Jed Rubenfeld

The denouement was convoluted and slightly unconvincing. And when the author credited his young daughters for helping with the structure of the novel, noting that they read a PG version, I wondered how much narrative was left once the bondage, fellatio, erotic asphyxiation, and flagellation was removed from the plot. Not my taste in literature, personally. I also wondered how plausible, in medical terms, was the hero's death-defying escape from the flooding caisson at the bottom of the show more river. Can one really escape "the bends" simply by exhaling during a far-too-rapid rise to the surface? The author's impressive educational credentials include legal, psychological, and dramatic background, not medical. But the squabbling amongst the psychoanalysts (often in their own words gleaned from published material) was amusing and New York of 1909 in all its gritty glory was a fascinating panorama. (However, sometimes I suspected Rubenfeld of dragging in irrelevant characters and events simply for purposes of atmosphere, because he felt this or that thing was too interesting to omit. Some also made serviceable red herrings.) I particularly liked the protagonist's take on both the Oedipal theory and Hamlet. I'm tempted to rip out some relevant pages and file them inside one of my reference works on Hamlet... show less

[This is a review I wrote in 2007]

Not your run-of-the-mill thriller, Jed Rubenfeld has expertly crafted this book around Sigmund Freud's psychological theories, his work, "The Interpretation of Dreams", and his most famously known case-study, "Dora", here in the novel loosely portrayed as the character Nora. There is much debate amongst the characters about Freud's Oedipus complex theory, and a further interwoven strand of analysis involves theories about Shakespeare's "Hamlet", and in show more particular Freud's Oedipal analysis of Hamlet and Ophelia.

It's an extremely clever blend of fact and fiction, based around Freud & Jung's visit to the US in 1909; the crime, of course, is pure fiction! The plot is fast-paced, with twists, it seems, every few pages. This one really did keep me guessing almost to the very end. Very occasionally the theorising weighs it down just a fraction, hence the 4 stars. An intelligent & intriguing thriller, with likeable characters - I can highly recommend it. show less

A disciple of Freud solves a murder in 1909 New York. Setting aside the needlessly convoluted plot, the main female character and her motivations (which are the motivations for the murder) are straight out of Freud (deliberately so, as the author makes clear in the afterword). So, unless you read Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria nodding the whole way through and saying, "This is SO TRUE! This is EXACTLY how women think!", you are not going to like this book. I am pretty sure the show more author's intention was not to show us how writing a female character based entirely on what Freud thought women were like creates a wildly inconsistent, wholly unsympathetic, and completely unrealistic heroine with motivations that make no sense, but that was the end effect of this book.

Also, if you think Freud has women right you are a) a man and b) a jerk. show less

“Certain groups do much better in America than others – as measured by income, occupational status, test scores, and so on,” Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld state bluntly in the introduction to The Triple Package. Why is that? And can we even discuss why without being a bunch of racist, anti-Semitic, eugenics-loving jerks?

I hope so. I think Chua and Rubenfeld do. I don’t know if their conclusions are scientifically sound – this isn’t my field – but I don’t think their book is show more offensive. It’s a fast, engaging read that raises some interesting ideas and leaves the reader with a lot to think about.

I think it’s safe to say that some reviewers of Triple Package were pre-affronted. “Amy Chua has come out with another book whose basic message is the same: you suck and I am better,” says Khanh Ho at HuffPost. I read Tiger Mom, and I don’t think that’s what it said. Chua obviously isn’t suffering from any lack of self-esteem, but she pokes fun at herself frequently, and quotes her daughters making hilarious remarks at her own expense.

(How sad is it to be Jed Rubenfeld, by the way? Okay, not terribly. He’s married to a beautiful, intelligent, wealthy woman, and isn’t doing too badly himself in the looks, brains, and cash department. But let’s face it: The Triple Package is being read and reviewed as an Amy Chua title. If she’d written it alone, it would still be a bestseller. If he’d written it alone – who knows.)

Anyway. Speaking of being predisposed to despise: In her review of Triple Package, Daria Roithmayr at Slate describes Tiger Mom as “a memoir in which [Chua] extolled the virtues of harsh disciplinary ‘Chinese’ parenting.” Again, not exactly. Chua probably wouldn’t have felt the urge to write about her parenting experiences if her younger daughter hadn’t fought “Chinese parenting” to the point of making Chua question her own ideas. And “harsh” is a harsh word to use about someone who in her own book makes it clear she’s all bark.

Nevertheless, when these reviewers are done rhymes-with-itching about Amy Chua, they do point out something I noticed in her first book, which is a certain obliviousness to money. Triple Package definitely discusses how well groups like Mormons, Chinese-Americans, Cuban immigrants, Nigerian immigrants, and others are doing in America; but Chua and Rubenfeld don’t point out how much cash in hand a lot of members of the groups in question arrived with in the first place. If the reviewers I mention have their facts straight, this is a critical omission.

I happen to think that Triple Package is an interesting work regardless. The anecdotes from people who’ve been loaded down with a simultaneous superiority/inferiority complex are fascinating.

My main issue with the book is this: The authors rarely question the idea that the sort of educational and material success they’re describing is worth what it takes to get. Chapter 6, “The Underside of the Triple Package,” is the shortest in the book. In spite of its title, it’s still a pretty loud cheerleader for the concept of working your butt off to get the highest test scores so you can go to the best college and get the highest-paying job – and your reward is to push your child to do exactly the same thing all over again.

Can we really look at the current state of the economy in America, and then look at how it got to be this bad, and then accept that premise without question?

Chua and Rubenfeld discuss at the end of their book how everyone can make a triple package out of whatever they happen to have lying around the house. (I may be paraphrasing slightly.) They never ask if we should want to. If part of the price of success is agreeing with the idea that you and your group are superior to all others, is it right to encourage a cultivation of that sense of superiority? Given how much racism and sexism we’re still fighting, shouldn’t we be trying to make a new path to success – and maybe redefining success? show less