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Do you really know how to faire la bise in Marseille? In Lille? Which cheek do you start on? And how many times? This ritual and its name, faire la bise, can be incomprehensible to those who are unfamiliar with this bisou or bcot, so familiar and routine at the same time.

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Its to better explore this phenomenon that I decided to map it in my forthcoming book, Parlez-vous [les] franais? Atlas des expressions de nos rgions (Armand Colin, October 2019). Thanks to an online survey system set up a few years ago, I was able to collect information from internet users about their use of French. This allowed me to clarify the area of extension and vitality of a number of linguistic regionalisms, and to examine, in a new light, the debate of pain au chocolat vs. chocolatine.

The hypotheses on the origins of la bise are numerous, and often unverifiable. Is it the ritualization of ancestral behaviors, such as sniffing each other to recognize each other or reproducing an emotional expression related to childhood? On this point, historians, anthropologists and other specialists in human behavior have not reached a consensus. Its said that faire la bise (or se faire un schmoutz, se biser, or donner une baise) is a habit that many Anglo-Saxons believe is typically French.

But its not: people also kiss each other in the countries in Southern Europe, in the Catholic or Orthodox tradition, in Russia, in some Arab countries and sub-Saharan Africa. Historically, it would seem that the ritual dates back to Antiquity, and that it has had its ups and downs in the history of modern humanity, sometimes prohibited, sometimes valued.

The question becomes even more complex when we try to take into account the context (saying hello, saying goodbye, wishing each other a happy new year, etc.), the family relationship of the people involved (la bise seems to have long been reserved for familial relations), or their gender. La bise between men has long been stigmatized.

What is certain is that this ritual has been regularly stirring the internet for the past fifteen years or so. Part of the discussion is about the number of kisses given. The question first caused a buzz in 2003, following the launch of the combiendebises website.

The ritual also prompted British stand-up comedian and expat Paul Taylor to post a humorous video about it, which quickly won over audiences (more than three million views on YouTube).

The data we collected as part of our surveys conducted between 2016 and 2019 allowed us to provide new insights to continue the debate.

Our first map was created using the responses of more than 18,600 internet users who reported having spent most of their youth in Belgium, France or Switzerland; and to whom the question How many bises do you do to greet someone close to you? Internet users were asked if they made one, two, three, four, or five or more kisses. We calculated the percentage of responses for each area in Belgium, France and Switzerland.

For each of these area, we used the answer that was most frequently the response:

In Belgium, most internet users reported a single kiss (rates are around 100%), as in the northern part of the Finistre department (Morlaix and Brest, where rates are a little lower, 70%). It seems that the demands of the organization demandingla bise be a single kiss, Groupement de rhabilitation de lusage de la bise unique, have been heard!

Mostly, the French give two kisses, except in Languedoc and in the southern part of the former Rhne-Alpes region. Its a behavior that can be found in French-speaking Switzerland. In the northern part of France, the yellow areas indicate where there are still four kisses. However, analysis of the data shows that, in these regions, the four kisses are highly competitive with the two kisses. Kissing four times is a more common habit among older people than younger people. The future will tell us if the four kisses will continue to be reproduced in the years to come, or if they will become a distant memory.

The origin of these differences remains unknown. An internet user pointed out to me that the three kiss-region covered approximately the Protestant area of the 17th century, and that they would have been a sign of recognition of the Holy Trinity. For the four kisses, the idea would seem to be that everyone can kiss each others cheeks.

The second debate concerns the cheek that should be turned first when you faire la bise. Of the just over 11,000 participants we interviewed, 15% of respondents admitted not knowing or replied both could be first. We excluded the responses of these participants, and generated the following map based on the remaining responses:

We can see that the territory is roughly divided into two parts. In southeastern and eastern France, the left cheek is turned first. In the other hemisphere, it is the right. However, it should be noted that there are two islets in each of these large regions: in the blue zone, French-speaking Switzerland stands out. In the brown zone, Haute-Normandie is the one that stands apart.

Again, it is difficult to explain the rationale for such a distribution, as the area drawn on the map does not correspond to any other known area that would explain it.

Finally, it is a less well-known fact, the way we call the act of faire la bise (and sometimes more generally, the act of faire un bisou to say hello or not) varies from one region to another. Our surveys allowed us to accurately map the area of seven regional verbs and expressions.

Most of the words on this map belong to the same family as the contemporary French word bise (of which bisou is a derivative). The verb se biser, for example, has now emerged in conversational usage, but it is found in the writings of many early 20th-century authors (notably Raymond Queneau), and it still appears in some dictionaries (noted as a familiar term). It is still used in west-central France, where it coexists with the se biger variant, probably passed into regional French through the local dialects (Poitou, Angevin and/or Tourangeau) that were still commonly spoken by our ancestors a century ago.

In Belgium, faire une baise quelquun is not sexual: the word baise corresponds to the noun kiss (we find it in the somewhat outdated word baisemain). The baisse variant, which is found in part of Picardy, is also related to the local form of the word for kiss in the dialects of this region.

The verb se boujouter, typical of Normandy, is built on the word boujou, which is the dialectal form of the French word bonjour in this region of France (so its nothing to do with the cheek).

In French-speaking Switzerland, the word bec, which is used in the expression se faire un becquer, is a phrase formed from the verb becquer, which is still used in French, and which essentially means peck with the beak, then take by the beak. We can compare bec to its equivalent in familiar French bcot (which also created the verb bcotter, se faire des embous, sembrasser amoureusement).

As for the word schmoutz, which is found in the phrase se faire un schmoutz, it is of German origin and means bisou in French (or smacker in English). It is exclusively used in the departments of France where Germanic dialects were still spoken for the most part at the beginning of the 20th century.

In a territory as large as that of the French-speaking world of Europe, it is not surprising that, from one region to another, the greetings, politeness or denominations of this or that object or action dont go by the same name. In the past, in the days of our great-grandparents, dialects provided this community function. French has now taken over, but online social networks make it possible to highlight this beautiful diversity, much to the great pleasure of linguists.

This article was published in partnership with Le Point.

Featured image:Stock Photosfrom Iakov Filimonov /Shutterstock

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From "Se Biser" to "Se Boujouter": the Regional Variations on "La Bise" in France - Frenchly

Prior to migration, animals that migrate experience multiple physiological and behavioral changes. Ethologists adopted the German word zugunruhe, which means migratory restlessness to describe this phenomenon.

Aside from dog and cat owners who head south in the winter with their pets and back north in the summer, we seldom think of migration as a factor in companion animal behavior. When most of us think of migration, we think of birds and monarch butterflies making their semi-annual flights.

However, many species migrate. Although some migrations are long, others may be relatively short.

The seasonal migrations of deer between lower and higher elevations is a familiar example of the latter. But periods of restlessness and anxiety may precede these shorter migrations, too.

Food preferences may shift; animals may eat more or different foods, or cache food in their burrows. And even though some practitioners and many companion animal owners may be unfamiliar with the terminology, many have experienced the direct or indirect effects of zugunruhe.

