Rohit's Realm

Rohit Reviews: War and Peace

2012-03-12T22:17:52-07:00

For the benefit of those who have not had the insurmountable displeasure of interacting with me in person of late, I must admit that I have become somewhat fixated in recent months upon the so-called Mayan apocalypse and the prospect of world coming to an (unlamented) end on or about December 21, 2012 (the winter solstice). That's not to say I believe the world is coming to an end in nine months, because only lunatics and buffoons believe in such rubbish, but only that this prospect has caused me to contemplate the meaninglessness of life (alone and in the dark, of course) and consider the extent to which I have accomplished nothing more than I normally might. One natural question that follows from this line of thought is as follows: what would I regret not having accomplished if when I perished along with the rest of the wretched mass of humanity that torments this miserable planet like a biblical plague? The answer shouldn't be too hard to guess: I would regret having not gotten to Leo Tolstoy's 1869 epic, War and Peace.

And so, with heady thoughts of the world's end consuming me, I set out on January 1st of this year to accomplish at least this one goal in a life otherwise riddled with false starts and downright failures. Last night, I accomplished this goal, some nine weeks after I began, and below I briefly summarize some of my impressions on this vast, towering novel.

Where to begin when reviewing a novel that spans two decades and 1,250 pages—what Henry James described as a large loose baggy monster—is somewhat of a conundrum. War and Peace is, at its essence, a historical fiction—predominantly the story of three families, the Bolkonskys, the Rostovs, and the Bezukovs, as they navigate Russia during the Napoleonic Wars (approximately 1805–1812). At another level, it is Tolstoy's treatise on war and military history. And at yet another, it is an awesome and awesomely compelling tale of an entire people as their country descends into war.

It is hard not to devolve into raving praises for a novel that accomplishes so much so well, but having spent the better part of the past two months with this work, I would prefer here to focus on a couple areas I found to be problematic. Notably, length was not one of these. Yes, the novel is quite long and completing it will require more focus and diligence than is usually necessary for most other works, including other works of Russian literature. Given the numerous characters and parallel story lines, keeping on a schedule is all but necessary to keep from losing track of it all. But so what? It's worth it. I read about 50 pages or so a night and never felt that it was dragging.

That said, two areas I did find problematic were as follows: first, despite occupying some 1,250 pages of text, the novel failed at times to develop characters in depth that I was expecting; and second, perhaps as a consequence of the enormous breadth of the novel and focus on humanity broadly, the novel never engaged with philosophical questions that emerge in the character's lives (principally those of Pierre Bezukhov and Andrei Bolkonsky). Additionally, Tolstoy's ultimate conclusions on war (and peace) are not nearly as revolutionary today to someone living after the carnage and atrocities of the 20th century as they might have been to someone living in the late 19th century. At times, they even seem somewhat quaint.

Of these flaws, the most disappointing to me was the first. Although nearly a decade has elapsed since I read Tolstoy's other great work, Anna Karenina (on this trip to London, incidentally), that novel remains in mind one of the greatest and most moving portrayals of the depth of human emotion ever created. Just about everything one might feel in a lifetime is, I'd like to believe, covered in that novel. The fact that War and Peace failed to deliver with its characters in the same manner as Anna Karenina was therefore quite a let down.

I don't mean, however, to be too dour. Ultimately, this was still a book I'm very much glad I was able to finish before any untimely apocalypse could take me out and one I wholeheartedly recommend to all but the faint of heart. I just can't say it was the best Tolstoy I've read when I have read Anna Karenina. Four stars of five.

Handwringing on the Subject of E-Books

2012-02-02T05:18:46-08:00

Having committed most spare moments of the past month to making progress in Leo Tolstoy's massive 1869 tome, War and Peace, it seems only fitting to pause as I pass the approximate halfway point (end of Volume II, page 600 of 1224) and consider the vexing question of book format that has tormented me since the start of the e-ink revolution in late 2007. Although I bought a second generation Kindle shortly after its release in April 2009, and have since then occasionally used the thing to read books (as opposed to law articles), it has never replaced the physical format for me (as it has for many fellow techies I know). Indeed, both of my last two ill-advised book-buying binges have involved brick and mortar bookstores, and my version of War and Peace is the 2008 Vintage translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (easily my favorite Russian translators, incidentally).

