand detergents. It is also the life-long passion of scientist Erika Siletti.

In a “sunny top-floor lab in the Dutch town of Wageningen,” Siletti witnesses scenarios like the one posited above every day. She watches people chew, swallow and secrete in the same, almost obsessive way Andries Van der Bilt observes humans gnaw silicone in the Netherlands or 19th century bonbon vivant William Beaumont inspected and dissected the digestive process of his patient and captive Alexis St. Martin. They are all scientists, with one overwhelming and intoxicating shared interest — the alimentary canal. And, with “Gulp,” Mary Roach probes their lives, contributions and tastes with the same cutting precision with which Siletti surveys spit.

For the last ten years, Roach has exposed the eccentric underbelly of science to popular audiences. From “Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers” to the supernatural to the science of sex (actually titled “Bonk,” not the sequel to “Stiff”), she has infiltrated and compiled anecdotes, facts and people centered around the taboo topics of the human form. It’s a winning recipe that rewards the passing inquiry with an intelligent, entertaining and jocular narrative. With “Gulp,” she returns to this formula and serves us what may be her finest work to date.

This is not to say “Stiff,” “Bonk,” “Spook” or “Packing for Mars” were somehow lacking. They, as well as “Gulp,” all contain a series of bizarre stories steeped in the puzzling-yet-provocative intersection between passing curiosity and active experimentation. Why, there’s a damn smorgasbord of them in “Gulp.” There’s Howard Fletcher, an early 20th century gadfly whose self-branded method of mastication — chewing vigorously until liquification — became the favorite of Franz Kafka, John Harvey Kellogg and one “anonymous writer” with “excreta in the form of nearly round balls.” There’s Michael Levitt, a scientist of flatulence who invented “the flatus-trapping Mylar ‘pantaloon.’”

What makes “Gulp” a cut above the rest is not the quality or absurdity of the stories involved, but how Roach cleverly trusses them together through the progressive narrative arc of the digestive system.
Despite a brief, fascinating entree into the world of domestic pet- food production, Roach’s structure mirrors the course of human digestion. She begins with the senses, with the ambiguity of taste and the American cultural palette. She continues by delving into not only the delicate mechanics of the mouth, the troublesome politics of the esophagus and the sturdy duty of the colon but also the often obsessive, strange, troublesome and sometimes sad lives of the people who live, breathe and taste the very sustenance of the human experience.

“Gulp” begins with the question of taste. It is an odd, subjective quality formed by cultural, familial, economic and political experience. It is difficult to parse and even harder to market to the general populace. Taste is not a problem for Roach. With “Gulp,” she goes beyond whetting the public’s appetite for curious info on the human body. Simply put, “Gulp” is addictive.

Contact Jessica Pena at jpena@dailycal.org.

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The book is surprisingly personal, but it is appropriate for describing how food can be a personal experience. It brings people together and takes them to faraway places just to encounter a worthwhile experience for their taste buds. A single “taste memory” can flood the mind with nostalgia, as she demonstrates. Whereas the subtitle of the book, “My Life in the Kitchen,” may suggest stories about cooking to potential readers, the stories range from travel stories to autobiographical anecdotes. As is appropriately stated in the book jacket, “Knisley presents her personal history as seen through a kaleidoscope of delicious things.”

She has clearly experienced what is considered “high-end” as well as what is considered “garbage” but never acknowledges her food experiences as such. There is only what is tasty and what is not so tasty (sorry, lemonade chicken). As the daughter of a professional chef and an epicurean, Knisley had an unusual adolescence. Her teenage years did not involve rebelling with sex, drugs and rock and roll. She ate McDonald’s — and she still does — proudly. There is a section in which she does not bash junk food as a normal foodie might. Instead, she defends it (and frankly, it’s a kind of convincing, if not compelling, defense). She expresses sorrow for her parents, whereas most foodies would express jealousy: “Anyone who can fail to rejoice in the enticing squish/crunch of a fast-food French fry or the delight of a warmed piece of grocery-store donut, is living half a life.” This is a notion that a college student can certainly appreciate.

