Category — Books

Orhan Pamuk has "turned one of his novels into a museum, evoking the book and its setting," reports Ron Gluckman in the Wall Street Journal (5/10/12). Both the book and the museum have the same name: The Museum of Innocence. The novel is set and the museum is located in Istanbul, Turkey. The book is about "ordinary life" in Istanbul, and centers on a love triangle; the museum is a collection of various items that figured into the plot. There’s an earring left behind after a love scene, for instance, and a handbag the book’s protagonist bought for his fiancee at a shop where his other love interest, a teenage girl, works.

"Novels are about preserving the ways we feel, detailing the ways we hold objects, the way in which we smell something," says Orhan, a Nobel Prize-winning author. "Even in a novel of 600 pages, the details of objects fade away, but we never forget the sentiments those objects generate … This museum is more about those sentiments than the story." The novel’s storyline was driven, in part, by things Orhan found in local curio shops, which he would buy after describing them in the novel. "When I finished the book," says Orhan, "the house was full of these objects. I had to do the museum."

This was much easier said than done. Orhan bought the building in which The Museum of Innocence is housed back in 1998, and the museum took so long to complete that his "die-hard fans had wondered whether it would open" (the book, first published in 2008, includes "a map to and ticket for entry to the museum; that ticket is now honored for admission"). Items are "grouped in 83 numbered panels, one for each chapter" of the book. Some see the project as self-indulgent, however Ron Gluckman suggests it is "an inventive bricks and mortar expansion of the story at a time when the internet often seems to simplify literature."

The corner of North Sixth and Mount Vernon Streets in San Bernardino is the cradle of the fast-food taco, reports Julia Moskin in the New York Times (5/2/12). There sits the Mitla Cafe, which opened in 1937 and still serves “tacos dorados con carne molida, ‘golden’ tortillas fried to order and folded around a spicy compressed wedge of ground beef, blanketed with iceberg lettuce, chopped tomatoes and shredded Cheddar.” This taco has been on Mitla’s menu as long as anyone can remember and it “very closely resembles the taco served to more than 36 million customers every week at 5,600 Taco Bell locations in the United States.”

This, according to Gustavo Arellano, author of Taco USA, is no coincidence. Back in 1950, a fellow named Glen Bell opened a hamburger stand “across the street from Mitla.” Glen apparently was jealous of the success of the McDonald brothers, who opened “the first McDonald’s drive-up hamburger stand” in the same neighborhood ten years earlier. Glen “ate often at Mitla and watched long lines form at its walk-up window.” He persuaded Mitla’s owners “to show him how the tacos were made” and “experimented after hours with a tool that would streamline the process of frying the tortillas.”

Glen started serving tacos at his own restaurant, which he re-named Taco Tia, El Taco, and then utlimately, Taco Bell. The Taco Bell website claims that Glen invented the “fast food crunchy taco,” a claim that Gustavo, “perhaps the greatest (and only) living scholar of Mexican-American fast food, disputes.” His book features other stories of white Americans “who managed to capitalize on Mexican food,” as well as at least one Mexican, Mariano Martinez, inventor of the frozen margarita machine. Overall, Taco USA tells the story of “how a few foods (salsa, tacos, chili, tequila) from the complicated and enormous cuisine of Mexico managed to slip into the mainstream of American taste.”

Philip Delves Broughton thinks that many business people “are clueless about one of the most vital functions, the means by which you actually generate revenue,” reports L. Gordon Crovitz in the Wall Street Journal (4/27/12). That function is the sales function, and the focus of Philip’s book, The Art of the Sale. Sales people, says Philip, are unfairly classified as somehow different than other business types. “They need conventions in Las Vegas and complex commission structures” and are “goaded to perform and reined in when they sell too hard,” he writes. “They are patronized as ‘feet on the street’ by those who prefer to imagine that business can be conducted by consultants with dueling PowerPoint presentations.”