As with most things in my sorry excuse for an existence, the question of why bothers me. Why haven't I abandoned the physical format yet (as I long did in music, TV, and movies)? E-books mean less clutter and less expense—what's not to love? Perhaps nothing. But I can think of at least three possible explanations as to why I—and many of my fellow bibliophiles—might not have made the leap to e-ink wholeheartedly: (1) books are intrinsically different than other media such that (a) format matters and (b) the physical format can be superior; (2) the utility people derive from pretension (i.e., others seeing your library) exceeds the cost of the clutter; or (3) we are relics of a soon to be bygone era on our way to waxing nostalgic about bookstores and paperback books much the way our parents' generation goes on about record stores and LPs.¹ Bear with me as I tackle each of these thoughts in turn. Or don't: it wouldn't be the first time I (or this third-rate site) have been abandoned, and it certainly won't be the last.

Are Books Different?

Distinguishing books from other media that have almost entirely escaped the physical world is a difficult enterprise. On the one hand, books (like music and movies) are just data easily translated to 1s and 0s and thus stored digitally. On the other hand, listening to music and watching movies are a passive form of entertainment whereas reading is active. Once I've popped a CD into its player, it is indistinguishable from a digital recording played off an iPod; the same is not true of a book, where physical manipulation of pages is required.

The issue becomes especially salient when reading a book like War and Peace, which is written in multiple languages and requires heavy annotation for modern readers. Between all the French and German dialogue left intact and translated in footnotes, and the end notes that explain obscure historical references, I imagine my edition of War and Peace would be essentially unreadable in a digital format. Accessing the end notes in the physical copy is irritating as it is, but having to jump back and forth to footnotes in the digital edition to understand dialogue that was half French and half English translated from the Russian would be absolutely unbearable. In fact, many of the Amazon reviewers make this exact point about the Kindle edition of the 2008 Vintage edition.

So, at the very least, we can conclude that (a) format can make a difference for books in a way it doesn't for passive media, and (b) in some instances at least, the physical format may be superior. What about cost? Again, the answer isn't clear. The venerable Wall Street Journal, for instance, noted (subscription required) in December that as publishers have begun to set their own prices (rather than the flat rates dictated by Amazon), the prices of e-books sometimes exceed the cost of the paperback version by $10 or more. No matter your commitment to minimalism and clutter-free living, that sort of premium is hard to justify paying.

The trouble with the format justification, however, is that it is too shortsighted. We are still early in the e-book revolution and with improving technology, it may be that format becomes irrelevant here too. A reasonable analogy might be the story of compression algorithms and music. In the mid 1990s, CDs still had worth because the 44.1 kHz that CD audio offered was usually vastly superior to the shit recordings available on the Internet. Fifteen years later, compression algorithms are such that we can have the same or better quality sound as CDs with same or less disk space as those crappy mid 1990s MP3s. Anyone who buys a CD today is a fool. And let's not even get started on lossless algorithms such as FLAC!

Thus, while the format argument might provide some solace at the moment, clearly another justification will be required to support my continued purchase of physical books, if not now, then soon.

How Much Is Pretension Really Worth?

Can pretension be that justification? Certainly, it has long justified far worse on this dreadful site. But after reading an article (subscription required) late last year in the (consummately pretentious) New Yorker, I am no longer convinced. In a nutshell, the author in that article, who is tasked with packing up his deceased father-in-law's library, asks what is the value of a private library? His ultimate conclusion is that, maybe, it's not much, and certainly not as much as we who collect vast quantities of dead trees might like to think it is.

Sad as I am to admit it, the author's arguments really resonated me after some reflection. What would my library say to someone tasked with packing up all my shit if I were to get hit by a bus tomorrow (or end it all after the 49ers or Cal suffer yet another devastating loss)? Would they be impressed by all the languages I know how to code (as evidenced by the various O'Reilly books on the subject) and all the Russian literature I had consumed before my inopportune death? Or would they silently curse me for not having cleaned up my own shit before my untimely demise and conclude that I was just some pretension jerk off who didn't know how to code half the languages he had books for and who hadn't read more than a quarter of the books he owned? I mean, seriously, what kind of asshole actually owns Aron Nimzowitsch's My System?

This compelling argument combined with the facts that (1) I live in a broom closet in Midtown, (2) rarely have anyone over to my place to witness my pretension as a consequence, and (3) move far more often than I would like, makes it rather obvious that pretension is not, in fact, worth it.

Am I a Relic?

Which brings me to the most likely explanation: I (and many of my generation) are relics of a bygone era. As I noted last year, a new generation of pant-shitting ingrates is already among us. Will that generation relish the calm weekend afternoons browsing through bookstore shelves the way I do? Hard to see it happening with all these newfangled smartphones and social networks and sexts.