Recall that establishing the physical and mental territory is a top animal priority. During these periods of transition, both of these are unstable. Animals who functioned in a more solitary or semi-solitary manner in the warmer weather may group together for warmth and protection from predators as the weather becomes colder and food supplies more limited.

While all this occurs, its also increasingly likely that at least some of this activity will occur on pet owners property or on the trails or in the parks where they take their dogs for exercise. Ironically, some of these wild animals may adapt to areas populated by people and their pets much faster than people and pets may adapt to the presence wildlife.

Called human-induced rapid evolution change (HIREC), this population of wildlife inhabiting and even thriving in human habitats has grown so rapidly it warrants its own specialty, urban ecology. It also resulted in a recent PBS series called Wild Metropolis. Thus, while their owners may see their treks with their dogs on their land or in nearby parks as fun and relaxing, these may be anything but for the family pets.

Establishing and protecting the physical and mental territory also is a critical animal priority for even the most sheltered house pets. Consequently, restlessness and behavioral changes in wildlife can and does alter companion canine and feline behavior.

Often the first sign of this is the veterinarians or clients awareness that the behavioral problem is seasonal. Because changes in behavior cause changes in physiology and vice versa, some of these animals may experience physical as well as behavioral issues.

For example, the Browns cat marks with urine in addition to being plagued by urinary tract problems year-round. However, the history reveals that these are being aggravated by the chronic stress generated by other cats in the household, the owners failure to keep the litter boxes clean, and the multiple cat-related arguments that routinely occur between those people.

Compare that cat to the Greens cat who only falls of the litterbox wagon in the spring and fall when the free-roaming wild animal and feral cat community become more restless. As the Greens cat ages and more wildlife and feral cats populate their area, the cat shrinks the in-house territory shes willing to protect.

After one traumatic face-to-face experience with a fox on the opposite side of the sliding glass door, she stops marking that door as well as the other exterior doors in the house. Instead, she only marks the Greens bed where she sleeps with them.

In multiple cat or dog households, the animals may adhere to a social structure in which one animal assumes the bulk of the territorial protective duties. Seasonal increases in wildlife restlessness also may lead to an increase in aggression between the highest-ranking animal and (usually) most subordinate one the household.

Typically, this occurs when the protector animal cant or doesnt want to target a perceived threat (e.g., a wild or feral animal in the yard). Rather than do that, the more fit animal will go after the weaker one.

Sometimes referred to as the bystander effect, targeting another safer or available target enables the protector to quickly dissipate the cascade of stress hormones summoned to take on the threat. Presumably, this spares that animal the negative effects associated with the gradual waning of those hormones over time. Wild animal studies indicate that different levels of stress hormones as a function of rank also protects the animal underdogs when this occurs.

In this situation, though, an elegant mechanism that prevents serious injury in wild animals may wreak havoc in companion animal households if any people present dont understand whats going on and why.

Perhaps all they see is their macho Bruiser snarling and charging their timid little Babycakes. Their minds are so full of images of all the horrible things Bruiser might do to their baby, they cant see what actually is or isnt happening.

Their baby has read their bullys signals and positioned herself between the legs of a chair in a corner where he cant get to her. Meanwhile he carries on until hes spent and goes away Unless, of course, the owners start screaming and yelling and turn this beneficial ritualistic display into a far more serious one.

This brings us to another aspect of zugunruhe as it plays out in human-animal interactions: the real possibility that its effects occur in humans as well as wild and domestic animals. Using a stable physical and mental territory as the standard, consider all of the seasonal transitions companion animal owners may make with or without their pets.

Think of those teachers who may spend their summers at home relaxing with their human-companion animal families who start to gear up for a return to the classroom every year. Or, the seasonal restlessness and anxiety we begin feeling as the holidays approach. In both cases, these adult human feelings may pale beside that of any youngsters in the household. No doubt the family dogs and cats are aware of and influenced by these, too.

Think of zugunruhe as the emotional soundtrack playing in the background as wild and domestic animals experience seasonal transitions of one kind of another. These transitions and any anxiety that goes with them may take many forms in human-companion animal households.

If and how these seasonal physiological and behavioral changes influence an animals behavior depends on the quality of the bond the animal shares with any people in the household as well as whats going on in nature.

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Zugunruhe and companion animal behavior - MultiBriefs Exclusive

In Gaudy Night, a classic of the golden age of detective fiction by Dorothy L. Sayers, the heroine, Harriet Vane, wonders whether mystery novels can ever rise to the level of literature. Harriet is a successful author, like her creator, but suffers from writers block. The relationships between her characters were beginning to take on an unnatural, an incredible symmetry. Human beings were not like that. Harriet wonders what might happen if she were to abandon the jig-saw kind of story and write a book about human beings for a change.

More than eighty years after Gaudy Night was published, in 1935, were enjoying another golden age of detective stories. Mysteries and true-crime narratives seem to satisfy a need for women in particular, as the journalist Rachel Monroe writes in her new book, Savage Appetites. Stories about the worst things that can happen to a person serve to excavate a subterranean knowledge, Monroe notes, opening up conversations about subjects that might otherwise be taboo: fear, abuse, exploitation, injustice, rage. In 2012, the novel Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn, introduced Amy Elliott Dunne, a character whose fury at the false promises of life and marriage prefigured the mass unleashing of womens anger a few years later. Writers like Tana French, Laura Lippman, Megan Abbott, and Celeste Ng have won both popular and critical praise with stories about the damage that the world inflicts on women, and, sometimes, about the damage that damaged women do. The mystery genre, with its plots that patrol the outer borders of believable human behavior, has proved uniquely suited to illuminate a generalized hostility toward women, one so normal and pervasive that its often almost impossible to see.

Many histories of feminist detective fiction find foremothers for todays anti-heroines in the hardboiled sleuths of the nineteen-seventies and eightiesin P. D. Jamess Cordelia Gray, for example, and Sara Paretskys V. I. Warshawski. But Harriet Vane is an earlier, often overlooked member of the same lineage. In a new group biography of Sayers and the school friends who served as her lifelong support system and creative collaborators, The Mutual Admiration Society: How Dorothy L. Sayers and her Oxford Circle Remade the World for Women, the historian Mo Moulton shows Sayers setting out in Gaudy Night, her most psychologically astute and least conventional novel, to present her own philosophy of womens intrinsic intellectual equality.

Set at Oxford in the fictional womens college of Shrewsbury, Gaudy Night investigates a string of acts of vandalism and threatening letters sent to students and faculty. Its a romance as much as a mystery, in which the cerebral Harriet comes to terms with possessing both a heart and a brain, and accepts her feelings for her partner in crime-solving, the droll and debonair Lord Peter Wimsey. The genteel atmosphere of Sayerss Oxfordwhere the key clue is a quotation from Virgils Aeneid, and where Peter and Harriet take a break from their case to go puntingexists in a different universe from the eerie pageantry of Flynns Missouri or the saturated dread of Frenchs Dublin. But Sayerss subject cut close to the bone in her own day. As suspicion falls on Shrewsburys female faculty, the quarry that Harriet calls the College Poltergeist becomes a spectre of the eras worst fears about educated, professional women. In unmasking the culprit, Harriet, and thus Sayers, vindicates a womans right to a life of the mind.

