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B0DSZLN57Y
| 4.16
| 205,135
| Apr 28, 1985
| May 2010
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liked it
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As I was reading this book, a student saw me reading it and asked what it was about, I had to think for a few moments before answering. “It’s about ter As I was reading this book, a student saw me reading it and asked what it was about, I had to think for a few moments before answering. “It’s about terrible people in a terrible place, doing terrible things to each other,” I said. And that really does just about sum it up. The story that McCarthy tells is a complete destruction of the mythology of the Old West that Americans had come to know and love over the years. Some of the more modern Western films had begun to explore this territory when the book was published in 1985 – many of Clint Eastwood’s films spring to mind – creating a West where the “hero” is just the least bad person in the film. Even then, though, there are still undercurrents of the nobility of the cowboy, out to tame a savage land for the good of a civilization that will no longer need him when it’s done. This book features characters who are violent and vicious, thieves and murderers who will stop at nothing to get what they want. It starts with the nameless Kid, a young man who joins a group of bounty hunters riding the US-Mexico border in the years before the Civil War. They’re ostensibly looking for Apaches, bringing back scalps for gold, but they’re not especially picky. Any black head of hair ripped from the head of its owner will do, and if that means ravaging some small Mexican villages, then so be it. The bounty hunters are led by Judge Holden, a man who gladly takes his place as the antithesis of everything that was supposed to be right and good about the old west. In both form and philosophy, Holden is barely human, and he only becomes less human as the book goes on. Insofar as the book has an antagonist, it is he. He contrasts greatly to our ostensible protagonist, The Kid, in many ways. For one, the Judge has a name. For another, the Kid routinely disappears from the story for pages at a time, only to reappear to get to the next stage of the story. It’s actually very easy to forget that the Kid is in the book, until you see him again and think, “Oh yeah. Him.” The Judge, on the other hand, is impossible to miss. He holds court out in the wilderness and expounds upon his philosophy of the world. He is huge and pale and clean, standing out amongst the filthy and starving band of killers that he’s assembled. Whenever he’s off-stage, you find yourself wondering when he’s going to show up again, and how much worse things will get when he does. Another image that McCarthy decides to destroy is that of the Native Americans as being honorable heroes, out to save their land from white invaders. Just as the cowboys of old were not knights on horseback, the natives were not noble savages who resorted to violence only as a last resort. The Apaches – and other native Americans in this book – are just as violent and bloodthirsty as their American and Mexican counterparts. Everyone, regardless of background, ultimately resorts to violence and savagery, throwing aside all morality in the name of either profit or survival, or simply the demonic glee of seeing things destroyed. No one comes out of this book looking good or ultimately redeemed. All are villains. All of this made it something of a tough read for me. Not because of the scenes of horrifying violence – I can deal just fine with those – but because there was no one I wanted to like. I mean, I was fascinated by The Judge, but with that same kind of fascination that made me watch tsunami videos or that made people visit Ground Zero in New York City. It’s horror on a scale that we hope never to experience in our own lives, but we can’t look away. Without someone to like, it was hard to care, and when it’s hard to care about a book, I find reasons not to read it. The writing was amazing, don’t get me wrong. McCarthy’s use of language was a joy to read, even if his refusal to use quotation marks got me a little annoyed from time to time, and I sometimes found myself reading passages out loud in the voice of Sam Elliott. In describing the landscapes of the West, McCarthy turns nature itself into a character, one that is every bit as violent, dangerous and hateful as the humans traversing it. In addition, he does a very good job with the pacing of the book. The narration tends to grow as the book goes on, with sentences becoming longer and more elaborate as they unspool across the page, some taking a page or two to themselves, only to be stopped short by a single line or a rapid exchange. It’s hypnotic in places, and something I wish I knew how to do half as well. All that aside, though, the only thing that really kept me going – other than the writing – was morbid curiosity. That, and the hope that I would figure out what McCarthy was trying to say in the book. What it all means. And that, friends and neighbors, is one of the pitfalls of being an English teacher. Always looking for meaning in things, for the bigger picture, the author’s Big Message to his readers. And as far as I can tell, McCarthy’s message is that man is a savage, terrifying animal, capable of cruelties that the average book-buying person cannot