So, maybe this is the time we stop asking why and just accept that we're become our parents, at least in the generational relic sense. To truly become our parents, we'd have to engage in a sixty year project of self-righteousness and hypocrisy, inflate an unsustainable entitlement state that we consciously chose to habitually underfund, bankrupt the world, fuck up the family unit through endemic selfishness, and then leave our children holding the bag on the whole goddamn mess. But that's a story for another day.

* * *

All the bullshit and rambling aside, what can I conclude after this verbal diarrhea of an entry? Two things: first, as long as format is an issue, I'm going to continue to buy paper copies of certain types of books (mostly older or complicated ones) while moving to e-books for just about everything new; and second, publishers ought to rejoice because those older or complicated books that are generally available for free on e-readers as a consequence of being out of copyright are precisely the ones for which a physical format (with its superior annotation) actually makes sense. The irony is rich—even the Baby Boomers couldn't have planned it better.

^ ¹ Full disclosure: I own both turntables and LPs. They sound different, and in some cases, better than digital audio. That doesn't mean that I support LPs as the principal medium of music delivery, however. Have you ever had to carry around a bunch of LPs? It's not fun.

Some Thoughts on Sports Allegiances

2012-01-22T10:09:16-08:00

Obsessive allegiances to sports teams have always mystified me, even as I myself hold and act upon these obsessive allegiances. This most worthless of sites, for instance, has long documented my ire and despair over the trials and tribulations of the ever faltering Cal Golden Bears. But as I myself observed some years back following an especially devastating failure by my alma mater that nearly brought me to tears, the notion of caring enough to weep about a sports institution whose only relation to you is that it represents your undergraduate university is difficult to explain—at least as a rational matter. The notion that one might care the same way about a team whose only relation is even more tenuous—that it represents a city which you may have once called home—is downright preposterous.

All these rational thoughts notwithstanding, each August I inevitably get excited for the upcoming college football season (and by October, am usually reduced to despair by atrocious quarterback play). Worse still, I would have been getting similarly excited about the NFL each year, but for nearly a decade, the team I've long rooted for—the San Francisco 49ers—was stuck in a rut of horribleness that actually made it seem like Cal had a better chance of getting to the Rose Bowl than the 49ers to a playoff game.¹ One might think that after a decade of next to no expectations, my allegiance to the 49ers might have lessened. Instead, hours away from the NFC Championship, I again find myself anxiously awaiting the game—and wondering why it is that I care so much.

For one, I don't even live in San Francisco anymore. Indeed, nearly five years have elapsed since I last lived in San Francisco. What possible importance could that city's team hold for me now, especially when I live thousands of miles away in a city with two teams competing in every major professional sport? The only response I have to that eminently reasonable line of thought is this: old allegiances die hard. And my allegiance to the 49ers is as old as they come for me, dating back some 21 years and long before I even knew that Cal and Berkeley were the same thing.

Although I spent most of my (surly) youth in (the) Orange County, we lived in the Bay Area for a couple years in the early 1990s, around the time I became aware of professional sports. The 49ers had just transitioned from Joe Montana to Steve Young at that point and remained relatively strong. Three seasons of NFC Championship appearances against the (much loathed) Dallas Cowboys, culminating in a Super Bowl victory in 1995 pretty much sealed it for me. I would always be a 49ers fan after that.

So, I followed them as a kid. Does that explain it? Perhaps, in the same way it explains why Cal football has been important to me over the years: it's been an unwavering constant across time zones, schools, cities, and careers. But I also liked watching the Bulls as a kid (who didn't?) and the NY Rangers (Mark Messier!). I haven't seen a Bulls game in years, and lost interest in both the Rangers and hockey generally after the '94 lockout. These teams mean nothing to me now, whereas the 49ers continue to mean a lot. Why?

Having rambled on for the previous few paragraphs, I realize that question remains as salient as ever. And I still have no clue as to its answer (which, of course, bothers me to no end). But perhaps sometimes there are no answers in life. So, I guess all I can say is this: Go Niners!

^ ¹ Realistically, this belief was also totally misguided. The last 49ers' last playoff appearance before this season was in 2002; Cal, meanwhile, hasn't made it to the Rose Bowl since 1958 (and hasn't won since 1937). The two can't even be compared.