The book progresses through the years of her life, keeping her relationship with food in mind. Some are the kind of things one might expect: her first time having certain foods or memories of her mother’s and grandmother’s cooking. However, she is not without surprises — somehow, she talks about astoundingly personal topics, such as her first period or her parents’ divorce, and manages to seamlessly tie them in with culinary experiences. The pages are filled with as much hilarity as rumination.

The format is an inventive one, which, in a graphic novel about food, is not surprising. Every chapter ends with a recipe, and speaking from experience (assuming the sangria and chocolate chip cookie recipes were not exceptions), they were carefully chosen. The illustrations are charming in exactly the kind of style that fans of her webcomic, “Stop Paying Attention,” would be accustomed to and fans of graphic novels by Craig Thompson, Julia Wertz or Kate Beaton would likely embrace. Knisley regularly appears in Saveur as an illustrator for “Recipe Comix.”

“Relish” should not be categorized as a book about food or a graphic novel (though even in either of those categories, it should be considered one of the best releases of the year). It is a love story and a coming-of-age story, all with food as the catalyst. That having been said, it is a universal story that is unfortunately likely to have a specialized audience but hopefully will not. Every last ingredient in “Relish” harmonizes, in the end, into a beautiful, bittersweet recipe.

Contact Ephriam Lee at ephraimlee@dailycal.org.

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Debuted in 1925, the Leica has always been known for its unobtrusiveness and user friendliness. It is an agile camera — small, fast, effective, efficient. Shove it in your pocket, grab it when that magical moment happens and snap the shot. It’s that easy.

The contraption itself is beautiful, complex and powerful. The pictures it snaps — equally so. It is natural, then, to celebrate the 99th year of the Leica with a coffee-table book that mirrors the artistry and importance of the Leica.

Each page is itself a work of art. The designers consciously assembled each composition like the most prudent photographers. They set the text off center and frame it with images, elaborate typography and design elements but most often with negative space. The colors are carefully chosen — evolving from blacks, whites, greys, reds and metals (gold, silver, brass) to a wider palette as color photography appears in the narrative.

The pages are clear and logical in organization and in order. They are user-friendly.

Page 63. Your head is tilted upwards to gaze into the underbelly of the Eiffel Tower. Electric greens, purples, pinks and blues bleed through the metal lattice structure and almost drip right off the page onto your face.

One can count on two hands the pages that explode off the page like this and truly shock the viewer’s eyes. But this is perhaps the point. Like the iconic photographs in the book, each page asserts its impact simply and minimally. Although “Napalm Against Civilians” and “V-J Day in Times Square” are some of our history’s most potent images, they do not rely on fancy visual effects to destabilize the viewer emotionally.

Similarly, the telling of the Leica story is, for the most part, simple and straightforward. Although it is weighted down at times by camera jargon — which camera buffs would likely embrace far more enthusiastically — it avoids extravagant language and superfluous narrative.

The book is consistent and dependable. Sound familiar?

We learn early on that the company prioritizes the person behind the camera. Leica is “the ideal camera for amateurs, reporters, tourists, and explorers.” Page 51 and 52 are devoted to photographs of people — all sexes, ages and races — snapping shots of us with their Leicas.

The story gains most traction when it discusses the individual behind the lens — whether that person is Alfred Eisenstaedt, Christie Brinkley or an ordinary four-year-old girl named Martha, who liked to use her Crayolas to draw Leica cameras.

Iconic photographers like Eisenstadt, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Capa are memorialized in provocative profiles. We learn that Cartier-Bresson acquired his vision instincts from hunting big game while living in Africa as a child. Analysis of Capa’s famous image of a falling soldier is juxtaposed with “The Falling Soldier” remake by Mike Stimpson: a photograph of a falling Lego soldier. These little Leica tidbits welcome the reader into the camera’s quirky story.

Flipping through the book is like picking up an M, Leica’s latest model. It is clear and comfortable, yet unmistakably significant. It seems like the natural way to tell the Leica tale.