even begin to contemplate. The horrors that are depicted here are so brutally displayed and so viscerally described that we eventually become numb to them – which is a new horror by itself. There are things depicted in this story which should evoke nothing less than absolute moral condemnation, a rejection that such things should be possible to contemplate, much less carry out. So when you find yourself glossing over these horrors as though they were mundane, it’s jarring. As you read, you want to keep a distance from the monsters populating the book, but isn’t ignoring their evils a kind of acceptance? And do you really want to be the kind of person who accepts these things? At the same time you’re trying to convince yourself that real people shouldn’t be capable of the acts you’re reading about, you end up accepting them. Maybe that was what McCarthy wanted all along – for the readers to look at how we view violence and what our understanding of it really is. To force us to re-assess the limits of what we will tolerate and why. To make us look again at our heroes and villains and try to figure out exactly what the differences are, and whether we are really that far removed from them. Or maybe McCarthy just really likes writing this kind of thing. Either way, it’s a fascinating read, one that will linger with you long after you’ve finished the book. -------------------------- “In the days to come the frail black rebuses of blood in those sands would crack and break and drift away so that in the circuit of a few suns all trace of the destruction of these people would be erased. The desert wind would salt their ruins and there would be nothing, neither ghost nor scribe, to tell any pilgrim in his passing how it was that people had lived in this place and in this place died.” ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Feb 15, 2012
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Mar 27, 2012
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Paperback
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000712774X
| 9780007127740
| 000712774X
| 4.13
| 105,474
| Feb 1951
| Aug 2002
|
really liked it
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As a newly-minted high school reading teacher, my introductory book to spoon-feed to the young'ns was Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. It was a really g
As a newly-minted high school reading teacher, my introductory book to spoon-feed to the young'ns was Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. It was a really good one to start with, as it had a fairly simple and uncomplicated storyline, a small cast of characters, and fairly well-defined themes and literary techniques. Therefore, teaching it to students who weren't native speakers (but whose English was really good nonetheless) was a good experience. I hadn't read a whole lot of Bradbury prior to that, and really fell in love with the book. F451 was a great read, and something I'll review here once I've let it settle down a bit in my head. After all, I've spent the last couple of months teasing every shred of meaning I could out of it, and that's not the kind of review I write here, now is it? Reading the book gave me a new interest in reading Bradbury, so I picked up a couple of short story collections and started to make my way through them. While I was talking to my department head about it, she recommended that I read The Illustrated Man, a copy of which she just so happened to have sitting around. The Illustrated Man is a collection of eighteen short stories, more or less unrelated, but brought together under the larger, over-arching story of the Illustrated Man himself. Our narrator, you see, meets a large man on the road. The guy is covered with tattoos, of the highest quality. Their colors are vivid, their details are lifelike, and the man says that, at night, the tattoos come alive. They tell stories, if you watch them long enough. And if you watch them too long, you may see your own future as well.... Well, the narrator decides to watch as the Illustrated Man sleeps, and what he sees are the stories that are presented in this volume. By and large, the stories are unconnected to each other, which means we can go from a strange future where one family's house takes care of all their material needs to a poor farmer who manages to avoid the end of the world by being in one of his own. Still, there are a few thematic threads that run through the book that are interesting to look at. One of these themes is the way we relate to technology. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the first tale of the book, "The Veldt." In this story, we meet a family who are completely dependent on their house. It's a technological miracle, where everything is completely automatic. The thought of actually cooking a meal is tantamount to barbarism, and their idea of taking a vacation means just shutting down the more obsequious functions of the house. One of these is the children's nursery. Akin to the holodeck, this room can replicate any environment that the users want. The children's fascination with the savagery of the African savanna worries their parents, though, and the threat of having the room shut down eventually becomes more than the children - or the house - can tolerate. In "The Concrete Mixer," a Martian invasion force finds themselves overcome by the technology of Earth. Not the military