Rohit Reviews: Notes from Underground

2012-01-02T16:29:57-08:00

I am a sick man . . . I am a wicked man. An unattractive man. I think my liver hurts. With those opening sentences, Fyodor Dostoevsky's 1864 novella Notes from Underground joins the pantheon of books with awesome opening lines, alongside such masterpieces as Anna Karenina, A Tale of Two Cities (review here), Pride and Prejudice, and Huckleberry Finn. And like its compatriots just mentioned, Notes did not disappoint beyond its opening lines.

Considering that Notes is often regarded as the first existential novel, it has, unsurprisingly, long been on my list of books to read. But for whatever reason, it never was a priority, and given the length and density of other works of Russian literature (including a few by Dostoevsky himself), the almost absurdly short Notes, which clocks in at only 131 pages, always seemed to fall by the wayside. That is, until my second ill-advised book-buying binge of 2011. But length can be deceiving: despite its rather skimpy appearance, the novel still packs a rather impressive intellectual punch—and this time, without the 200 pages or so of exposition usually endemic to Russian novels.

Notes from Underground is told in two parts: the first, written in the present (i.e., the early 1860s) is a rambling diatribe seemingly taken from the diary of a forty-year-old man living on the margins of St Petersburg society that attacks the determinism and socialism of Dostoevsky's contemporaries in mid nineteenth century Russia, and in particular, N.G. Chernyshevsky's 1863 utopian novel, What is to be Done? The second part involves three misadventures from the underground man's younger days in the 1840s involving an officer who won't acknowledge him, his classmates who loathe him, and a prostitute whom he torments.

How can a man of consciousness have the slightest respect for himself? inquires the underground man early on in Part One. And as that Part progresses, we come to learn of the underground man and his theories on life—he is delusional, narcissistic, and filled with anxiety, despair, misanthropy, self-loathing, and paranoia—in short, he is one of the world's first existential antiheroes and an eminently recognizable character of even our modern existence. Given his isolation, the underground man can offer us insight on both the human condition and purported theories of utopia: how can a utopian vision be accurate when humanity is so wretched, so irrational, so stupid? asks our underground man in Part One; and we can't help but agree. People really are the worst.

Part Two then applies those themes and qualities in three anecdotes that are simultaneously horrifying and hilarious. We follow the underground man as he tries to exact revenge on an adversary who does not know he exists; then as he invites himself to a dinner of people who hate him (and who he hates), only to humiliate himself; and finally, to a brothel where he lectures a young prostitute about her impending death and unlamented fate, and then invites her to visit his house. Mocked by his servant, loathed by his acquaintances, and full of unflinching superiority, the underground man (and perhaps, all of humanity) is painted in Part Two as inexplicably egotistical and breathtakingly irrational—painfully, pathetically human, in other words.

As I mentioned above, despite its length, this novel did not disappoint. On the contrary, I very much enjoyed it. Besides raising rather profound questions, it also presents with some tremendous insights on both life and our place in it. And quite certainly, later existentialists used Notes as a springboard. For instance, hints of both Sartre's and Camus's consideration of free will in The Age of Reason (review here) and The Stranger, respectively, are found in the ramblings of the underground man.

But what makes for good intellectual fodder doesn't necessarily make for a great way to open the year. That's probably for the best, however; I wouldn't want any misplaced positivity attendant to the start of this new year to compromise my misanthropy and self-loathing. After all, as the underground man himself notes: Every decent man of our time is and must be a coward and a slave. Five stars of five.

Year in Review, 2011

2011-12-31T15:24:04-08:00

Well, dear readers, it would appear that both you and I have managed successfully to keep the existential demons at bay for yet another dismal year, undeterred in our never ending pursuit of nothingness. Whether that is an accomplishment or a most miserable development, I leave for you to decide.

Rather than spread holiday cheer this year in an uncharacteristic display of misguided merriment (as I have been want to do in the past), however, I thought I might take a moment to comment on the state of this most dismal site as it charges on (futilely) into its tenth year of existence. Yes, you read that correctly: it's been ten years. Hard to imagine, really.

And while the state of its author has not much changed in that time—I remain as unmoored in a turbulent sea of loneliness, despair, and the like as ever—this site has taken a definite tumble, both in intellectual caliber and technical adequacy. I can't much help the former; tacit failure is largely what this site represents, after all. But I can and do intend to remedy the latter, probably sometime in the first or second quarter of 2012. (It's important to have goals.) So stay tuned for a better platform by which I will deliver my usual enlightenment.

