More hot genome action. There are plenty of fascinating tidbits in the book, but I felt a bit like the choir on the receiving end of a sermon. The author’s main point is that genes play a role in developing various structures in the brain, even though those structures can be modified after the fact based on influence from the environment. Nature and nurture, not versus. Roger.

Maybe there are a lot of people still running around that are sufficiently ignorant of the last fifty years of progress in biology, but I for one would have appreciated reading more about actual results in the efforts to understand the development of the brain and less about how people who are stupid enough to hold a strong “tabula rasa” position need to acknowledge that some parts of the brain are pre-wired.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book, and I really appreciated having some of the more fantastic scenes brought into sparkling visual life by the film. The three Alexis were all superbly cast and hearing that wacky English spoken was generally even funnier than reading it. I did come away with the feeling that had I not read the book, the movie would have been confusing and disconnected. So read the book first.

With such a snappy title, it’s no wonder the book was so popular. The advice was all rock solid, even if he did repeat himself a bit to really drive the points home. I read an edition published in 1950, as I heard that modern editions have been heavily edited from the 1936 original aiming to smooth over its lack of political correctness. There is some great straight shooting advice in this edition, like “Don’t nag” aimed at the housewives and “Don’t compare your wife’s cooking to your mother’s” aimed at the husbands. Words to live by.

A fascinating trip down the rabbit hole of embryological development, genes’ role in the process, and all the weird shit that can go wrong when a fork is stuck somewhere therein. The author does not set out to titillate, but as a matter of course covers some serious sideshow freakery — complete with detailed descriptions of the breakdown in the relevant developmental processes.

Being a giant fan of Murakami’s novels, I am relieved to report that Tony Takitani is pretty good. I hadn’t read the short story on which the film is based (I’m not sure it’s been translated) but the film did a great job of capturing that Murakami esssence. The pace is erratic and though one gets the strong feeling that this is a social commentary, it’s not obvious what in the hell the comment is, which is also very Murakami. I dug it the most.

I now realize why this film took so long to be released in the States. The whole business of veering incongruously into future land wouldn’t go over well with American audiences. The rest of the film, however, just didn’t hang together. It’s possible that Wong Kar Wai was going for sort of a collection of vignettes, something like he did in Chungking Express, but it just didn’t work.

A fascinating look at a few years in the life of a guy living on the streets of New York, addicted to crack, and writing about it all.