And it’s a tale that is far from over. At a time when our relationship with technology is constantly questioned, it is comforting to learn about a company that was founded on the basis of “the symbiotic link between humans and technology.” “The iPhone 4,” as Steve Jobs said, is “like a beautiful old Leica Camera.” One would hope the next 99 years of photography bring the same symbiosis as the Leica has.

Anna Carey is the arts editor. Contact her at acarey@dailycal.org.

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— Josie Yang

Anarchy Comics Revisited
Comic book editors Jay Kinney and Paul Mavrides celebrated the publication of “Anarchy Comics: The Complete Collection” with a discussion on the problems of traditional political cartooning and the power of good satire.
Kinney explained that inspiration for the comic came from the authors’ desire to bring entertainment and humor to politics at a time when traditional left propaganda was caught up in tired old ideas. After being criticized for featuring a white figure in a comic, Kinney decided it was time to reinvigorate political cartooning, which had for so long been preoccupied with politically correct cliches, such as America represented by Uncle Sam, democrats as the donkey and the left as “multiracial crowds with clenched fists.”

These cartoons rarely went beyond the limited circle of anarchist publishers, and Kinney wanted to reach other audiences, so he started to sell his comics in record stores and punk boutiques. Kinney and Mavrides wanted the comic to represent the multidimensional aspects of politics, “not just a one-note polemic.” To achieve this, they resolved to stay away from the notion of “anarchism as chaos,” and even designed the logo to look ‘“fun.” They believed that pointed humor could be much more subversive than dense political discussion.

Kinney lamented that this kind of comic can usually only be found online today because modern comic fans are not looking for political stimulation. The new anthology, containing all four issues of the iconic comic series plus additional unpublished material, is published by Oakland’s PM Press.

— Meadhbh McGrath

What Does Utopia Look Like?
Putting aside for a moment the idea that there might not be a utopia, another question emerges: Can we live in it if it does? The answer, according to Cindy Milstein, is no — at least not yet.

Talking at speeds that would impress the smoothest politicians, Milstein was energetic and engaging, with a fairly straightforward point. “We can’t populate the spaces we imagine as utopia,” she said, “because we are debilitated by our social structures.”

It’s a very anarchist idea and one she emphasizes the most. Milstein’s lecture was a call to action, urging people to abandon the hierarchical constructs that are supposedly restricting our thinking. Her points were mostly anecdotal, describing for instance a man who intentionally jaywalked in Europe to open people’s eyes to the rigid structures they were so accustomed to.

Milstein then adopted a dreamy, Trelawney-esque tone in her speech. She painted an idealistic picture of friend helping friend in times of crisis without the confines of law or bureaucracy. If we were not so focused on individual property, she said, this might be possible. Her word of the day seemed to be “togetherness,” and she suggested that to become worthy of utopia humankind must break free from the hierarchical model. While her assertions might be valid, Milstein finished her talk rather vaguely, leaving open the question of how one might achieve this leveling she speaks of.

Although she did not address her titular question, Milstein presented a more perplexing idea that perhaps mankind is stopping itself from achieving utopia.

— Josie Yang

The Sex Workers’ Rights Movement
Shannon Williams has been doing sex work for almost 17 years, during which she has been heavily involved in sex work activism. She explained how local, national and international sex workers’ rights movements work to end stigmatization and violence against sex workers and create safe working conditions by campaigning for HIV prevention and safe-sex education.

Sex work is frequently conflated with trafficking, particularly in South East Asia. Williams explained how Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee, a self-regulatory board in Calcutta composed of 60 percent sex workers and 40 percent government representatives, helped to reduce the problem of trafficking by visiting sex workers to ensure they are of age and participating willingly.

Williams also discussed the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which requires countries benefitting from U.S. aid to sign an Anti-Prostitution Pledge. In Brazil, the group Davida convinced their government to refuse $14 million of U.S. aid, instead creating a fashion line to raise money called “Daspu,” from the Portuguese word ‘das putas’ (meaning ‘whores’), also a play on Daslu, the name of a high-end Brazilian designer.