Oh, and Happy New Year. Be sure to enjoy the festivities tonight. If the Mayans were right, it'll be this planet's last.

Rohit Reviews: This Side of Paradise

2011-12-27T23:41:39-08:00

Only a few days ago, I lamented the slowing of my reading pace caused by what I deemed the twin malignancies of overwork and ill-conceived travel. The holidays, however, have brought some spare time and today I wrapped up the first of four new books purchased in yet another ill-advised book-buying binge last week in Brooklyn. Compared to Midnight's Children, F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise was a breeze of a read that I could most likely have finished in a day had it not been for other commitments. Having read and enjoyed The Great Gatsby a couple times (once in high school and again in college), I had rather high expectations for Fitzgerald's 1920 foray into the literary world at the tender age of twenty-three. Unfortunately, the novel ended up being somewhat of a disappointment.

This Side of Paradise is the story of Amory Blaine, a young man from a well-to-do Midwestern family, from the time he is a child to sometime after he has graduated from college. Presented in three parts, the novel interweaves narrative text with poetry, songs, stage directions, and excerpts of letters to document Amory's coming of age, his search for identity, and his various romantic dalliances. Through the various episodes, we see Amory find and lose love, confront the social strictures of boarding school and college, and combat the restlessness that accompanied his generation.

Before dealing with the subject of my disappointment, I suppose it behooves me to mention the positives of this novel. For one, the hints of what made Gatsby such an impressive feat are already present in Fitzgerald's debut. His prose is descriptive, evocative, and breezy—at times, it even sparkles. For another, This Side of Paradise captures the ennui of youth rather well, whether in the search for meaning or the intensity of first love.

That last point, however, is also probably why I had a tough time relating to this novel. For whatever reason, I missed it when I was in my own adolescence, and reading it now at age 28, it was hard not to see it as a rather shallow and inexperienced effort. To begin with, Amory wasn't the most sympathetic protagonist, and considering the autobiographical nature of the novel, neither was Fitzgerald. Superficial, arrogant, narcissistic, and lazy, Amory embodied a rather loathsome character type also on display in Gatsby, with the difference being that in This Side of Paradise, Fitzgerald failed to evoke our sympathies. Nor do any of Amory's love interests fare much better. Seductive, but fickle and flighty, the women of this novel come out even worse than Amory, if that's possible.

More generally, I found the characters were rather undeveloped and their relationships insubstantial. The episodic and meandering nature of the novel did not help in this regard. The book also lags toward the end after Amory's final romantic encounter (with Eleanor). Fitzgerald clearly struggled to close the novel, and the second to last scene with the formerly rich Amory spewing socialist drivel to his college friend's father was both unbelievable and rather misplaced.

Ultimately, its sophomoric nature notwithstanding, I would still recommend this book—but just barely. If you are a fan of Fitzgerald, this will be an interesting read to see the prototypes of his latter, memorable characters. And as a study in the listlessness of the Lost Generation, this book might be deemed a great success. But don't kid yourself: this is no Gatsby and recognizing that before you start will probably allow you to avoid the disappointment I experienced. Three stars of five.

Rohit Reviews: Midnight's Children

2011-12-24T23:00:32-08:00

After an inspired spell of reading over the summer, the autumn again brought the twin (self-imposed) malignancies of overwork and ill-conceived travel that have long plagued me (and this site). Naturally, as a consequence, the feverish pace at which I had been consuming books ground to an unseemly halt. But as I had quietly committed to finishing the four books I bought in an ill-advised book-buying binge in July before the end of the year, I spent the last few weeks in a mad dash to finish the last—and by far, the longest and most difficult—of the lot: Salman Rushdie's 1981 Booker Prize winner, Midnight's Children. We are nothing, after all, without our entirely arbitrary commitments to ourselves. (I might be nothing regardless of my entirely arbitrary commitments to myself, but that's a story for another day.)

Midnight's Children is the somewhat fantastical tale of Saleem Sinai, one of 1,001 children born with supernatural powers in India between midnight and 1 am on August 15, 1947, the day of India's independence from British colonial rule. Saleem, one of two born at exactly the stroke of midnight, is, along with his nemesis born at the same instance, endowed with the most potent powers of the bunch, and by virtue of this historical accident, his life becomes inextricably intertwined with the country of his birth.