technology, mind you, but the mindless, brain-destroying technology of leisure. Faced with TV and radio, casinos and bars, drive-in movies and fast food, the Martians discover that Earth is far more dangerous than they had ever expected. In "Marionettes, Inc," Bradbury weaves a tale worthy of Philip K. Dick, telling about a very special service that will create an exact android duplicate of yourself. This robot will do all the tedious things in your life, such as go to work, do chores and tolerate your spouse. But what if the perfect robot duplicates are too perfect, and decide that they don't really want to do the drudgery anymore? In "The City," a self-aware metropolis wakes up after twenty thousand years with the arrival of human astronauts - and immediately begins planning its revenge on those who left it so long ago. Another recurring theme in this collection is that of seeking happiness, through one means or another, and only occasionally finding it. In these stories, characters are looking for something that will make their lives worthwhile, or at the very least a little bit better. In "The Long Rain," a group of explorers on Venus want just one thing - to get out of the eternal, unceasing rain that pummels the planet. The Sun Domes are their only shelter, if they can find one before they die or go mad. In "No Particular Night or Morning," an astronaut searches for the only thing he can be absolutely sure of in this universe - nothingness. In "The Man," a group of interstellar explorers are looking for a being, who may or may not be Jesus Christ, going from planet to planet and always finding themselves just a little bit too late. In "The Rocket," a poor junkyard owner wants more than anything to fulfill his dream of showing his children outer space, and manages to do it in a slightly roundabout way. And in "Rocket Man," a father tries to find what he really wants - to live among the stars or to stay with his family on Earth, and ultimately realizes that he wants - but cannot have - both. The stories in here are all pretty good, and there were a few I want to touch on in more detail. The one that I took the most notes on was "The Other Foot," a tale of Mars and the shocking reversal of racial discrimination. In this story, Mars has been colonized by Black exiles from the United States, sent off-planet in an ultimate act of segregation. After decades of eking out an existence on that harsh planet, they learn that a rocket from Earth - probably containing a white astronaut - is on its way. The community reacts in a knee-jerk fashion, preparing a new apartheid on Mars - re-creating the worst of Jim Crow, only in reverse. When the rocket touches down and announces that nuclear war has destroyed everything the colonists had known and loved about Earth, and that white Americans had come to Mars to beg for the help of its citizens, the mob has a change of heart and decides to let bygones be bygones. As much as I hate post-modernism, I couldn't shut off my critic's voice while reading this story. I wondered if a story about Black oppression written by a white author must automatically be racist in nature, and I wondered if Bradbury's suggestion that Black colonists on Mars would, as a first reaction, try to re-create the worst conditions they had endured on Earth might not be rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of Black culture. Then the Intellectual Machine That Eats Itself (i.e. Postmodernism) began to ask if perhaps these thoughts were rooted in my own unacknowledged racism, at which point I had to just finish the damn story and move on. It's a question that probably wasn't asked fifty years ago, though, which makes the story an interesting one to revisit in our slightly more enlightened age. Another story that I really enjoyed was "The Exiles," which has also been titled "The Mad Wizards of Mars." In this tale, the great writes of fiction - and their works - are living (where else?) on Mars. There you can find Edgar Allan Poe and Ambrose Bierce living with Charles Dickens and Shakespeare. They're on Mars because Earth has been systematically destroying their works, and thus depriving them of immortality. When a rocket arrives from Earth carrying the last load of books to be destroyed, the fictionauts launch a last-ditch attempt to save themselves. With Poe leading their armies, they pour all of their power into stopping the rocket. Shakespeare's witches fling curses at the astronauts, and Poe summons all the armies of fiction to defend their existence. It's a story that you can tell Bradbury had a lot of fun writing, and is full of wonderful references to the authors he loves. Just the image of Edgar Allan Poe screaming defiance at the air is one that I will treasure every time I read the tale. What's really wonderful about this collection is that it's aged well. Published in 1951, it does suffer from some of the mid-century sci-fi tropes of the day, and modern writers would never be allowed to get away with something like a rainy Venus or humanity calmly accepting the end of the world. But they're still great stories, and well worth the read. So go read 'em. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jul 21, 2010
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Jul 23, 2010
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Paperback
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0441783589
| 4.01
| 241,991
| Dec 1959
