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A Canticle for Leibowitz
Finished reading Canticile for Leibowitz by Walter J. Miller finally.
Amongst the best books I've read and will haunt me for quite a while I suspect.
Review is below. I've cut-tagged it, because it does contain vague spoilers, nothing major, but some people don't like to be spoiled at all, so it is cut for them.
The book is about a bunch of monks in a post-nuclear future. It contains three novellas. Each novella is a work in of itself, yet also part of the whole. The setting is a monastary that is located in the middle of the desert in Utah in the distant future. The monastary in the first section is attempting to get saint-hood for it's founder "Leibowitz", a man who had been a scientist and became a monk devoted to presevering scientific knowledge from the people who after the nuclear holocaust wished to destroy it. The second section takes place fifty years later and involves the sharing of the preserved memorabilia with the rest of the world - a world that is now hungry for scientific discoveries, yet still shrouded in darkness. The third section takes place more than a hundred years after the first two and we are in the same monastery and events that had taken place prior to the first section appear to be happening again.
The novel was written in 1961 around the time that John F. Kennedy was threatening Cuba with a missile launch, historically known as those Five Days in October. It was also written by a man who served in World War II as a radio operator and tail gunner, participating in more than fifty-five combat sorties, among them the controversial destruction of the Benedictine abbey at Monte Casino, the oldest monastery in the Western World. Fifteen years later he wrote this book. Which is followed by a sequel nearly forty years later. In the introduction, we are told that he committed suicide in 1996 at the age of 74. The intro and the blurb at the back serve as excellent bookends to this tale and this is coming from a gal who hates intros and authorial notations and would prefer not to see them. Here, they add to what is in between the pages - a sort of footnote on the proceedings if you will.
It would be easy to write this novel off as no more or less than a bad utopia or nuclear war allegory - morality tale. Of which I've read several, including Alas, Babylon (my favorite) and On the Beach by Neville Shute, not so fond of. And the movies that came out in the 1980s, during the last nuclear scare - The Day After, not to be confused with the disaster film that came out two years ago, amongst them. But this novel is more than that.
It is a disturbing and difficult novel. Bleak at times, uplifting at others. The language of it catchs at you, pulls at your mind, and at times, seeps through the fingers. It does not stay the same throughout, but the change in tone and word choice is not grating, you don't really notice it at first, more, become aware and shrug it off. And is written in three not one language. If you are a scholar of latin and hebrew, you will no doubt get more from this than I did. Just as you would if you have the patience to google and/or hunt down every word you have not seen before. I tend to figure it out by contextual meaning and let it go with that. I admit, I am a lazy reader.
If this sort of thing puts you off, you may have troubles getting through the novel - the author does not assist you by translating the latin and hebrew words - occassionally, he does, but not often. I liked that, because it keeps you in the point of view of the monks throughout.
Because the story takes place entirely through the monk's pov - you won't find many women here.
None in fact appear, except possibly in brief reference, until the last section. And the four that do, aren't main characters. They are a two-headed woman, a mother, a mother, and a reporter. All brief walk-on parts. Women do not exist in this world. This troubled me until I realized that within the context of the novel, the absence of women made sense.
The themes of the book run the gamut - and the book is in some ways a slave to its thematic impulses. The writer seems more interested in the ideas he wishes to convey than in his characters or plot. That said, there are at least five characters that stand out in my memory and they are so vivid you can taste them. And through their conversations with each other, the book is in some respects a long conversation or discourse between characters, the themes become crunchy as well, no longer estoreic but real. If an idea can be considered something you can touch and squeeze in your fist. I found myself changing my mind regarding issues such as euthansia, faith, science, who should have access to knowledge, religion and how we communicate with each other. Euthansia is a heavy theme in the final chapter - where you find yourself questioning the morality of it with the character's whose head you currently reside within. Forgiveness - not of man, but of God, is another theme. (Something I found interesting because much like the monk, I do not believe God needs to be forgiven, the novel questions that.) And like all good conversations - you do not leave this novel with any answers, just more questions. A really good conversation or debate does not leave you with the satisfied feeling - oh, I was right, or oh I won or damn, they were right - but rather, the feeling of, maybe, just maybe, there's another way of looking at this after all? That maybe there is no right or wrong answer, it depends on the situation. And the whole thing bears more pondering. This book will make you ponder things. Turn and twist them through your mind.