But in sales, Philip sees a certain nobility. “It holds that in a properly functioning democracy, no matter the condition of your birth, if you can sell, you can slice through any obstacles of class, status, or upbringing in a way inconceivable in more hidebound societies,” he writes. “Selling well, in this view, is also a reflection of a healthy character. It means you are the sort of person people are drawn to — hardworking, clean living and trustworthy.” To make his point, Philip profiles a number of sales people, including Abdel Majid Rais El Fenni — but you can call him Majid. A Moroccan merchant of “high-end rugs and other furnishings,” Majid succeeds simply by being “open and honest with customers.”

Philip also praises Steve Jobs because Apple “inspires more than a commercial relationship. It inspires faith” — for which customers “are happy to pay a premium.” Nelson Mandela is cited for bothering to “learn the language and culture of the ruling white Afrikaners” and then using that understanding to make his case against apartheid. The Dalai Lama, meanwhile, uses “adaptive selling,” in that he alternately “presents himself as a modest monk” or “a sophisticated critic” depending on the circumstances. Philip predicts that technology will enable “a new sales culture neither hard nor soft, neither bullying nor sappy, but one that relies on transparent information and enhanced cooperation … Technology,” he writes, “provides the transparency that leads to trust.”

Clarence Birdseye explored the marvels of frozen food while hanging out in “the frozen recesses of Labrador,” reports Janet Maslin in a New York Times review of Birdseye, by Mark Kurlansky (4/26/12). Birdseye apparently was quite the explorer, having also done time in Montana, “studying ticks to better understand Rocky Mountain spotted fever.” His work proved that animals of any size could carry ticks, which was a medical breakthrough. “If Birdseye had done nothing else, his fieldwork on spotted fever and ticks would have earned him a footnote in history,” Mark writes. Birdseye apparently also had a taste for the critters that he shot and then photographed in the field.

According to Mark, “when Birdseye found something in nature, he always wondered what it would taste like and what would be the best way to cook it.” Apparently, “freshly sliced fried rattlesnake” was a favorite and he also enjoyed “such delicacies as sherry-marinated lynx and the front end of a skunk.” His neighbors reported that Birdseye developed “a string-operated contraption” designed to catch small birds on his lawn. “We always thought he was going to eat them … for some experiment,” a neighbor recalled. “In any case, we knew they were goners.”

Meanwhile, back in Labrador, Birdseye loved to spend “long hours on a dog sled in subzero temperatures …. He also found ample opportunity to study how and why different foods froze at different temperatures.” He went on to figure out the best way to package frozen produce, which in a place like Labrador, “with no access to fruit or vegetables in winter … was a subject of urgent importance.” The book “coaxes readers to re-examine everyday miracles like frozen food, and to imagine where places with no indigenous produce would be without them. It emphasizes the many steps that went into developing such a simple-seeming process.”

“Lego is both a metaphor and a case study for the argument” that “simplify and repeat” is the secret of business growth and success (The Economist, 4/28/12). It also goes to the heart of Repeatability, by Chris Zook and James Allen, who “argue that the most successful companies share three virtues. They have a high distinctive core business. They make great efforts to keep their business model as simple as possible. And they apply it relentlessly to new opportunities.” Examples include “Ikea with its flat packs, McDonald’s with its burgers” and of course Apple, which “has cut through the buzzing confusion of its industry by applying the same formula to a succession of iProducts.”

As for Lego, what began as an enterprise built on (or out of) interlocking plastic brick careened in the 1990s into “theme parks, television programs, clothes, watches and learning labs. The firm hit a wall made of bricks, not plastic. After years of dismal results, a new boss in 2004 took Lego back to its roots … you can now design a house or a castle online and order the bricks you need to build it. But Lego’s focus is firmly back where it was in its heyday — on little interlocking blocks that turn children of all ages into master builders … today there are 75 bits of Lego for every person on the planet.”

Chris and James, both Bain & Company consultants, identify three ways to apply the “simplify and repeat” model: “Some companies, such as American Express, target ever more precise groups of customers. Some apply the model to new markets: Nike brought its ‘swoosh’ to one sport after another. Some apply the same management system to lots of different businesses,” such as Danahar, a holding company that has applied the same “lean” management system to 85 companies. Of course, simplicity can be difficult to maintain in the face of disruptive innovation (see Kodak, Xerox, Nokia, Kmart and Blockbuster). But Chris and James “argue that successful companies can survive dramatic change by deciding which bits of their business models to preserve and which to dump.”