Though narrated by Saleem in the first person to his caretaker and future wife as a sort of autobiography, the novel opens with his Kashmiri maternal grandfather some thirty-two years before Saleem's birth. From there, Saleem's narrative moves slowly to the present, recounting for us the history of both his family and his country. Although seemingly meandering at times, the novel is never without direction or purpose. And it couldn't be otherwise. At some level, we already know what will happen given Saleem's early proclamation that his life would track that of his country, born at the very same time.

A stark departure from the books I have been reading recently, Midnight's Children has a rich magic realism about it that I found to be initially difficult to conquer. As with another epic of the magic realism genre, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, the novel moves in fits and starts, blurs past and present, introduces a dizzying number of characters, and engages remorselessly with supernatural phenomenon. But whereas García Márquez's prose is intoxicating and spellbinding, Rushdie's is atmospheric and evocative: reading Midnight's Children often felt as though one was walking around Bombay Mumbai or New Delhi (both cities in which I have spent some time as a child).

Having often lamented the lack of plot in postmodern works, moreover, I was particularly pleased to find that this novel had a rather well-developed one. Fantastical and imaginative though it may be, it is nevertheless fundamentally a thoroughly encompassing story of one family across three generations in twentieth century India. At another level, it is a recounting of the history of the nation as it transformed from a colonial appendage of Britain to a modern nation between the 1910s and the 1970s. Rushdie's ability to seamlessly and powerfully interweave the two is a rather significant accomplishment in this reader's opinion.

Putting aside my general positive reaction to this novel for a moment, I must point out a few caveats. First, as with all magic realism, the hypnotic nature of this sort of writing makes it a rather difficult read. If you're not paying close attention, you are almost certain to miss crucial details. That was part of the reason it took me so long to finish this book—it's not the easiest book to read right before bed after you've spent twelve plus hours churning legal documents.

Second, and perhaps more critically, it is at a very foundational level a novel that requires some understanding of Indian history and culture to fully appreciate (far more so than, say, works by Lahiri). In both respects, I benefited from my origins—others may not be so fortunate.

On the historical front, many significant figures of twentieth century Indian history make an appearance; understanding their role at some level requires knowing who they are and what they did. Perhaps more importantly, Rushdie sprinkles his prose heartily with Hindi and Urdu expressions and idioms as well as Indian styles and mannerisms. Part of what makes the evocation of the country so powerful is the aptitude with which Rushdie presents both Saleem's monologues and the various character's dialogues. I would think that those who have not spent any time in India would be at a distinct disadvantage in this regard when it comes to understanding the humor.

Finally, without giving too much of the book away, I was a bit disappointed in its conclusion. With Midnight's Children and especially with the midnight's children, Rushdie took on a rather large project. The fact that he could not deliver fully—in particular, that the midnight's children as a class would not achieve the role in the novel that the title might have suggested they ought to have had—may not be surprising, but it is nonetheless somewhat disheartening.

Caveats notwithstanding, however, I definitely enjoyed this novel. Although it's not the quickest or the simplest of books, the good ones rarely are. Having already mentioned One Hundred Years of Solitude, I would be remiss if I didn't leave you with yet another similarity—a prophesy much like that of Melquíades that rather aptly sums up the novel:

Newspapers praise him, two mothers raise him!
Bicyclists love him—but crowds will shove him!
Sisters will weep; cobra will creep . . .
Washing will hide him—voices will guide him!
Friends mutilate him—blood will betray him
Spittoons will brain him—doctors will drain him—
Jungle will claim him—wizards reclaim him!
Soldiers will try him—tyrants will fry him . . .
He will have sons without having sons!
He will be old before he is old!
And he will die . . . before he is dead.

Four stars of five.

Recent Mod Perl Woes

2011-11-28T22:03:31-08:00

I would imagine that most of you (insofar as there are any of you) who read this most miserable of blogs do so with some kind of feed reader. And as you should: the code running this decrepit site has not been updated in almost five years—an eternity in the Internet era. One problem with running such an old site is that when things break, they break badly. That was precisely what happened this past weekend when what should have been a routine security upgrade of my webserver (Apache) instead took out my whole web presence.

And while I'd like to say I have fixed things, alas it isn't so. I have merely hacked them so that they are again functional; a fix, unfortunately, is still missing. For anyone experiencing issues recently with Apache and mod_perl, I have outlined the issue below. (That past sentence, by the way, should be taken as a sign for most—or all—of you to skip what comes next.)