Rage a bit at them. Discard them. Then come back again.
I got the feeling when I finished it, that the author was asking me questions not answering them.
Asking if we can pursue scientific knowledge without destroying each other? If we can believe in something greater than ourselves? If we can see pain as not a curse but a gift that provides us with insight? And whether we are always doomed to repeat our mistakes over and over and over again, as if we've learned nothing from the historical records preserved from the times before us?
A few weeks ago a friend told me that only science and math matter, the humanities are meaningless.
And I remember retorting - that this isn't true. Without the humanities - the study of art, culture, literature, history - how can we keep science in check? How can learn from past mistakes? See a perspective other than our own? Communicate something other than a formula or a mathematical equation, but rather the purpose of such an equation and whether such an equation should even be attempted. At the same time - art and culture worship science, push it forward, provide meaning.
The two are married, they are in constant negotiation, they swing about one another. To say one is better than the other is a bit, I guess like saying Yang wins over Yin or vice versa. Or man is greater than woman. We need, we require both.
It's an odd book. One that will haunt me quite a while. And like any odd book, has changed some of my perceptions of my universe. Has it changed me? I don't know.
Next book on my plate is What Love Means to You People by NancyKay Shapiro . It just came out in hard back and a bit different than what I've been reading lately. A romance between two men as opposed to a sci-fantasy.
And yes, I'm still pecking at Chapter 19 of my own novel.
Amongst the best books I've read and will haunt me for quite a while I suspect.
Review is below. I've cut-tagged it, because it does contain vague spoilers, nothing major, but some people don't like to be spoiled at all, so it is cut for them.
The book is about a bunch of monks in a post-nuclear future. It contains three novellas. Each novella is a work in of itself, yet also part of the whole. The setting is a monastary that is located in the middle of the desert in Utah in the distant future. The monastary in the first section is attempting to get saint-hood for it's founder "Leibowitz", a man who had been a scientist and became a monk devoted to presevering scientific knowledge from the people who after the nuclear holocaust wished to destroy it. The second section takes place fifty years later and involves the sharing of the preserved memorabilia with the rest of the world - a world that is now hungry for scientific discoveries, yet still shrouded in darkness. The third section takes place more than a hundred years after the first two and we are in the same monastery and events that had taken place prior to the first section appear to be happening again.
The novel was written in 1961 around the time that John F. Kennedy was threatening Cuba with a missile launch, historically known as those Five Days in October. It was also written by a man who served in World War II as a radio operator and tail gunner, participating in more than fifty-five combat sorties, among them the controversial destruction of the Benedictine abbey at Monte Casino, the oldest monastery in the Western World. Fifteen years later he wrote this book. Which is followed by a sequel nearly forty years later. In the introduction, we are told that he committed suicide in 1996 at the age of 74. The intro and the blurb at the back serve as excellent bookends to this tale and this is coming from a gal who hates intros and authorial notations and would prefer not to see them. Here, they add to what is in between the pages - a sort of footnote on the proceedings if you will.
It would be easy to write this novel off as no more or less than a bad utopia or nuclear war allegory - morality tale. Of which I've read several, including Alas, Babylon (my favorite) and On the Beach by Neville Shute, not so fond of. And the movies that came out in the 1980s, during the last nuclear scare - The Day After, not to be confused with the disaster film that came out two years ago, amongst them. But this novel is more than that.
It is a disturbing and difficult novel. Bleak at times, uplifting at others. The language of it catchs at you, pulls at your mind, and at times, seeps through the fingers. It does not stay the same throughout, but the change in tone and word choice is not grating, you don't really notice it at first, more, become aware and shrug it off. And is written in three not one language. If you are a scholar of latin and hebrew, you will no doubt get more from this than I did. Just as you would if you have the patience to google and/or hunt down every word you have not seen before. I tend to figure it out by contextual meaning and let it go with that. I admit, I am a lazy reader.