Harriet only accepts Peters affections when it becomes clear that he respects her profession. On the subject of her writing, he is, she thinks, about as protective as a can-opener, telling her bluntly, You havent yet... written the book you could write if you tried. Sayers seems to have intended this advice for herself as much as for Harriet. Gaudy Night was her attempt to prove that detective fiction could address human problemsespecially the problem of how a woman can know herself and her ambitions in a world where sexism obscures them from view.

Sayers didnt begin her career with the intention to write mysteries. Moultons book opens at Oxfords Somerville College, the inspiration for Shrewsbury, in 1912, a few decades after women were first allowed to enroll at the university. As undergraduates, Sayers and a few friends formed what they jokingly termed the Mutual Admiration Society, or M.A.S., a clique of aspiring poets and playwrights who critiqued one anothers drafts over hot cocoa.

The M.A.S. was originally apathetic toward the political cause of womens equality, declining to join the campaign for suffrage. Still, as upper-class, educated women, Sayers and her friends were simultaneously insiders and outsiders in their professional milieus, Moulton writes, arguing that this duality was formative: I suspect they would have been somewhat boring men. Sayers, for example, would likely have become an academic if the posts available to women scholars in the early nineteen-twenties hadnt been so provisional and scarce. Moulton concludes that the M.A.S.s marginality within the gender politics of their era served a role like sand in an oyster. They struggled and were pushed out of the main lines of promotion and success, and, instead of reproducing the world of their fathers or their mothers, they made something new.

Many educated women of Sayerss generation became either wives or teachersor they taught until they married. Beginning her adult life during the First World War, Sayers found herself ill-suited for either option. Its immoral to take up a job solely for the amount of time one can spend away from it, which is what most of us do with teaching, she wrote to a friend, in 1917. But her attempts to support herself as a poet and publishers apprentice produced a kind of nightmare of financial instability. After passing a case of mumps by reading pulp detective novels, Sayers tried her hand at writing her own mystery. In Whose Body?, published in 1923, she created the erudite, aristocratic Lord Peter, the protagonist of what would become a wildly popular series. She dreamed up her hero in an admittedly escapist frame of mind, Moulton writes, giving him a posh flat full of antique books and a butlerall the luxuries and comforts that she could not afford.

Sayers couldnt have chosen a more lucrative genre. In the nineteen-twenties and thirties, mysteries were ubiquitous as mass entertainment. They were also synonymous with a jigsaw-style formula. Even as Sayers grew prosperous from Lord Peters exploits, she nursed a level of disdain for her chosen profession. Make no mistake about it, the detective-story is part of the literature of escape, and not of expression, she writes in the introduction to The Omnibus of Crime, an anthology of stories that she edited in 1929. She argued that the question of how to unite intricate plots with characters who read like real human beings was itself a mystery that writers had yet to solve, adding, At some point or other, either [the characters] emotions make hay of the detective interest, or the detective interest gets hold of them and makes their emotions look like pasteboard.

If this question occupied Sayers in the early years of her career, so did a series of personal trials, which Moulton recounts in The Mutual Admiration Society. Sayers was not born a feminist, Moulton writes. She became one, through bitter suffering and the stark realization of the precariousness of her position. (She remained skeptical of the label feminist even after it fit.) The first wakeup call was a disastrous love affair with a novelist named John Cournos. Sayers hoped that the relationship would lead to marriage and children; from Cournoss letters, Moulton summarizes his desires as unconditional sex and total submission. Next, Sayers had an affair with a married man that resulted in an accidental pregnancy. Lacking any good optionit was 1923, and abortion was illegal and dangerousthe thirty-year-old Sayers chose to keep the child a secret, sending him to live with a cousin. When Sayers later married, the union was not as harmonious as the one she would invent for her fictional characters. Atherton (Mac) Fleming, a journalist and photographer, seems to have viewed his wifes success with ambivalenceeven though, or especially because, her earnings supported him.

Moultons book sheds new light on Sayerss evolution as a writer, showing how some of her best work occurred in collaboration with her friend Muriel St. Clare Byrne. (For one thing, the dynamic between Peter and Harriet may have been modelled on Byrnes equitable romantic partnership with another woman.) Sayers and Byrne are the most compelling characters in Moultons group biography, which also includes subjects who lived much smaller lives; not all the material adheres to the promise of the books subtitle, which is to show a circle that remade the world for women. But chapters about Sayers and Byrnes work on a play featuring Peter and Harriet shows how that process altered Sayerss own writing. In the play, Busmans Honeymoon, written at the same time as Gaudy Night, Sayers challenged herself for the first time to craft a convincing romantic arc for her charactersand the play changed her approach to what she called the psychological elements of stories. She began defending her genre against the charges of empty escapism that she had once levelled at it. In a lecture from 1936 titled The Importance of Being Vulgar, she responded to critics who derided her work as lowbrow, insisting that detective fiction could capture such vulgarities as birth, love, death, hunger, grief, romance, & heroism.

A collection of Sayerss published works, in 1957.

In her introduction to the 1929 Omnibus, Sayers had lamented the state of the fictional female detective. Most were charming creatures... of twenty-one or thereabouts who solved their cases through the mystical property of feminine intuition and gave up detective work at books end in order to get married. Others, like Agatha Christies Miss Jane Marple, were skilled amateurs rather than respected professionals. The really brilliant woman detective has yet to be created, Sayers writes.

Harriet only partially fills the vacuum that Sayers identifiedshes an amateur detective to Peters semi-professional, and its he who assembles the cluesbut Gaudy Night lays the groundwork for the beloved women sleuths of future generations. The archetypal detective is a figure who values truth above all else: above empathy for victim or villain, love of friends or family, even the preservation of her own life. As Cassie Maddox, a protagonist of Tana Frenchs Dublin Murder Squad series and a new BBC adaptation, says in the The Likeness, from 2008, The detectives god is the truth, and you dont get much higher or much more ruthless than that. In Gaudy Night, women scholars argue bitterly about whether their work can ever come before family. But faced with the case of a male historian supporting his wife and children on a falsified find, they all agree that he must be reported; they value the historical record over the well-being of the mans family. Sayerss women are ruthless enough to be trusted with real work.

In the best detective stories, the truth thats uncovered isnt limited to the name of the culprit. Mysteries, like works of horror, transmute nebulous fears into tangible dangers. The genre lends itself to exploring anxieties about the unknown and unknowableshadowy territory that, for Harriet and many of the detectives whove followed, includes the contents of their own minds, or the substance of their own personalities.