| May 1987
|
it was ok
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This book is controversial. Says so right there on the cover - "The Controversial Classic of Military Adventure!" A quick look at its Wikipedia page s
This book is controversial. Says so right there on the cover - "The Controversial Classic of Military Adventure!" A quick look at its Wikipedia page seems to support this, claiming that the book has been criticized for its literary merit, its support of the military, up to and including fascism, racism, utopianism, and gods knows what else. What is certainly true is that it's a book that is guaranteed to make someone, somewhere very angry. In the unspecified future, humanity has taken to the stars. In our efforts to colonize planets that are hospitable to us, we have spread as far and as wide as possible. Unfortunately, this has brought us into direct contact with alien races who are not entirely keen on sharing land with us, and, as we have always done, we are willing to fight, bleed and die for every inch of it. Our main enemy is the Bugs, whose proper name we never actually learn, and they are a vicious enemy indeed. They possess a hive mind, made up of Soldiers, Workers and Brains. The Soldiers are, of course, the most dangerous, not least because they have no individual sense of self-preservation. Unlike the human soldiers, who value their comrades and brothers-in-arms highly, the Bugs will never go back for a fallen comrade and never consider the safety of their own when prosecuting a campaign against the humans. In other words, the Bugs truly are alien to us, and therefore need to be eliminated. The story follows a young man, Juan Rico, in his journey from enlisted grunt in the Mobile Infantry to Officer in the Terran Federation. Through his eyes, we learn about the technological lengths that we have gone to in order to be able to fight the Bugs. First among these is the powered armor that the Mobile Infantry wears - an all-purpose exoskeletal suit that vastly increases its wearer's speed and strength, in addition to providing him with instant contact with his squadmates and vital information that he needs to fight the enemy. Humanity in the future has made great strides in terms of warfare, all out of need to defeat the Bugs. You might be forgiven, then, for thinking that this was a grand military adventure. That we would feel the thrill and terror of a young military recruit as he experiences a universe larger and wilder than he ever could have imagined. You would be wrong. Not entirely wrong, of course. If you read it right, you can infer the newness and strangeness of the circumstances that Juan Rico finds himself in. But this book isn't about Juan Rico, even though he is the narrator. In fact, we don't even learn his proper name until nearly two-thirds of the book is finished. Before then he's just "Johnnie," which is one of the most generic soldier names out there. Juan Rico is so irrelevant to the story that we don't even find out that English isn't his native tongue until three pages before the end of the book. Juan Rico is nothing more than a cipher in this tale, about as important to the content of Starship Troopers as Glaucon is to The Republic. In the classic tale of Socrates, the philosopher talks about justice and politics and society, with his wisdom inspired by a question-and-answer session with his students. Somehow, the students always manage to ask just the right questions to allow Socrates to expound on his theories, and they're usually wrong in just the right ways to make Socrates look smart. So it is with Starship Troopers. Juan Rico is the means by which Robert Heinlein is able to put forth his opinions on war and society, politics, citizenship, crime, child-rearing and, of course, military service. Instead of writing a series of straightforward essays, unfortunately, he decided to make his readers slog through Starship Troopers. This book is a love letter to the military and all it stands for. Not just war and death and destruction, of course, but also loyalty, sacrifice and devotion to duty. It is an examination into why people become soldiers, why some succeed and others fail, and about the historical importance of the soldier class in human history. It's about war as a tool of diplomacy, both in its startling effectiveness and its unfortunate inevitability, as well as the importance of the chain of command and proper military discipline. It's about the comradeship of veterans and the lessons they learn during the service. There's a good reason why this book is on the reading lists for both the Navy and the Marines. What it is not about is any of the characters that are actually involved in the story. The only reason Juan Rico is who he is is because he is not someone else. He could have been Buddy St. Germaine or Phil Waxman or Marvin Crumplebottom and the story would have read exactly the same: son of a rich businessman who enlists in the armed forces just to tweak his father, learns a whole host of Valuable Lessons (tm) and eventually discovers his calling. There is absolutely nothing about Juan Rico than makes him any more interesting than any other character except that he happens to be the narrator of the story. If that were all, I might be able to let this book slide as just thinly-veiled military fetishism. But honestly, there's no veil there at all. The story stops in several places