If this sort of thing puts you off, you may have troubles getting through the novel - the author does not assist you by translating the latin and hebrew words - occassionally, he does, but not often. I liked that, because it keeps you in the point of view of the monks throughout.
Because the story takes place entirely through the monk's pov - you won't find many women here.
None in fact appear, except possibly in brief reference, until the last section. And the four that do, aren't main characters. They are a two-headed woman, a mother, a mother, and a reporter. All brief walk-on parts. Women do not exist in this world. This troubled me until I realized that within the context of the novel, the absence of women made sense.
The themes of the book run the gamut - and the book is in some ways a slave to its thematic impulses. The writer seems more interested in the ideas he wishes to convey than in his characters or plot. That said, there are at least five characters that stand out in my memory and they are so vivid you can taste them. And through their conversations with each other, the book is in some respects a long conversation or discourse between characters, the themes become crunchy as well, no longer estoreic but real. If an idea can be considered something you can touch and squeeze in your fist. I found myself changing my mind regarding issues such as euthansia, faith, science, who should have access to knowledge, religion and how we communicate with each other. Euthansia is a heavy theme in the final chapter - where you find yourself questioning the morality of it with the character's whose head you currently reside within. Forgiveness - not of man, but of God, is another theme. (Something I found interesting because much like the monk, I do not believe God needs to be forgiven, the novel questions that.) And like all good conversations - you do not leave this novel with any answers, just more questions. A really good conversation or debate does not leave you with the satisfied feeling - oh, I was right, or oh I won or damn, they were right - but rather, the feeling of, maybe, just maybe, there's another way of looking at this after all? That maybe there is no right or wrong answer, it depends on the situation. And the whole thing bears more pondering. This book will make you ponder things. Turn and twist them through your mind.
Rage a bit at them. Discard them. Then come back again.
I got the feeling when I finished it, that the author was asking me questions not answering them.
Asking if we can pursue scientific knowledge without destroying each other? If we can believe in something greater than ourselves? If we can see pain as not a curse but a gift that provides us with insight? And whether we are always doomed to repeat our mistakes over and over and over again, as if we've learned nothing from the historical records preserved from the times before us?
A few weeks ago a friend told me that only science and math matter, the humanities are meaningless.
And I remember retorting - that this isn't true. Without the humanities - the study of art, culture, literature, history - how can we keep science in check? How can learn from past mistakes? See a perspective other than our own? Communicate something other than a formula or a mathematical equation, but rather the purpose of such an equation and whether such an equation should even be attempted. At the same time - art and culture worship science, push it forward, provide meaning.
The two are married, they are in constant negotiation, they swing about one another. To say one is better than the other is a bit, I guess like saying Yang wins over Yin or vice versa. Or man is greater than woman. We need, we require both.
It's an odd book. One that will haunt me quite a while. And like any odd book, has changed some of my perceptions of my universe. Has it changed me? I don't know.
Next book on my plate is What Love Means to You People by NancyKay Shapiro . It just came out in hard back and a bit different than what I've been reading lately. A romance between two men as opposed to a sci-fantasy.
And yes, I'm still pecking at Chapter 19 of my own novel.
no subject
ps ... for those who don't know " Canticile " is a funeral mass of sorts.
no subject
I was watching Bablyon 5 - which was opposite DS9 in my area when it premiered.
Don't remember much of B5, since haven't seen an episode since the finale that aired. So my memory of the show is quite hazy in places.
I have vivid memories of some episodes, while others, not much memory at all.
For example - I remember the whole segment with Londo and Gkar switching alliances - Londo alligning himself with the shadows, Gkar going against them. Partly because that twist blew my mind. To have what appeared to be an obvious villian become one of the most heroic and noble characters and what appeared to be an obvious clown to become one of the most fascinating and complex villians, was quite an achievement. But a lot of the other subplots...not so much, I'm afraid.