How do you follow a novel like Fleishman Is in Trouble? If Taffy Brodesser-Akner knew what people loved so much about her debut she would have replicated it, she says. The story of a newly divorced hepatologist discovering the joys of dating apps while trying to look after his two kids when his ex-wife goes missing on a yoga retreat, Fleishman Is in Trouble was one of the smartest, funniest novels of recent years. It was made into a hit TV series with a starry cast, for which Brodesser-Akner wrote the screenplay. But writing her second novel almost drove her “insane”. Long Island Compromise might be described as a Jewish take on The Corrections (Brodesser-Akner has read Jonathan Franzen’s 2001 novel four times); a whopping family saga about money and the American Dream, following three generations of the Fletcher family as they find, and then lose, their fortune. A TV version is already under way. “Writing for me is not generally hard,” Brodesser-Akner admits, “and every sentence in this book was a hard one.”
From the Greek words pan (all) and psyche (soul), panpsychism is the view, held by many peoples around the world since antiquity, that consciousness resides in everything at least to some degree — that it’s a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of the physical universe. Animals have it, plants have it, and even single cells have it. That doesn’t mean your chair is conscious — but, according to some panpsychists, the atoms inside it might be. How exactly that could work is a philosophical puzzle (more on that soon).
As you can imagine, scientists have spent the past century mocking this idea. Fair enough — it does sound wacky at first. And yet, this theory of consciousness, though still controversial, is now enjoying a resurgence as mounting scientific evidence suggests that you don’t need a complex brain to feel, remember, learn, or think. In fact, you may not need a brain at all.
Not long ago, on a Times podcast, Paul Krugman breezily announced (and if we can’t trust Paul Krugman in a breezy mood, whom can we trust?) that, though it’s hard to summarize the economic consequences of the pandemic with certainty, one sure thing is that it killed off ties. He meant not the strong social ties beloved of psychologists, nor the weak ties beloved of sociologists, nor even the railroad ties that once unified a nation. No, he meant, simply, neckties—the long, colored bands of fabric that men once tied around their collars before going to work or out to dinner or, really, to any kind of semi-formal occasion. Zoom meetings and remote work had sealed their fate, and Krugman gave no assurance that they would ever come back.
“Long Island Compromise” is an exploration of intergenerational trauma and an unabashed critique of income inequality — Thorstein Veblen’s “The Theory of the Leisure Class” is even invoked — but it is also uproariously funny.