The social ethics of value are being displaced in the name of efficiency, reports Jonathan V. Last in a Wall Street Journal review of What Money Can’t Buy, by Michael J. Sandel (4/21/12). Traditionally, value has been defined in terms of the inherent value of the thing itself — a gift is meant to maximize "sympathy, generosity, thoughtfulness and attentiveness," for instance. This has become less true over the past several decades with the rise, for example of gift cards, which instead maximize efficiency. The advent of naming rights has similarly diluted the "inherent worth" of everything from stadiums to public parks to subway stops and even police cars. Announcers for the Arizona Diamondbacks are now "required to call home runs ‘Bank One Boomers’."

It gets a bit creepier in the insurance industry, specifically where life insurance is concerned. Originally, life insurance was "meant as a safety net for families," but over time it has become "a ghoulish investment vehicle … today companies routinely take out life-insurance policies on their employees because the policies are an excellent revenue stream, whether traded or held until collection. In recent years there has arisen an entire ‘life settlement’ industry in which investors buy life-insurance policies from the elderly. The quicker people kick the bucket, the higher the rate of return." This represents a change of attitude, a changing market morality, where anything becomes a commodity the moment we decide it can be bought or sold.

This can, of course, lead to bribery — because it is more efficient. When this happens, Michael writes, "it is important to remember that it is bribery we are engaged in, a morally compromised practice that substitutes a lower norm … for a higher one." And where does it end? Why not an auction for a spot in a top college, rather than getting in on merit? It would be more efficient and also ensure that the spots go to those who value them the most. However, it would also "change the meaning of ‘value’ as it relates to the idea of a university." In this view, "every tension can be resolved by seeking the maximally efficient outcome." Michael acknowledges that efficiency can in fact be "both necessary and useful," but warns that we need to be aware of its potential corrosive effect on our established values.

“Since the rise of middle-class prosperity after World War II, cars have been an extraordinary window into the country’s culture and mood,” writes Paul Ingrassia in a Wall Street Journal excerpt from his book, Engines of Change (4/20/12). That window opened in a big way, of course, with the 1950s appearance of tail fins, which were both inspired by fighter planes as well as “powerful totems of America’s peacetime bounty.” The fin-wars escalated between General Motors and Chrysler, peaking with the 1959 Cadillacs, which “had the tallest tail-fins ever appended to a vehicle that didn’t fly.”

Fins became progressively smaller after that, “and disappeared entirely by 1965. By then, extravagance in car design had spawned a backlash. Volkswagen was selling some 150,000 Beetles a year in the US by the mid-1960s,” and became an icon of “the 1960s counterculture.” Another icon of a different sort — the Ford Mustang — “debuted in April 1964, just as America’s first Baby Boomers were coming of age. The car caused a sensation, even though it was built on the chassis of the dull and dowdy Ford Falcon.” Seymour Marshak, Ford’s marketing chief at the time, compared the Mustang’s lines to those of a woman.

The 1970s saw the introduction of the AMC Gremlin, which was “designed on the back of a Northwest Airlines airsickness bag and launched on April Fools’ Day, 1970″ … and was perhaps was a metaphor for the ensuing decade. The 1980s gave rise to yet another Baby Boomer icon, “the revolutionary Chrysler minivan,” which “quickly became the preferred vehicles of ‘soccer moms,’ who were becoming a formidable force in America’s political landscape.” The minivan led to SUVs as well as renewed interest in pickup trucks,which are political icons in their own right, most recently in Scott Brown’s 2010 campaign to fill the late Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat (link).

Magical thinking may be detached from reality but “offers psychological benefits that logic and science can’t always provide,” writes Matthew Hutson, author of The 7 Laws of Magical Thinking, in the New York Times (4/8/12). In fact, “some belief in the supernatural — often a subtle and unconscious belief — appears to be unavoidable, even among skeptics.” This may be because our superstitions give us “a sense of control and a sense of meaning.” Knocking on wood or carrying a lucky charm may not actually produce a magical result, but “they produce an illusion of control and enhance self-confidence, which in turn can improve our performance and thus indirectly affect our fate.”