Sayerss most cherished feminist commitment is that our true selves are tied up in our talents: that every person, regardless of gender, has a type of work for which theyre intrinsically suited, and that the ethical choice in life is, as Harriet says, to do ones own job, however trivial. In Gaudy Night, the typical marriage encompasses a womans existence completely, which is why Harriet, cursed with both a heart and a brain, has chosen the latter, believing that its impossible for a woman to balance both. But her self-abnegation, far from enabling her work, frustrates the fulfillment of her artistic potential, turning her books into lifeless intellectual exercises. Meanwhile, women who choose heart over brain face a worse fate. Making another person ones lifes work has a devastating effect... on ones character, as a member of the Shrewsbury faculty tells Harriet. It means being devoured, robbed of a rightful role in society as surely as a ghost lacks a foothold on earth. The scholar warns against underestimating women who have undergone this hollowing. Far from despising them, she says, I think they are dangerous.

Gaudy Night hints that most marriages are a form of spiritual femicide. Gone Girl, in which a villainous female protagonist escapes her airless marriage by faking her own death, takes that metaphor to its logical conclusion. In the most famous passage of Flynns novel, Amy explains how her husband, Nick, set her disappearing act in motion the moment he fell in lovenot with her but with the person that men expect women to be: the Cool Girl... the girl who likes every fucking thing he likes and doesnt ever complain. Amy argues that, faced with a real person where he expected the Cool Girl, Nick dismantled her in search of the woman he thought he married. He took away chunks of me with blas swipes: my independence, my pride, my esteem. I gave, and he took and took. He Giving Treed me out of existence. Amys lament is that of an everywoman, but her actions are those of a psychopath. Her idea of poetic justice is to frame Nick for her murder: He killed my soul, which should be a crime. Actually, it is a crime. According to me, at least.

Nick doesnt know the real Amy, and this enigma is the engine of Gone Girl. In Gaudy Night, as mounting evidence suggests that the poltergeist must be one of the esteemed members of Shrewsburys faculty, Harriet begins to fear that theres truth in the fulminations of sexiststhat women who choose head over heart are somehow dangerous. She doesnt know if shes drawn to the idea of a life with Peter or just anxious about being a woman alone. If you want to do without personal relationships, then do without them, Peter says. Dont stampede yourself into them by imagining that youve got to have them or qualify for a Freudian case-book. But Harriet cant discern her own motivation, and self-doubt begins to send her mind haywire.

Here, Gaudy Night hits on the reason that mysteries feel tailor-made for writing about sexism: because sexism, like other forms of prejudice, has a way of making people mysteries to themselves. Who would we be in the absence of internalized biases and psychological injuries? This question sits at the heart of the best crime thriller of the last decade, Tana Frenchs The Witch Elm. The narrator, Toby Hennessy, is the golden boy for whom everything goes right. Only after a series of unlucky turns does Toby begin to realize that his identity has always been as contingent on fortune and circumstance as everyone elses. While he was skating through high school, the cousins he grew up with were being tormentedone for being gay, the other for being a bookish girl who rejected the violent advances of a popular boy. As surely as those assaults shaped their victims, Toby was defined by his failure to notice. As one of the cousins says, Im never going to know what I would have been like if you had had my back, that time. The not-knowing, as the other cousin points out, is the worst part of all: the idea that I was who I was because of some random guy I just happened to meet.... Like anyone could turn me into anything, and there would be nothing I could do about it. At first, Toby resists the idea that random chance could remake a person. When he realizes that this is exactly whats happening to him, he feels like hes falling through the floor of the warm bright world that hes always known, into the strangling dark of another one.

Alongside contemporary writers like French and Flynn, Sayers seems almost quaintly optimistic. The vandal of Gaudy Night" is revealed to be not a member of the faculty but an opponent of womens educationnot an allegory of womens intellectual unfitness but a manifestation of an irrational hatred. When Harriet understands that shes free to choose a life of pure head and no heart if she wants, she can finally see the work that shes meant to do. She commits to a nontraditional marriage and an unconventional detective novelwhich, after many reworkings, she deems nearly satisfactory and almost human.

By catching her poltergeist, Harriet performs an exorcism on her own fear. Her literary descendants are rarely so lucky. Their mysteries have a way of pulling them down into the dark underside of reality that Toby discovers. Wherever the case leads, the end finds them still living there.

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An Overlooked Novel from 1935 by the Godmother of Feminist Detective Fiction - The New Yorker

Zuckerman, a writer for The Wall Street Journal, says he became fixated with cracking the Simons code. And though he doesnt entirely succeed, he divulges much more than anyone has before. More important, despite the tendency to dot his book with such daunting phrases as combinatorial game theory and stochastic equations, he tells a surprisingly captivating story. It turns out that a firm like Renaissance, filled with nerdy academics trying to solve the markets secrets, is way more interesting than your typical greed-is-good hedge fund.

Simons first began investing as a young man after receiving $5,000 as a wedding gift. He was a commodities speculator for a short time; watching soybean futures soar was kind of a rush, he told Zuckerman. But within a few years, he and several colleagues were thinking seriously about how they might create a computerized stock trading system that could search and Im quoting Zuckerman here for a small number of macroscopic variables capable of predicting the markets short-term behavior. In 1978, Simons left Stony Brook University, where he had built its math department into one of the best in the country, to start the firm that we now know as Renaissance Technologies.

The story Zuckerman tells is about how Simons and the mathematicians and programmers he surrounded himself with found those variables. They collected incredible amounts of historical data not just about stocks and bonds, but about currencies, commodities, weather patterns and all sorts of market-moving events. They made plenty of missteps along the way. But in time, they had gathered so much data and had computers powerful enough to ingest that data that the machines found profitable correlations no human could ever suss out, much less understand.

Zuckerman does a fine job of bringing not just Simons to life but most of the other quants who played key roles in creating Renaissances system. For the politically inclined, one of the most interesting was the firms former co-chief executive, Robert Mercer, the conservative billionaire who funded Breitbart News and Cambridge Analytica. Zuckerman portrays Mercer as a peculiar but largely benign figure within the company who liked to zing his liberal colleagues, but mostly kept his own counsel. When his role in conservative politics caused an outcry, Simons felt he had to ask his longtime partner to step down as co-C.E.O. But even though Simons himself was a liberal, he wasnt happy about it. Hes a nice guy, Zuckerman quotes Simons telling a friend. Hes allowed to use his money as he wishes.

When you get right down to it, Simons makes money because human behavior will never be completely efficient. Those short-term anomalies Simons and other quants unearth exist because humans have always acted emotionally. I think the market is reasonably close to efficient, another well-known quant, Clifford Asness, once told me, but there are a lot of little inefficiencies. Those little inefficiencies are what emotionless computers take advantage of. Renaissance just happens to be better at finding them than any other firm.

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How to Beat the Market - The New York Times

Dear Community Partners,

Just over a week ago, the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport (MSY) successfully completed an overnight transition from our former terminal to a brand new facility on the other side of the airfield. In a time where many airports in the United States are dealing with aging infrastructure and land constraints, the fact we had the opportunity to build a new terminal from the ground up at no cost to local taxpayers is a major accomplishment for our region.