Local activist groups St. James Infirmary and Act Up are currently working on a major campaign to ban the use of condoms as evidence of prostitution. This worldwide problem has put trans women and street-based sex workers at a much greater risk for contracting STIs, as well as sex workers in massage parlors, where the managers, fearing the severe penalties for pimping, forbid condoms.

— Meadhbh McGrath

Asia’s Unknown Uprisings: 1986-1992
George Katsiaficas sought to explain how anarchism activists can guide popular movements — but “sought” is the keyword there. While the 1990s Asian uprisings he described are comparable in nature to those he advocates, the speaker focused only on the idea of social revolution as opposed to the execution thereof.

Katsiaficas offers the “tactical use of nonviolence” as a means to instigate grassroots movements in opposition of government, describing the utility of students and minority groups to effect change. We can learn from movements in places such as the Philippines or Nepal that uprisings have a cascading effect, one the speaker hopes will be mimicked in further revolutions in the future.

Ultimately, Katsiaficas espouses typical anarchist ideas, speaking against both democratic and authoritarian regimes. At one point, for example, he compares John F. Kennedy to Saddam Hussein and asserts that they had similar programs of chemical warfare. Both, according to the speaker, were reprehensible. His view of the anarchist struggle is grounded, it would seem, in ethics and the good of the people, which governments will always oppose.

Despite the broad goals and aspirations of Asian uprisings that the speaker described, he fell short in that he did not explain their significance to us. If anything, Katsiaficas’ speech was a recap of history, and people may learn from those lessons rather than the one he did not quite articulate.

— Josie Yang

Contact Josephine Yang at jyang@dailycal.org.
Contact Meadhbh McGrath at mmcgrath@dailycal.org.

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“The Fun Parts” tries really hard. Too hard, actually. Lipsyte is a seasoned and highly praised author, but “The Fun Parts” seems like a sophomoric effort riding on the back of a lucky first success. While there are some truly meaningful lines — even chapters, such as a story about the daughter of a Holocaust survivor — many more are contrived, trying and failing to be poignant. At one point, a character says, “I sound like the narrator of a mediocre young adult novel from the eighties,” which is, ironically, true of many of the less self-aware narrators.

Further tainting the narrative is Lipsyte’s stilted, forced dialogue, some of which sounds more like a caricature of a bad ’80s sitcom than actual spoken words. In one story, a character overuses the word “totes” — to the protagonist’s cartoonish confusion — in order to drive home his already apparent douchebaggery, an out-of-touch joke that simply falls flat. In quite a few others, Lipsyte drops a wide variety of slang for cocaine, as if the junkie jargon — rather than the scenes of tourniquets, needles and crack spoons — will convince us that the characters really are addicts.

Even outside of the dialogue, most of the characters aren’t exactly likeable — but, to be fair, that’s sort of the point. The constant inability (and unwillingness) of the characters to succeed is supposed to be funny, except Lipsyte doesn’t quite pull it off consistently. The “totes” guy, for example, was supposed to be a date gone horribly wrong, but the situation was too ridiculous and worth only a meager, pity-driven chuckle. However, there are also some fantastically developed characters with some funny quips, and Lipsyte’s characterization manages to shine (rather dimly) despite his poor execution elsewhere.

The structure of “The Fun Parts” is its saving grace in this regard. Each character’s story is only a chapter long — which cuts down the time readers have to spend with the more insufferable ones — and although they’re completely separate from each other, they’re all related in theme or mood. It’s here that Lipsyte gets it right, emphasizing a general topic or emotion in the stories rather than interpersonal relationships. This, too, is what makes the book somewhat successful as a whole, because individual characters can be ignored for the broader picture — and that broader picture is actually worth seeing.

The best part about “The Fun Parts” is, without a doubt, that it’s thought-provoking. Some of those thoughts might be negative (“Why is this idiot saying ‘totes’ over and over?”), but there are quite a few interesting things to focus on too. Characters deal with drugs and childhood issues, identity crises and death, but the fascinating thing is that none of them deal with their issues well. It’s a bit of a trainwreck, but you can’t take your eyes off of it. If you can deal with the bad parts, you should pick up “The Fun Parts.”