Lysann Damisch, a University of Cologne psychologist, proved this in a study in which half of her subjects were given a “lucky ball” that had been “lucky so far.” The “lucky ball” golfers “drained 35 percent more golf putts than those with a ‘regular” ball.” Richard Sosis, a University of Connecticut anthropologist, conducted another study in which 36 percent of secular women in Israel who recited psalms reported reduced anxiety over local violence. We also use magical thinking when bad things happen, applying the law of “everything happens for a reason … When lacking a visible author, we end up crediting an invisible one — God, karma, destiny, whatever.”

This is also “psychologically useful,” because believing “in destiny helps render your life a coherent narrative, which infuses your goals with a greater sense of purpose.” Kenneth Pargament, a Bowling Green State University psychologist, published a study in which “students who saw a negative event as ‘part of God’s plan’ showed more growth in its aftermath. They became more open to new perspectives, more intimate in their relationships and more persistent in overcoming challenges.” Other laws of superstition include believing “that objects carry the ‘essences’ of previous owners … that symbolic objects (e.g., photographs) can summon what they represent … and the attribution of consciousness to inanimate objects.”

Airplane windows are rounded because of the catastrophic cracks resulting from square-edged portals in 1950s-era jetliners, reports Matt Ridley in a Wall Street Journal review of Henry Petroski’s To Forgive Design (4/11/12). That’s but one example of how design failure spawned innovation. Most of Henry’s other examples involve bridges, such as the one built in 1939 over the Tacoma Narrows in Washington State. The area was “thinly populated and heavy traffic was not expected,” so engineers designed “a two-lane bridge with a narrow sidewalk” that “was extremely narrow, light and shallow for its great length.”

This made sense until the winds kicked in and the bridge began to sway, “slowly at first, then gradually building to wild undulation — before finally collapsing.” The problem was that a bridge “so long, thin and light was almost bound to be too flexible to stand.” The solution, among other things, was to build “a new suspension bridge … with four lanes rather than two to reduce the length-to-width ratio.” The result was that the new bridge attracted “economic growth to the area” and “tolls rapidly retired its debt … within 50 years another was needed to handle the increasing traffic.”

Henry provides many other examples of how bridge failures led to improved designs. A “cantilever bridge over the St. Lawrence River” in Quebec, built in 1907, would have been “the world’s longest span,” but “it collapsed under construction, killing 75 workers.” Following the disaster, Canadian engineers wore “an iron pinkie ring” to remind themselves of the failure and recited a Rudyard Kipling poem, Hymn of the Breaking Strain, as a ritual reminder: “So when the buckled girder / Lets down the grinding span / The blame of loss, or murder, / Is laid upon the man. / Not on the stuff — the man!”

Tyler Cowen suggests that “if you want to eat like an economist, you should find a chef who doesn’t cook like one,” reports Graeme Wood in the Wall Street Journal (4/7/12). Tyler, an economics professor at George Mason University, is the author of An Economist Gets Lunch, “an eccentric, first-person hodgepodge of gastronomic thoughts, strategies and travel stories.” His best economic advice is to find restaurants where “the supplies are fresh, the suppliers are creative and the demanders are informed.” So, a good choice “would be a sushi bar near Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo, where fresh fish and discerning diners make selling bad sushi unviable as a business.”

Tyler also recommends “Thai restaurants attached to motels (more likely to be family-run and not desperate to make rent).” When going for Pakistani food, he advises looking for eateries featuring pictures of Mecca, because “the more aggressively religious the decor, the better it will be for the food.” It’s also a good sign if your fellow diners “are screaming at each other” or “pursuing blood feuds” as this would indicate that “people feel comfortable there and return frequently with their families.” Hopefully, they check their weapons at the door.

A fancy atmosphere, meanwhile, is “a sign that the restaurant cares about something other than what’s on the plate,” according to Tyler. “You want to see that the people eating there mean business,” he says. Tyler considers out pit barbecue to be “the greatest American innovation” but recommends eating barbecue “in towns of less than 50,000 people” and at restaurants “that open in the morning … since nothing signals commitment better than a willingness to spend nine hours overnight cooking meat next to a pit of fire.” Which, he says, shows “just how uneconomical true barbecue art can be.”