while Heinlein uses his characters as mouthpieces to tell us how he thinks society should be run. Ancillary characters - students, subordinate soldiers - ask just the right questions or are wrong in just the right ways so that Heinlein, much like Plato speaking through Socrates, can make the points he wants to make. Juan's professor, retired Lt. Colonel Dubois, and the other lecturers repeatedly point to the 20th century as a model of how not to govern, happily cherry-picking some of the worst results of our system of government and holding them up as the inevitable result of a society that is not run by veterans. For that is how he sees the best of all possible states - one in which only veterans are full citizens and in which only veterans can run the country. The logic being that only someone who has voluntarily enlisted and served in the military is able to truly put the needs of society before his own, and is therefore the best person to run a country. Heinlein, through his fictional avatars, then goes on to show how much more superior the Terran Federation is to its more democratic predecessors and how stupid we were not to see the obvious truth. The message, then, is that the reader is stupid if he or she does not agree with Heinlein. The ancillary characters who challenge Heinlein's thesis are written as obvious idiots and are roundly insulted and abused by their superiors, which effectively becomes Heinlein abusing his readers. In addition, Heinlein sets up so many straw men to knock down that it gets tiresome. Juan's father, for example, is almost stereotypical as a foil to Dubois. Mr. Rico is rich and aloof and sees the military as nothing more than a bunch of violent thugs who have outlived their usefulness. The first time we see him, he is a snob and a jerk, and Juan's decision to piss him off by joining is almost inevitable. The next time we see Mr. Rico, of course, he has joined the Mobile Infantry himself, and has seen the error of his ways. Other members of the cast are overtly written to embody certain themes in Heinlein's opinion of military rule, both positive and negative. Private Hendrick, for example, is a constant complainer, one who stands up for himself during boot camp and just barely escapes a hanging. He is not disciplined enough to be a soldier, and by extension a citizen, and therefore serves as a warning to others. Sergeant Zim [1:], on the other hand, is the consummate soldier - hard on his charges in boot camp, yet as concerned about them as a father would be to his sons. Zim, along with an array of Lieutenants, Captains and other officers, serve as blatant father-substitutes for Juan Rico, with all of the qualities that one would want in a father and absolutely none of the drawbacks. If anything, their only flaws are that they are too concerned about their soldiers. While reading, I wondered if maybe Heinlein was being sarcastic. If perhaps he was trying to demonstrate the true folly of military fetishism by taking it to its ultimate extreme. I have to admit, I didn't disagree with all of his ideas. His thoughts on juvenile delinquency, for example, really struck a chord in me - he maintains that treating young offenders as rational adults who can learn from their crimes is foolishness since, like puppies, young people are not inherently rational and have not yet learned the difference between right and wrong. The term "juvenile delinquent," he maintains, is an oxymoron, since a juvenile has not yet been able to learn of his duty to others, and therefore cannot be delinquent. To treat him as if he were is to fatally misunderstand human nature. And I think there is a grain of truth to the idea that someone who willingly puts her or his life and body on the line for his or her fellow citizens might indeed have the perspective necessary to govern a country. I would point out, however, that this argument rests on a flawed assumption - that service automatically confers selflessness. There may be correlation, but causation is not yet proven. But I don't think he's being sarcastic. The themes and ideas in this book resonate with those that permeate his other books. What's more, Dubois sounds like Jubal Harshaw, Lazarus Long and Professor De la Paz - other characters from other books who all served as mouthpieces for the author's political and social philosophies. And this is what makes Heinlein's books so special - he is not afraid to stand up for his ideas and put them right there on the page for the reader to see. It is not so much Heinlein's ideas that I object to in this book, even if I do disagree with many of them. It is his presentation of those ideas that bothers me. Flawed logical methods presented as irrefutable discourse, transparent characters with no life beyond their purpose as object lessons, and a dissertation on military supremacy that is just barely disguised as a science fiction novel. It is written from the presumption that the writer is right and the reader is, from the first page, completely and utterly wrong. I think the ideas that Heinlein presents in this book are important, and they are worthy of discussion. I just wish he had held his readers in a little higher esteem when he decided to discuss them. [1:] As a side note, the entire boot camp sequence is much, much more entertaining if you read Sgt. Zim with the voice of Invader Zim. It exponentially improves the book. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Mar 16, 2010