Still, if you’re planning to read Lipsyte, “The Fun Parts” probably isn’t the best place to start. The writing is somewhat amateur, the humor is spotty and the characters can be overly irritating. It’s about as “meh” as any forgettable work would be, except it’s not quite forgettable.

A great read? No. Interesting? Totes.

Contact Kallie Plagge at kplagge@dailycal.org.

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Born in 1944 in apartheid Birmingham, Ala., Davis experienced racial discrimination growing up and was involved in political activism at a young age. However, it wasn’t until 1969 that she rose to national attention when she was removed from her teaching position at UCLA due to her membership in the Communist Party. In 1970, Davis was placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List on false charges, one of only eight women to ever appear on this list. The resulting police search drove her underground, and, when she was captured, President Nixon congratulated the FBI on its “capture of the dangerous terrorist, Angela Davis.” Davis was eventually acquitted in 1972, after 16 months in prison following an international “Free Angela” campaign.

In 1969, Ronald Reagan vowed that Davis would never again teach in the UC system. Today, Davis is a professor in the history of consciousness department and former director of the feminist studies department at UC Santa Cruz. She is also the author of several books, including a new collection of previously unpublished speeches entitled “The Meaning of Freedom,” her first full-length book since 2003.

Davis offers a penetrating analysis of how attempts to arrive at the social landscape she envisions are consistently foiled by institutional and cultural injustice. Davis discusses the intersections of oppression in our society, revitalizing discourse about race, gender, class and sexuality and proving there are still new and interesting ways to talk about these issues. Davis collapses the social partitions that separate us and brilliantly links these seemingly unrelated issues into a broader understanding of freedom.

Davis’s fearless spirit and unwavering commitment to justice were strikingly evident when she appeared at Oakland’s Marcus Books, the oldest black bookstore in the U.S., last Friday to discuss her latest book. She began by asking the audience why last year’s activism surrounding the death of Trayvon Martin died down following the arrest of policeman George Zimmerman. Davis described how the public’s loss of interest suggests that the only thing people were demanding was the prosecution of an individual. She argued that this kind of solution results in the individualization of incidents of racism, so that we tend to think it is just the individual who needs to be cured. This interpretation cuts off discussion of social issues, failing to address the centuries-old problem of racist violence.

Davis has famously proposed prison abolitionism, condemning the prison system for lumping crimes together so that social issues are not given proper consideration. According to Davis, the structural racism and sexism apparent in the institution of the prison demonstrates that we continue to live with the ghost of slavery. Davis’ powerful speech described how we tend to think about justice in terms of the law, but the law is only capable of apprehending individuals. Therefore, any “equality” that the law can provide is necessarily a false equality — in her words, “a sameness rather than equality — the law cannot distinguish the 1 percent from the 99 percent.”

Davis challenges her audience to think about how racism and sexism permeate our everyday lives. She encourages them to question the aspects of discourse that we take most for granted, as it is this “taken-for-grantedness” that leaves us trapped in a system of injustice. By engaging in these difficult dialogues as a community, we can expand our understanding of freedom and bring about social change.

Contact Meadhbh McGrath at mmcgrath@dailycal.org.

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Last Tuesday night Anderson gave a candid discussion on the state of future manufacturing technology at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. In addition to serving as the editor of Wired, Anderson was a reporter for The Economist and currently devotes all his time and energy to his recent CEO position at his drone robotics corporation. While also providing a brief summary and push for his latest book, “Makers: The New Industrial Revolution,” Anderson’s seminar was aimed at addressing recent shifts in the economics of the world’s systems of mass production.

To put it simply, the merit of this new movement is that technological manufacturing has become something that it hasn’t been since before the 1700s — democratized. Several new innovations, such as websites like
shapeways.com, can turn the personal, grassroots designs of creative individuals into 3-D reality by utilizing the overseas industrial system that was normally reserved for multimillion-dollar corporations with exclusive contracts. The recent availability of household 3-D printers has further aided this possibility.