Since the terminal opened, we welcomed over 310,000 travelers into the new facility, and, on average, we see about 40,000 travelers per day. As you know, airports are very complex operations with over 4,000 employees representing hundreds of different stakeholders spanning across airlines, police, ground transportation operators, skycaps, concessionaires, delivery drivers, custodial staff and parking operators just to name a few. A move of this magnitude can be compared to picking up a small city and moving it to a different location.

Before the new terminal opened, we did our due diligence in conducting simulations and tests of the new systems, modeling traffic patterns, training employees and even inviting the public into the facility so they could learn their way around. However, we knew there could be some adjustments necessary to account for actual human behavior once we began to operate in a real-world environment.

Airports are dynamic environments with systems constantly changing, and this week has been no different. Overall, we are seeing improvements in Airport operations since day 1 as Airport staff, airlines, tenants and passengers familiarize themselves with the new terminal. Moving forward we will continue to make any short-term and long-term adjustments as needed to provide a world-class experience.

Id like to share a few updates on our progress:

Airport AccessThanks to the interim improvements DOTD made to the I-10/Veterans/Loyola intersection, travelers have adequate access to the new terminal while DOTD works to complete the interstate flyover in 3-4 years. After observing real-world traffic patterns on opening day, DOTD and the Airport were proactive in identifying and addressing some minor changes to further enhance vehicular flow for passengers traveling to and from the terminal as well as for the community that uses that intersection.

Before the move, passengers frequently saw significant traffic delays trying to access the former terminal on busy weekends. While the new roadway is an improvement, DOTD and the Airport will continue to proactively monitor the flow of motorists and make necessary adjustments to help improve navigation and alleviate congestion.

New Airport Concessions ProgramOur completely new concessions program featuring a mix of local and national restaurant and shopping options has been an overwhelming success. Concessionaires reported they have experienced more business than anticipated, and have been flexible in responding to the demand. This validates our unique vision to design a program where most concessions are located down the middle of the concourses post-security where passengers can comfortably enjoy the variety of amenities while staying close to their gates.

Consolidated TSA CheckpointTSA completed the installation of 12 out of 15 screening lanes, and expects to have all 15 lanes installed by the end of the week. As you know, we now have a single consolidated checkpoint. While the queuing area may appear to be full because all passengers are now funneling through a single checkpoint, the lines are continuously moving.

Despite contrary reports on Sunday, TSA has reported that wait times did not exceed 45 minutes during that peak period and that almost all were through security in 30 minutes or less. Although these times are not optimal, they will improve once all 15 lanes are functioning. During non-peak periods, TSAs average wait times remain comparable to what we saw in the former terminal. The Airport is monitoring checkpoint wait times, and will coordinate with TSA as appropriate.

New Rideshare SystemAirports across the country are facing challenges with rideshare providers impacting traffic flows around their terminals. We also faced significant challenges with rideshare impact at the former terminal. When the new MSY terminal opened, rideshare providers Uber and Lyft both launched new systems which allow travelers to use a code to take an available car rather than wait to meet a specific driver.

This process is designed to ease curb congestion and lessen wait times. However, the Airport initially experienced some congestion on the arrivals curb near the rideshare queuing lanes as drivers are becoming familiar with the new pick up process and locations. For a positive customer experience, officials from both rideshare providers as well as the Airport staff are continuing to work together to make changes such as installing new signage, enhancing driver and passenger information and stationing additional traffic control personnel in the area. Weve already seen some improvement and will adjust further if needed.

New Inline Baggage Handling SystemPrior to opening the new MSY terminal, the Airport worked with stakeholders to conduct thorough testing and simulations of the baggage handling system. After the new terminal opened, we experienced some issues with the outbound baggage system not operating properly at certain points of the day, which is to be expected when a completely new system is fully launched. Thats why the airport ensured that the baggage system contractors and construction project managers are on site during this initial transition phase. These crews have been working with all airlines throughout the day to respond, identify, and correct issues as they arise, and were already seeing improvement to how the system functions.

We are confident that this terminal will deliver on our promise to vastly improve the first and last thing visitors see when they come to this region with many of the features the modern passenger expects such as:Electrical outlets available at 50 percent of the seats in the gate hold areasFast, Free Wi-FiWater bottle refilling stations post-securityMothers RoomsA pet relief area post security3 curbside check-in locations with easy access to the Short Term Garage

Beyond all those amenities, the beautiful architecture and the world-class restaurant and shopping options, we are proud to be in the lead among other airports in the country by offering other innovative customer service features:The new Park MSY Express Economy Garage now features convenient shuttle service and Complimentary Baggage Check-in allowing outbound passengers to check their luggage from the comfort of their vehicle before parking. This means passengers can catch the shuttle luggage-free and skip the airline ticket counter, and we are just the fourth airport in the country to offer a service like this.Our new Long Term and Short Term parking garages are equipped with overhead lights above the parking spaces indicating where spaces are available or occupied. This will reduce the time it takes to find a parking spot and help passengers get to their flight faster. This new technology is completing its calibration phase, and will be up and running in time for the upcoming holiday travel season.In the coming weeks, we will be one of about four airports in the country to offer a program allowing customers who are not flying and dont have a boarding pass the opportunity to visit the restaurants and shops located post security. The MSY Guest Pass will be available 7 days a week from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. to individuals who register ahead of time. This way, more people can come out and experience everything this terminal has to offer.We are the sixth airport to offer Uber and Lyfts new systems allowing travelers to use a code to take the next available car in the line rather than wait to meet a specific driver.

We will continue to lean forward as we implement all these new systems, and ask the public to be patient during this transition. As always, your support is greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,

Kevin C. DollioleDirector of AviationNew Orleans Aviation Board

Read more:
Director of Aviation Kevin C. Dolliole provides an update on the New MSY - WGNO New Orleans

What happened to make plague able to cause devastating epidemics, as in this depiction from 1349? (Credit: Pierart dou Tielt/Wikimedia)

One of civilizations most prolific killers shadowed humans for thousands of years without their knowledge.

The bacteria Yersinia pestis, which causes the plague, is thought to be responsible for up to 200 million deaths across human history more than twice the casualties of World War II.

The Y. pestis death toll comes from three widespread disease outbreaks, known as epidemics: the sixth century Justinianic Plague that ravaged the Eastern Roman Empire; the 14th century Black Death that killed somewhere between 40% and 60% of the European population; and the ongoing Third Pandemic, which began in China in the mid-19th century and currently afflicts thousands worldwide.

Scientists long assumed that the deadly disease began infecting humans just before the earliest epidemic, the Justinianic Plague.

But recent paleogenetics research reveals that plague has been with us for millennia longer: Ancient DNA (aDNA) from the bacteria was recovered from human skeletons as old as 4,900 years. This means people were contracting and dying from plague at least 3,000 years before theres any archaeological or historical evidence for an epidemic.

