What was read this week: Jan 19-25

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes

Why ‘The Sopranos’ is a Brutal Masterpiece on Change, Truth, and Isolation

What was read this week? Well, not much. I had been watching around two episodes per night of The Sopranos, but for some reason I changed, I just got consumed with finishing it.

So like any good addictive type, I binged it—stayed up all night to finish the final season.

What a remarkable show.

Everything is amazing in it—the acting, the writing, the cinematography.

If you haven’t seen it (which I hadn’t), it is quite possibly the best television show ever produced. And James Gandolfini as Tony Soprano might be the best television character.

Exploring the Core Themes of ‘The Sopranos’

But how does one characterize the show? What themes does it explore?

Certainly, one could argue for the negative depiction of Italian-Americans in popular culture, but then the show itself is dealing with those issues internally.

One could argue for the violence and evil—the people and systems that make it complicit.

One could argue for the depictions of mental health and the complexities of its expression—mental health as an internal mirror for the external violence.

In a show that lasted for six seasons with almost an hour per episode (13 episodes per season, and a final season with 21 episodes), there is a lot of ground to cover in the exploration of its themes.

The Central Idea: Do People Ever Really Change?

For me, the central idea of that show was that people simply don’t change. Perhaps that people are incapable of change.

• Carmela stays a willing participant of evil because she benefits financially. She remains a shallow woman who needs to feel superior to the women around her.
• Tony is still a lying, cheating, womanizing mob boss prone to rage and melancholy.
• Dr. Melfi is still a naive woman, fascinated by the exoticness of the underworld, disguising her attractions behind shallow professional ethics.
• Chris is still an immature addict seeking a father figure.
• Paulie is still a wise guy, Adriana still a fool, Meadow still a seeker, and AJ still a failure.

This central theme of people’s willingness or unwillingness to change is one of the defining features of the show.

But, like any great piece of art, there are multiple themes.

The Abyss Stares Back: Facing Change and Endings

The pilot episode sets up another broad topic explored throughout the series.

If you recall, the episode is framed by Tony meeting with Dr. Melfi and recounting his day before a panic attack.

He says he didn’t get in on the ground floor and knew it—but he feels more and more like he got into the business at the end.

This is one of the prominent ideas explored in the show. As Nietzsche (who is named in the show) says in Beyond Good and Evil:

“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”

It is this reaction to the abyss’s gaze, to the fighting of monsters, that defines the show.

Loss and endings are all around the characters in their daily lives. They make threats of endings with themselves and the people they exploit.

They are constantly attending wakes and funerals. Made guys are frequently becoming informants for the FBI, trying to escape the abyss’s gaze.

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Isolation, Truth, and the Codes That Bind

It’s not so much someone’s unwillingness to change but rather an exploration of staring into the abyss, standing on the cliff’s edge, trying to navigate the next step so they don’t fall over.

There are huge specters that swell up from the abyss to haunt the characters:

• The government
• Mental illness
• Guilt and remorse
• Other families vying for power and money
• The inability to keep the ‘family’s’ business from corrupting the familial

These ghosts gaze back at the characters, and how each one navigates them is essential to understanding the show.

Some commit suicide.

Others turn to drugs, sex, or Prozac. Some turn to faith.

Each character has a moral code they use to navigate the abyss’s edge.

Truth is something that must be concealed for survival, and the codes that make up each character always stand in relation to truth. For instance:

• The only time Tony is close to being honest is in sessions with Dr. Melfi. Even then, her professional code of confidentiality prevents him from actually telling the truth.
• When Carmela visits her own therapist and he is honest with her, she flees from it—unable to bear the truth.

Even within the Soprano family, truth cannot be told. Members speak to each other in coded language, keeping things hidden to preserve themselves.

Isolation defines the show.

The Brutal Irony of Connection and Isolation

The codes the characters live by both bind and disconnect them from everyone else. Each member of the mob shares an oath, a code of silence, which simultaneously unites and isolates them.

Just as the mob members share dinners, the FBI agents do the same. Psychiatrists and family members share dinners too.

But at each gathering, the same isolating dynamic exists:

• Dr. Melfi refuses to tell the truth about Tony at their dinners.
• Tony refuses to tell the truth about his indiscretions at his dinners.
• Carmela refuses the truth at their dinners.

When isolation is violated, things devolve.

Chris’s inability to keep Adriana uninformed—his need to complain about his life—sets her up for a fall.

When she is honest with him, it ends her.

Each character’s moral code isolates them, standing as a barrier to truth and as the defining feature of their connections.

Final Thoughts: Why ‘The Sopranos’ Is Essential Viewing

If you haven’t seen The Sopranos, please do.

It is an amazing piece of art that will make you reflect on your own relationships and the codes that bind us.

Apart from its philosophical explorations, it is an absolutely addictive show because it is just so good.

What Else Was Read This Week: A Book to Skip

At the other side of good this week, I read something that I wouldn’t recommend really to anyone.

I had received a book as a Christmas gift that I ended up reading called The World in Books by Kenneth C. Davis.

I like Davis’ writing style and have always appreciated him as a popularizer of some difficult subjects, but this book just fell flat for me.

The book is basically a sort of year-of-reading type book where he explores what he defines as a short book, under 200 pages, that could be read in a week if you choose to follow his program set forth.

I guess this book is the follow-up to his previous work where he explored short works of fiction.

Why This Book Misses the Mark

The problem I had with this work on short works of nonfiction was the organization itself.

Each work explored had a tiny snippet selected, then a brief summary, information on the author, why you should read it, and then what to read next. Every one of these could be expressed only briefly in a few pages but is only given a couple of paragraphs in the book, leaving you with a feeling of, why did I just read this?

In addition to too-brief explorations, the book is too long.

How could you explore short books of less than 200 pages and make the book over 400 pages?

So suddenly, the author thinks that his book is more important than the books he’s discussing?

An Unfocused Selection of Nonfiction Works

Aside from the organization of the chapters, I also had a problem with the actual selection of the 52 “best” nonfiction books in history.

The category of nonfiction for him basically means everything not fiction, so suddenly the poetry of Sappho gets included or the Chinese philosophy of Lao-Tzu.

The selections he argues in this work as the “best” are just all over the map and fall prey to one of the issues I had in academia: this noble but ultimately biased idea of inclusion.

Including Sappho in the selection is clearly a consequence of this, let alone the more contemporary works.

The Canon: Inclusion vs. Context

At some point in time, we must come to terms with the facts of history.

Only those in power and privilege were able to engage in thinking and writing.

For most of history, this means there is an exclusion of women, people of color, or slaves—and if we’re in the West, a lot of the literature, philosophy, or cosmology of the rest of the world.

Acknowledge this and don’t try to be all things to all people, but don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.

You cannot have A Room of One’s Own or Things Fall Apart without history.

Teach the history so we can continue to have these extraordinary works, but don’t try to whitewash history to relieve anger.

Why Anger Needs Context

Anger is essential for the new works of any movement, but the anger must be directed at something.

There must be knowledge of the thing before in order to rebel against it. Otherwise, it’s just ignorance—like a teenager rebelling against authority because it’s authority.

This is perhaps a broader discussion of the Canon and what is and is not important—something I feel like I will need to write more on to argue my position.

But as far as this book is concerned, you should miss it.

The book should have either not been written and just published as a list or published in a different format. It should have simply been his arguments on why you should read the works discussed.

It’s actually confusing to me how this work fits within the broader context of Davis’ work as a whole, or really why he decided to write it at all.

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