To demonstrate the future he was describing, Anderson had onstage with him a visual aid that resembled something straight out of an episode of “Star Trek.” A sleek, wood-encased MakerBot 3-D printer sat nearby, roughly the size of a dorm room mini-fridge, emanating a blue fluorescent glow. After a few strokes on an attached touchpad, Anderson uploaded a digitally rendered design that the machine worked on over the course of the talk. By the end, it delivered a perfectly rendered plastic toy of Darth Vader’s head.

With this unprecedented speed and consistency comes a wide range of uncharted legal territory. Anderson touched on the lack of protective copyrights on 3-D objects that can now be replicated in someone’s living room with the touch of a button. His choice to replicate a globally recognized trademark of “Star Wars” onstage suddenly became an apt visual metaphor for the lack of control that corporations will have over what consumers decide to create in the privacy of their own MakerBots.

In order to summarize the potential of what this technology can do, it is important to remember the previous role that 2-D printing had in the lives of the mass consumer public. Anderson recalled that upon the original household printer’s reception, most regarded it as a tool to replicate what was written by others. But very quickly, the printer’s purpose became user-defined. Instead of a device merely used for replication, it became a way to transpose original ideas and writing onto paper that could then be distributed. And once digital photography took hold, the standard 2-D color printer became a vehicle for cataloging the lives and experiences of billions of people. The same is true for the 3-D printer proposed Anderson. We do not fully understand the role that it will play in the world, only that it will further the capability of technology to realize the products of our imagination.

Contact Ryan Koehn at rkoehn@dailycal.org.

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It is this puzzling type of individual that Daria Snadowsky’s novel, “Anatomy of a Single Girl,” seeks to understand. Her protagonist, Dominique Baylor, is an eighteen-year-old schoolgirl, fresh off her freshman year as a pre-med at Tulane University. After spending the better part of the term grieving from a breakup with her high-school boyfriend and former love, she returns home to Fort Myers, Fla., for a summer internship at a local hospital. As she reunites with her kooky parents and Amy, her impish best friend, all seems set for a low-key vacation full of family outings and sleepovers.

That is, until Dom meets hottie fratboy (Beta, in case you’re wondering) Guy Davies, a physics major at Henry Ford Institute of Technology. She finds the courage to strike up a conversation and ask him out, a crucial first step toward finding her inner daring woman. The wheels are set in motion, and the reader anticipates the excitement of a new fling, ready to take off with Dom on the path to self-discovery.

But Snadowsky’s novel is quick to disappoint. Dom’s romance with Guy is momentous to her life, but to the reader it’s an outright bore. For a book about teenage affairs, “Anatomy of a Single Girl” is severely lacking in playfulness or wit. Just because a single girl’s head is often up in the clouds doesn’t mean it has to be vacuous. During her first date with Guy, Dom notes, “If I didn’t know any better, I’d guess Guy’s gravitational pull was reeling me in, from the way I leap to my feet and glide toward him at breakneck speed.” Such thoughts pervade the novel and are neither funny nor charming.

That’s not to say that there’s a need for Dom or any other character to be particularly sophisticated. Guy’s part-scientist, part-fraternity-brother persona is as simple as it gets yet serves its purpose. He’s a dude who likes sex — little else is required. But given that the reader spends most of the novel inside Dom’s head, it wouldn’t hurt if she had just a smidgeon of spark or spice. During her first intimate moment with Guy, she remarks, “I didn’t know it was possible to feel this ecstatic, wary, and turned on all at the same time.” It’s hard to think of a more expressionless and anticlimactic reaction.

It’s not all humdrum, however, as Amy’s character is the exception that adds flavor to the single-girl life. As a fun-loving and slightly unstable best friend, Amy contributes a bit of cleverness and some amusing relationship insights. In fact, she is a map of what Dom should have been because, let’s face it, we’d much rather read about a cheeky and haughty personality than about one who’s tepid and remarkably ordinary. One suspects that in writing “Anatomy of a Single Girl,” Sandowsky simply picked the wrong single girl to scrutinize. Through the lens of Dom’s character, it is difficult to appreciate the full extent and comedy of the single-girl conundrum.

Contact Eytan at eschindelhaim@dailycal.org.

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