Why didnt these earlier infections lead to devastating outbreaks like the Black Death? It seems the answer is part biological genetic mutations to the bacteria itself and part cultural changes to human lifestyles that encouraged the spread of the disease.

To identify cases of ancient plague, researchers extract aDNA from a skeletons dental pulp chamber and search for genetic code from Y. pestis bacteria. If fossil teeth contain Y. pestis DNA, its safe to assume that person died from plague.

Several studies have found plague victims who lived nearly 5,000 years ago more than three millennia before the first known plague epidemic.

Pathogen aDNA analysis also revealed how Y. pestis bacteria have evolved over time. The oldest genomes recovered belong to a now-extinct lineage, which was missing certain mutations that make plague so contagious for humans. For example, later Y. pestis strains evolved a gene that allows the bacteria to efficiently infect fleas, the main carriers of the disease in recent times. More ancient Y. pestis samples lack the gene.

So far, the earliest plague genome recovered with these mutations dates to around 1800 BC from the Samara Valley, Russia. The mutations were also identified in a skeleton from Iron Age Armenia that was dated to around 950 BC.

It seems the more contagious form of plague has been infecting humans for nearly 4,000 years.

But there are no indications in the archaeological record of epidemics in the ancient societies in Russia and Armenia despite the fact that some individuals died from the highly contagious plague strain.

Its possible outbreaks occurred but the evidence simply hasnt been found yet. For example, if future excavations were to uncover a series of mass graves that differed from the usual burial customs of those cultures, this could suggest societal disruption consistent with an epidemic.

Or perhaps the bacterial strains, though genetically similar to the plagues of Justinian and the Black Death, lacked some other critical mutation, still unidentified.

Alternatively, there could be another explanation, related to the behavior of the people being infected. Did the ancient people of the Samara Valley and Armenia live in a way that protected them from plague perhaps without even knowing it?

We sought to answer this by investigating whether the populations of 1800s BC Samara Valley and Iron Age Armenia behaved differently from people in Justinians Empire in crucial ways.

First we established conditions that make a population more or less vulnerable to an outbreak. We identified criteria known to be associated with plague virulence, or how infectious the bacterium is.

Population density is important; the number of people in contact with an infected individual affects the rate of disease spread.

Permanent agricultural settlements accumulate food storage and waste, which supports co-habitating rodent species. These rodents make ideal hosts for fleas that harbor plague bacteria.

As East Asia is the likely geographic source of plague, regular trade with the region is another factor.

And we examined reliance on horses, because some scholars suggest though its not yet biologically tested that the animals carry natural immunity to plague. Regular contact with horses could reduce a populations susceptibility to the disease.

We then compared three populations on these six criteria using archaeological and historical data.

For the Justinianic Plague, we focused on Constantinople, the capital of Justinians Empire and an epicenter of the outbreak. Constantinoples culture created a perfect storm of conditions for an epidemic.

It was a congested urban center with a population of over 500,000 people, or 140 individuals per acre. All of Constantinoples staple foods, including grain, were shipped from surrounding areas and stored in large warehouses, creating ideal breeding grounds for rodents. Flourishing trade also introduced the rat species Rattus rattus from India that would later be identified as the main carrier of fleas harboring plague.

In contrast, lifestyles in Samara and Armenia may have kept the epidemic at bay.

These populations were significantly more mobile and less congested than the urban population of Constantinople. The Samara population shows little evidence for agriculture and tended to occupy small settlements of extended families. These communities managed shared herds, and horse tools found in their characteristic burial mounds suggest the animals were highly valued. Remember, horses may have had some natural immunity to the disease.

Due to shifting local powers, Early Iron Age Armenia appears to have been home to farmers as well as nomadic pastoralists. Generally, though, archaeologists presume the populations practiced cattle farming, which would have made people substantially more mobile and dispersed than inhabitants of Constantinople.

Less congestion would have made contaminating nearby villages more difficult. Lacking agriculture, Samara could not have supported human-dependent rodents, the way Constantinople did. Both populations potentially benefited from a high ratio of horses to people.

While Samara and Armenia saw occasional plague victims, the structure of their societies likely protected them from the devastation wrought in Constantinople.

While encouraging economic and technological gains, urban development and trade created ideal conditions for an epidemic in Constantinople. Vulnerability to plague was an unintended consequence of this societys lifestyle.

Meanwhile, it seems earlier cultures unwittingly shielded themselves from the same threat.

The harsh reality is that its exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to control a pathogen, its possible mutations or its next outbreak. But understanding how human behaviors affect the spread and virulence of a disease can inform preparations for the future.

As a society, we can take organized measures to reduce the spread of infection, whether by limiting over-congestion, controlling food waste, or restricting access to contaminated areas. Human behaviors are just as critical to our disease susceptibility as are the characteristics of the pathogen itself.

This is a guest article from Sonja Eliason, MPhil Candidate in Bioscience Enterprise, University of Cambridge and Bridget Alex, Lecturer, California State University, Long Beach. The views expressed in this article belong solely to the authors.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Originally posted here:
Why People In Ancient Times Didn't Get the Plague - The Crux - Discover Magazine

Last month Google rolled out first-price auctions, whichbecause they are Googlemeans that now everyone else will follow suit. First-price will be the universal method for the $48 billion programmatic market. To provide some perspective, thats the same size as organic food sales in the U.S., the cannabis market worldwide and the entire wearables industry.

First-price means the winning advertiser pays exactly what they bid. This, versus second-price, which awards the auction to the highest bidder, means they pay only slightly more than the second highest price that was bid.

Up until now, second-price auctions were the standard. Advertisers liked them because they could avoid the winners curse, where they were stuck paying a price that may be grossly over what its true value is. Supply-side platforms liked them because they often would raise their price floors after bids came in, which allowed them to get extra money from advertisers and DSPs.

As of March 2018, the share of impressions being sold first-price was at 43.3%, up from 5.8% three months previous. But now with Google rolling it out, that share is going to skyrocket. I wouldnt be surprised if it hit 90% by the end of the year. All advertising platforms will be shifting to the first-price model; its now inevitable.

Heres the thing, though. No one likes change. And when it messes with pricing, people really dont like change. Its like the stock market. As a public company, you can change constantly as long as it doesnt negatively impact your stock price. Volatility in a person makes them interesting. Volatility in pricing makes it scary.

Volatility in a person makes them interesting. Volatility in pricing makes it scary.

Fortunately, we moved to first-price six months ago and have been through what youre about to experience. Im going to tell you exactly what happened so you can project what will happen when you or your ad platform makes this shift and what to do about it.

We had some resistance from our DSP partners because they were concerned that they would overpay for an impression and never know its true value. Performance bidders were worried that prices would get too high and negatively impact their take rate or that it would be too expensive for them to clear, which drives spend down. And everyone was wondering what it would mean from a technical standpoint.