To start, what were the symptoms? Due to various security vulnerabilities in recent months, I had updated Apache to its latest version (2.2.21). At the time, I was also running mod_perl 2.0.5 and Perl 5.10.1. After the upgrade, which went through without incident, I went to restart Apache, which is when the trouble began. After checking the httpd.conf syntax, the startup script froze up. A quick top revealed that the httpd process was rapidly jumping to 100% of the CPU and then sitting there until terminated manually. Somewhere, something was freezing up as Apache started up. Since I had not changed anything in the code or the configuration, I was mystified—and more than a little worried. When Apache won't turn on, things are quite a bit more fucked than usual.

The logs, moreover, revealed nothing at all—no errors, no warnings, not even a goddamn informational entry. Having spent almost a decade with these systems, I almost immediately recognized this insanely obscure issue as a likely mod_perl problem. Commenting out the the "perl_module" directive confirmed my suspicions—Apache started without incident in that situation. Problem is, this entire site is based on mod_perl; without it, there was no Realm.

My initial thoughts were that the new Apache wasn't working with Perl 5.10.1 and mod_perl. So I went on a lengthy process of moving to Perl 5.14 (which basically involved rebuilding hundreds of packages on my server). Hours later, nothing. Still the same problem.

Next step was to try tracing system calls to see where things were jamming up. I used FreeBSD's truss utility and discovered that the parent process was never forking; the fork command would be called followed by pgetgrp and then nothing.

After lots of googling, I found some hints that perhaps Perl 5.14 and mod_perl 2.0.5 did not work with threads enabled. This again led me down not one but two rebuilding wild goose chases—recompiling everything to not use threads and then recompiling everything to use Perl 5.12 (with threads). Still no dice.

Nearly four days into the bug hunt, I finally decided tonight that I would need to go line by line in the configuration file to see where mod_perl was choking. This lead me to discover that neither the PerlSetEnv nor PerlSwitches -Mlib directives were working as expected (I use PerlOptions +Parent to have a separate Perl interpreter and namespace for each virtual host). I finally discovered this old thread. Adding the <Perl> </Perl> blocks prior to the environment directives, however, broke the PerlSwitches -Mlib directive (since mod_perl was already instantiated by the <Perl> block).

The temporary solution: a two-stage hack. First, setup a sitecustomize.pl to replace the PerlSwitches -Mlib functionality. Then, add the empty <Perl> block and voilà—Apache will start once again. Clearly, this is not a permanent solution; among other things, it introduces hard coded hacks into what was supposed to be site neutral code.

But at the same time, I'm not sure finding an elegant solution to keeping a code base that is nearly a decade old alive is worth my time either. These sorts of infuriating bugs are a poignant reminder of both the bad old days (debugging excruciatingly obscure mod_perl errors) and why I actually need to find the time to move this site to a modern infrastructure. Hopefully, between now and then, I will not have to spend too much time with my dear old friend of the past decade—mod_perl.

My Romantic Quest: From Cynicism to Nihilism (Part 3)

2011-11-11T00:20:57-08:00

Part of maintaining a ridiculous blog for nearly a decade, I suppose, is having to confront the ridiculous assertions one has made on said blog in one's (ridiculous) youth. In my case, one such ridiculous assertion in particular might be salient today to those readers who have followed me over the years (and, of course, to those unlucky few who have had the distinct displeasure of having made my acquaintance in person): that I would get married on a triplet date, and more specifically, November 11, 2011 (or 11/11/11). Alas, today is the day of my (Internet) wedding and the bride to be has yet to show—they never do.

Could it be that I was stood up? Could it be that I have only one chance left to marry—12/12/12—until I am old and gray (2/22/22)? Could my storied romantic quest (to ruin my life) have ended in such a failure? Say it ain't so!

Unfortunately, dear readers, so it is. November 11, 2011 (11/11/11!) has come and soon it shall be gone. The only thing left will be my broken heart—and the memories of all those who would have never married me on 11/11/11, let alone 12/12/12. (Obviously, anyone inclined to marry me—God save them—would be more likely to do so on 11/11/11, a Friday, than 12/12/12, a Wednesday, for reasons that ought to be obvious.)

Luckily, though, the passing of 11/11/11 shall not mark the end of my (necessarily futile) romantic quest (to ruin my life). With the Realm (and my income) back after a lengthy and sad law school hiatus, I am once again able to offer women everywhere anything they want.

I would expand upon that notion, but what I am able to offer women hasn't changed much since I was last gainfully employed:

My sizable annual electronics and alcohol budgets reappropriated for you during the course of our relationship.

My uninterrupted attention, loosely translated as romance—flowers, candy, love letters, and all kinds of other stupid shit sappy people care about.