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Mar 18, 2010
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Mass Market Paperback
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0340837942
| 9780340837948
| 0340837942
| 4.15
| 136,939
| Jun 02, 1966
| Mar 14, 2005
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really liked it
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What would you do if you had access to the greatest supercomputer ever built? A computer so complex and intricate that it finally gains full conscious
What would you do if you had access to the greatest supercomputer ever built? A computer so complex and intricate that it finally gains full consciousness - and only you knew about it? Would you use it for your own nefarious purposes and hack your way to riches? Would you try to teach it how to be human? Would you tell it jokes? Or would you use it to start a revolution that frees your people in the Lunar Colonies from the yoke of Terran oppression? Manuel Garcia O'Kelly Davis never really meant for that last one to happen. One of Luna's best computer technicians, Mannie's philosophy was "Keep mouth shut" when it came to matters political, and never considered the political fate of the Moon to be something he needed to worry about. When he attends a meeting of Lunar dissidents, people protesting against the rule of the Earth-based Lunar Authority, he goes more out of curiosity than cause. An attack by Authority troops drives him together with lifelong revolutionary Wyoming Knott and anarchist professor Bernardo de la Paz, and together they hatch a plan to take down the Lunar Authority and make Luna into a sovereign nation above Earth. To do so, they'll need the help of Mike, the world's first - and only - sentient computer. He knows the odds, he can run the scenarios - with Mike on their side, the people of Luna can gain their independence and create a new nation in the grand tradition of old. A friend of mine said that this was the best political science textbook that she'd ever read, and in many respects she's right. This book packs a lot of social philosophy into three hundred pages, and Heinlein requires you to be pretty quick on the uptake. From Manny's clipped way of narrating the story to all the new lingo and concepts that are necessary for Lunar life, the reader needs to pay close attention in order to get the full impact of what's going on in the book. In a way, this book is Heinlein asking the question, "How do new nations begin?" Historically, there are two ways: top-down and bottom-up. In the first case, a person or people of strength brings a group of citizens to become a political entity. In the second, the people themselves rise up to overthrow their former masters. Most revolutions are a mix of the two, really, and Luna's is no exception. The very charismatic Adam Selene (Mike in disguise) and the brilliant Professor manage to bring the people of Luna together in order to rid themselves of the Lunar Authority. What makes it very interesting is that the book is pretty much a how-to book on insurgency and revolution. They work out an improvement on the traditional cell system of a conspiracy, and how to make it as stable and secret as possible, while still maintaining reliable communications. They figure out how to involve people in the revolution indirectly, harnessing the energies of everyone from children to old people. Working against a better-armed and more powerful enemy, Luna's revolution is a textbook model of how to overthrow your oppressors and gain your freedom. Of course, once you have your freedom, then what do you do with it? How do you run your new country, and how do you make sure that your freedom can be maintained? How do you build a government and write a constitution and establish trade and do all the other little things that have to happen if you want a country all your own? What's more, Heinlein puts forth a new society that is radically different from the ones we know now, and by necessity. With drastically different demographics and gravity, life on Luna cannot follow the same rules as life on Earth. This new life includes a near reverence for women, marriages that span not only multiple partners but multiple generations, and a spirit of individualism that would make the most grizzled pioneer proud. Life on the moon, as the title implies, is not easy. Many of those who come to Luna do not survive. Those who do, however, become the backbone of a new nation that will one day be the crossroads of the solar system. It's a dense read, but fun, once you get used to the narrator's mode of speech. Manny often leaves off pronouns and articles, making him sound very choppy and direct. And a lot of it is done in speeches and Socratic dialogs between the Prof and whomever is unlucky enough to get in his way. I'd say that the greater part of this book is discussion of how to have a revolution from the point of view of the moon, and a look at how Heinlein thinks a society should be ordered. Other than being very narrative-heavy, which modern readers might find somewhat tiring, there is one point about the book that didn't sit right with me. It didn't ruin the book, necessarily, but it put a big asterisk next to everything that Heinlein was trying to say. That asterisk is Mike. Mike is a truly marvelous AI. He is not only self-aware and blessed