Technically speaking, there are actually very few adjustments because the recent IAB specs already have options for both bidding types. If partners are confused about the model, explain what it means to pay what you bid and give assurance that pricing volatility will be short-lived. Emphasize the benefits of greater transparency because buyers have more insight into pricing, and publishers will get more reporting on bids.

We did see a spike in overall spend for about a week. But as bidder algorithms recalibrated, it leveled back to what it was before. After the plateau, we saw that this was a win/win for both our publisher and DSP partners. Our demand partners saw a higher win rate and a higher impression (or play) rate as a result. As they gained more buying power, overall bidding became more efficient. App developers saw their fill rate increase while yielding higher eCPMs.

And thats it. No, really, that is what you can expect. For such a major change in a pricing model, its almost anticlimactic, but the lesson here is to trust your technology. Decision-making engines were built to be able to understand which impressions are valuable and determine how much you should pay for them. They know what performs well and what doesnt. And technology, unlike human behavior, is flexible and can adapt to changes in the pricing system.

So, step up and make the investment to get on board with first-price auctions. If youre a platform, its a strategic investment. If youre a brand or agency, it might be more of an emotional one, understanding the implications and being OK with the shift. And while some say that bid shading, where the winner pays halfway between the first- and second-price winning bid, is a good compromise and limits risk, I ask why we believe there is too much risk when theres isnt. Also, that comes with a price; dont assume that youre not paying in other ways (e.g., covering the cost of the bid-shading tool).

What we need now is for everyonebuyers, sellers and those in betweento be all-in. Because first-price auctions are an important step toward transparency. It encourages a more honest pricing structure, which is an important move in a space where trust and transparency continue to be a sought after commodity.

See the article here:
Switching Platforms to First-Price Auctions - Adweek

U.S. democracy is a very curious beast. In U.S. democracy, it doesnt matter how big the calamity is. It also doesnt matter how many politicians urgently call for reform or how loud the public outcry is in the media.

In U.S. democracy, the law of inverse proportions applies: The louder the public outcry, the more one can be sure that nothing will happen to remedy the actual problem.

This perverted politic logic applies from the Facebook scandal and regularly occurring police killings of African-Americans to all those school shootings. Donald Trumps tenure in the Oval Office makes all this only more deplorable.

A while ago, there were those who believed that the youth protests after the high school shooting incident in Parkland, Florida would transform the political landscape. This time would be different, they said. They learned soon enough that they were kidding themselves if they didnt know it all along.

Later on, there was the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, and now the school shooting in Santa Clarita, California. And yet, nothing much will change on gun control in the United States even though the needed solutions are entirely commonsensical. Such solutions can only prove so elusive in ideology-driven countries. Meanwhile, Donald Trump and the Republicans still resort to blaming mental health issues for any shooting.

Under those circumstances, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the United States represents the most cynical country in the history of Western thought. Nowhere is the gap between self-laudatory statements and political realities bigger.

The preferred modus operandi is to operate what might best be termed as fake government. Such a government engages for the most part in pretend actions.

In their unbridled cynicism, Republicans rely on the chronically short attention span of the American public. They count on the fact that any calls for reform, often bombastically presented to satisfy the needs of public arousal, will soon enough fizzle and/or be forgotten.

As for the Democrats, they at least try to pursue some reforms, but they ultimately know that they arent going to succeed. For that reason, in some ways they are actually the more frustrating party. They raise the publics hopes and expectations for change and then cant deliver.

As a result, policymaking in the United States has degraded to the level of one gigantic kabuki show, resolving nothing.

Congressional hearings featuring Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg are further evidence of that. The Republicans, eager to turn Facebook with its political advertising power into an ally of the political right, only go through the motions of demanding change from the internet giant.

Notwithstanding the efforts of Elizabeth Warren and AOC, even many Democrats are conflicted, not just by being on the take for campaign contributions from Silicon Valley firms. In the past, they have also often been the chief promulgators of the supposed global soft power of the U.S.-based Internet giants, pretending those were a force for good.

Meanwhile, the Silicon Valley firms continue to operate as uncontrolled control freaks that ruthlessly explore any conceivable angle of human behavior and existence with their search algorithms.

A country where democracy is rendered so dysfunctional, where Republican politicians mostly act as shameless cover-up artists, as well as deniers, aiders and abetters of corporate malfeasance, is really a nation that lives in the permanent state of impotence.

In such a nation, bringing about the common good if it occurs is a matter of happening purely accidentally, not the consequence of serious policymaking.

In such a nation, it is also no surprise that Donald Trump is getting away with so much. The 45th U.S. President is frantically working 24/7/365 at bringing out the basest of instincts in the American public. Congressional Republicans will see to it that nothing stops him. Thats just another sign of American impotence.

Excerpt from:
US Democracy and the Age of American Impotence - The Globalist

The books section is supported by a generous donation from Anne Germanacos

With all the handwringing about the declining relationship of American Jews to Israel, I sometimes find it striking that literature is rarely part of the discussion. I feel strongly that the work of Israeli writers can be one of our strongest sources of connection, and one that survives the vicissitudes of politics and policy.

Ayelet Gundar-Goshen is one of few Israeli writers under the age of 40 to have made a strong impression outside the nation, including in a semester-long course she taught at San Francisco State University last year. The international success of her novel Waking Lions is owed in part to the broad resonance of its plot centered on the population of undocumented African workers in Israel. But it is also due to the fact that Gundar-Goshen, trained as a psychologist, has proven an astute analyst of human behavior both in Waking Lions and in her debut, often funny historical novel One Night, Markovitch.

Her new novel The Liar focuses on miserable teenager Nofar, who dreams of having a boyfriend, but who barely has any friendships at all and trails her more conventionally attractive sister Maya in securing the attention of others (including her parents).

Nofar is spending the summer working in an ice cream shop when a frustrated customer who turns out to be Avishai Milner, a winner on an American Idol-style television program whose 15 minutes of fame have elapsed unleashes an unjustifiable verbal attack focused on her appearance. Devastated, Nofar runs off in tears while still holding Milners change, and he follows her into an alley. Her screams attract a crowd and the police, and before long she has, in the heat of the moment, given the nod to their assumption that Milner had attempted to assault her sexually. Because of Milners stature, the case blows up in the media, and Nofar suddenly has the eyes of her nation and her classmates on her. And she has her first boyfriend, albeit one who emerges out of an attempt to blackmail her.

Nofars life has improved, but at the cost of carrying an enormous dilemma. If she continues to lie, a man will be wrongly convicted of sexual assault even though he is horrible in other respects. And if she reveals the truth, her life will not simply return to its former unhappy state, but she will become vilified for her actions.

The questions expand with the increasing number of lies surfacing elsewhere. For example, Nofars hapless boyfriend pretends to apply for an elite military unit in order to gain the affection of his father, a career soldier. And in a parallel plot, a Moroccan-born woman assumes the identity and life of her friend, a Holocaust survivor from Poland, after her friend dies.