Dedication as the person to whom I owe it all if I ever become rich and/or famous. There would, of course, also be monetary compensation for the former.

The warm, fuzzy feeling of having played a vital role in my romantic quest to ruin my life.

Plus ça change, plus c'est pareil. So, what do you say dear (female) readers? 12/12/12?

Introducing LawTeX

2011-10-24T21:29:27-07:00

Well, dear readers, it has been a long while—almost two months to be precise—and if it were not to ring utterly hollow, I might even be willing to apologize for my absence. But, as with many things in this (necessarily futile) life of mine, I am over apologies. Having last left you with a discussion of video games, moreover, I see no reason why I shouldn't mark my return with a discussion of something far more esoteric: LaTeX, or more specifically, the software I developed in law school to facilitate the use of LaTeX in a world dominated by (loathsome) WYSIWIG products. (That, by the way, would be the cue for most—if not all—of you to stop reading if you hadn't already.)

For those who are still with me after that (and I sincerely hope, for your sake, that you're not), allow me to turn back the clock a few years—four to be precise—when I was just entering law school. One of the first problems I confronted as a 1L was how I was going to take notes in class and on my reading assignments. Well aware of the horrors of the Socratic method, I wanted a note system that was searchable, portable, and pretty. Unfortunately, these criteria essentially ruled out almost all extant methods of note taking: handwritten notes did not meet any of the criteria, and after having switched to LaTeX (which for the thoroughly uninformed is a typesetting and document preparation system based on Donald Knuth's TeX) in my junior year of college, the thought of returning to the bad old days of Microsoft products was thoroughly revolting. What was a *nix-minded person to do?

Taking notes directly in LaTeX was, of course, not an option—the markup was far too complicated given the pace that lectures moved. And using strictly ASCII text for notes seemed untenable—text documents, though portable and searchable, are ugly and difficult to read. What I needed was a system to take notes rapidly in LaTeX. The Internet, however, provided no guidance and all I was left with, as is often the case in this necessarily futile life of mine, was an overwhelming sense of dejection and despair. And from that dejection and despair was born LawTeX, a set of tools and templates to facilitate the use of LaTeX in a law school environment.

As I set out in greater detail on the project page, note taking in LawTeX essentially consists of three steps: (1) notes are rapidly composed in a standard text editor (I like Emacs, though I wouldn't begrudge you if you were a vim person) using a limited markup language modeled on Wiki markdown; (2) these notes are compiled (more on this below) into LaTeX source code; and (3) the LaTeX source code is combined with templates and stylesheets and processed using standard LaTeX tools (such as pdflatex) to create beautifully typeset documents. Simply, yes? Well, at least in theory.

Those versed in compiler theory might have paused at Step 2 above. And with good reason: the term compile is ambiguous there. Did he mean compiling as in converting or transliterating the markdown text to LaTeX or did he mean compiling as in the Dragon Book? And, for the love of all that is holy, why would anyone ever mean the latter?

Actually, with LawTeX, I mean both. Having decided to take notes in an (evolving) subset of markdown in my first week of 1L, I had to quickly formulate a mechanism for converting these marked down notes into something useful. And by quickly, I mean a matter of days. Writing a full fledged compiler was not an option at the time, so I took the quick and dirty approach, using my first love—Perl. What came out of that effort was a fairly functional script that transliterated the marked down text into LaTeX.

As my law school career progressed, however, I came to find the transliteration approach to be problematic. Rapidly composing text made the likelihood of typos in the raw note text (and with the markdown) much more likely. And since the transliteration didn't attempt to check syntax or grammar of the raw text file, the errors would instead be passed into the LaTeX source, which would then have to be debugged when pdflatex choked.

Around the fall of my 2L year, therefore, I decided to start work on a compiler for LawTeX's markup language. This project (as much else in that time) quickly stagnated. After picking up some steam last fall, it again fell by the wayside as (Wall Street) work began to occupy more of my time.

And that's where things remained until last week when I got an e-mail from a current law student inquiring about the status of this project. Realizing that I should at least make available the bits that were functional (and the real compiler is definitely not), I finally posted: the transliteration Perl script, lawtextr; a template for incorporating the converted source code; and a couple stylesheets. All are available under a BSD-style license, which makes them free—as in beer.

Chances are, very few will find use of this stuff. But if you do and especially if you find any bugs, do drop me a line. And maybe some day when I finish that damn compiler, I'll have more to add to page.