What unites these stories is that the lies actually bring their purveyors love and respect otherwise missing from their lives. They momentarily overturn a system, whether within a family or within a nation, that has landed the characters at the bottom.

As the weight of ethical responsibility or the sheer practical challenge of maintaining a web of interdependent lies forces the characters to reconsider their mendacity, the reader joins in the questioning. Is the value of truth an absolute? In what cases can a lie be justified?These questions affect our personal lives and are now prominent in our political culture. Gundar-Goshen gives us much to consider.

Ronit Matalons novel And the Bride Closed the Door presents a decidedly different picture of a young woman in crisis. Hours before 500 guests are to show up to her wedding, Margie locks herself in her mothers bedroom and announces, Not getting married.

Remarkably different from Matalons other works, the novel plays a bit like a screwball farce, with each character choosing a different strategy to attempt to resolve the situation. Meanwhile, Margie barely communicates, except for slipping her transcription of a poem by the iconic Israeli poet Leah Goldberg under the door, but with its title altered from The Prodigal Son to The Prodigal Daughter and its language changed from masculine to feminine. (Hebrew nouns and verb forms are gendered.) The family members are left to interpret the meaning of her gesture.

The apartment becomes something of a microcosm of Israel, reflected in Margies Mizrachi family, the grooms Ashkenazi family, and the Arabs who have brought a ladder from the Palestinian Authority. Fascinatingly, the closest thing to a breakthrough comes when Margies grandmother, who has appeared to be on the verge of dementia, sings the Arabic lyrics of popular Lebanese singer Fairuz through the door. For Matalon, who was born to two immigrants from Egypt and advocated for Mizrachi Jews in Israel, this restoration of harmony with cultural roots in the Arab world likely had special meaning.

This was Matalons final novel, for which she received the coveted Brenner Prize the day before she tragically died of cancer in 2017 at the age of 58. In the acceptance speech read by her daughter, Matalon noted that there is something sad yet a little bit funny in the fact that I, just like my locked-in bride, am not attending this wedding. Her absence is indeed deeply felt, and we are fortunate to have the literary legacy she left behind.

Excerpt from:
Two Israeli novelists explore truth and integrity - The Jewish News of Northern California

byNICOLE FITZSIMMONS,Staff Writer

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is a novel that truly makes you think about human behavior. It makes us recognize that what we really desire is someone who will listen to us, who will make us feel like they want to listen to us. Yet, we fail to think about the person who is listening to us. We crave solace and will blindly share our soul to escape having the thoughts in our own mind. Rarely do we recognize the impact all of our thoughts can have when they are being driven into the mind of someone else. The novel shares vignettes of the main characters through the lens of a man who does nothing but listen.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter was Carson McCullers debut novel. NICOLE FITZSIMMONS/ THE QUADRANGLE

The first time I ever really fell in love with a book was the first time I read The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers. It was a required reading for my AP English Literature and Composition Class, so I thought it was going to be another novel that I skimmed through quickly at one in the morning the night beforehardly taking in any of the content, hoping I wouldnt be quizzed on it the day I walked into class. But this novel was different. I still have the same copy I had from the summer before my senior year, which is still covered in scribbles of annotations and underlines.

At just 23 years old, McCullers wrote this novel containing extremely complex and interesting figures. The story is based around a deaf-mute, John Singer, in an old mill town of the South during the 1930s. John Singer embodies a mystery to all of the surrounding people living in the town. He has the ability to read, write and read lips, yet does not like to do so. He is a distant and conscientious character.

The one person that Singer feels comfort with is his best friend, who is also a deaf-mute, Spiros Antonapoulos. Antonopoulos is the ultimate other; he is quite impetuous and his head is frequently up in the clouds. This is very distinct from Singer who is constantly aware of what he is doing, and always has a motive to his actions.

There is a deep admiration that is seen for Antonapolous from Singer, which does not seem to be completely mutual considering the apathetic characteristics Antonopoulos inhibits. This is parallel to the relationship between Singer and the rest of the characters: the lack of mutuality.

The mark of Antonopolous character is made when he is sent away to an asylum in the beginning of the novel. All the while, Singer bears Antonopoulos gifts and writes him letters as often as he could, with little reciprocation. After ten years of living with Antonopolous, Singer is forced to pay rent and live in a familys shared home located in the town.

Singers new-found loneliness leaves him looking like a vulnerable target for those around him in the town. Throughout the novel, McCullers introduces the reader to four extremely complex and interesting characters battling with the isolation and struggles they face. Singers lack of response leaves the characters around him with a confidant. It is almost as if he is a mere diary to them; he listens, and they share everything. Despite his own sense of isolation, the characters use him as a mechanism to battle their own remoteness.

The reader meets 13-year-old Mick Kelley at the Kelly family home Singer lives in, a young girl who is struggling with finding herself, sharing her thoughts and feelings and growing in her impoverished household that is trying its best to keep going. She uses music as her escape and uses it to battle with the isolation she faces, along with her confidant John Singer.

The next character is Jake Blount, a highly inconsistent and rash character who battles with alcoholism. He goes off on tirades about social injustice in drunkenness, in which Singer simply listens to. He has trouble internally accepting the socio-economic position that he and others in the town have to deal with, and even talks about leading a socialist revolution.

Benedict Mady Copeland is a black doctor and medical professional who has worked in the town for 25 years. During the tense period the novel is set in, he struggles with his desire to mend racial relations. This struggle is intense because of his nobility in working to make personal sacrifices and devote his entire lifes work to furthering the education of and aiding the black community. Besides this internal struggle in which he confides in Singer, he is also ill and his son is physically mistreated in prison.

The most interesting of the characters to me is Biff Brannon. He is the owner of the towns New York Caf, a place where both Jake Blount and Singer both frequently hang out in. It is a lonesome place that dwellers walk into at all hours of the night, yet it is important to the town and the novel. He is generous with all of his customers, including Mick. Despite dealing with tense relations with his own wife, Biff Brannon is one character that is continuously haunted by the fact that he cannot completely understand Singer.

The end of the novel is significant because it leaves the reader with a mountain of unanswered questions. For some this is the most irritating thing an author can do, but its something Ive really grown to love.

New beginnings are laid out as the four characters deal with the loss of the one person they shared their secrets with. Id like to think that there is hope in the ending of this novel, and that the thoughts they shared with Singer can now face reality as things begin to change completely with a small sense of hope in some strange way. The sun will rise again, and the characters will go on, seems to be part of the message.

Yet it is hard to deny that the ending of this novel is not sorrowful and eye-opening. McCullers intriguing take on isolation starts with the surrounding characters but ultimately ends in the greatest isolation of the one who aids the rest. I recommend this novel to anyone who is interested in works of literature that change the way you look at things.

The Heart is a lonely hunter with only one desire! To find some lasting comfort in the arms of anothers firedriven by a desperate hunger to the arms of a neon light, the heart is a lonely hunter when theres no sign of love in sight! writes McCuller.

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The Exploration of Isolation and Human Nature in the The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - The Quadrangle