with a rather rudimentary sense of humor, but he is tied into all of Luna's main systems. His processing speed and memory are exceptional, and while he doesn't really care one way or the other about rebelling against his owners, he does think that organizing a rebellion might be an entertaining diversion. He's a good character, really, but he is entirely too powerful. All of the problems that traditionally plague conspiracies, undergrounds and rebellions are solved by Mike. He knows the probabilities of success and can run thousands of scenarios in a moment. He is able to set up a moon-wide communications system that is completely secure. He can tap into the Lunar Authority's database while at the same time keeping the Rebellion's data secret. What's more, he can be trusted to know everything about everyone in the group - he cannot be bribed or drugged or forced to name names under interrogation. He can organize the bombardment of Earth with pinpoint accuracy, bring down attacking ships and organize attacks all over the moon. With Mike at their side, the rebels couldn't help but win, and I found that a kind of hollow victory, in a narrative sense. I kept waiting for Mike to be compromised - his power disconnected or his actual intelligence uncovered - or for him to change his mind about helping the rebels. One way or another, I wanted the rebels to win Luna without the help of their omniscient computer conspirator. As it is, Mike pretty much delivers the Moon to its people, and then vanishes without a trace. That's not to say that the human element isn't necessary - even Mike couldn't have won independence without them - I would rather have seen a wholly human revolution. Other than that, though, it was a very good read, and it's a book that ties into a lot of Heinlein's other works. Many concepts that are key to Heinlein's vision of the world are in this book - the freedom of the individual to direct his or her own life, the benefits of polygamy over monogamy, and of course the notion of TANSTAAFL - "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch" - which is arguably one of the governing principles of the universe. In this book, Heinlein asks the reader to do more than just enjoy a good story - he demands that the reader think about the message as well. And that's what makes Heinlein one of the greats. If you're looking for some essential science fiction and you like your politics rough-and-tumble, check this book out. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Mar 2010
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Mar 04, 2010
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Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
0345413997
| 9780345413994
| 0345413997
| 4.02
| 28,137
| 1957
| Jun 17, 1997
|
really liked it
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Oh, 1950s science fiction - is there nothing you can't do? One of the downsides to our modern information age is that we have so much information avail Oh, 1950s science fiction - is there nothing you can't do? One of the downsides to our modern information age is that we have so much information available to us. If I see a reference on a blog or in a book that I don't know, it's a quick hop over to Google or Wikipedia to find out what it is, and if it's really interesting I can find myself learning about something I never knew before. And so, if I want to know more about cold sleep, robotics or time travel, there's a whole host of ways that I can not only learn about it, but learn why it's just so hard to do. I mean, think about robotics - we've been looking forward to the perfect household robot for decades now. One that can cook and clean and do all those tiresome chores that we would rather not spend our time doing. The problem is that those tiresome chores are actually marvelously complex tasks, involving not only precise physical movements, but some very complicated judgment calls. Every time we figure out how to get a robot to do one of those things, we then have a hundred other things that need to be done to get it even close to human-like competence. I know this because the internet knows this. But back in 1957, this stuff was all new and fresh and unknown, so if Robert Heinlein wanted his main character to cobble together the perfect household robot with some off-the-shelf parts and a little bit of magic tech (the Thorsen Memory Tubes), then why not? Assuming we had the technology, what couldn't we build? Thus is the set-up for The Door into Summer, an adventure in engineering, patent law, and economics, with a little bit of time travel thrown into spice it up. Our hero, Daniel Boone Davis, is an engineer of the purest sort - he got into engineering to solve problems, and that's what he does. He doesn't want to be just one guy working on one cog for a huge corporation; he wants to make things himself that he knows will benefit everyone. He's a real Populist Engineer, too - his creations are made with replaceable parts, specifically so that the owner can quickly deal with any mechanical problems themselves, rather than have to wait for a repair shop to do the work. The parts are all off-the-shelf, too, which not only makes the machines easier to produce, but makes the production cost lower. In other words, he's making machines that will benefit as many people as possible, and the first one is the somewhat misogynistically-named Hired Girl. This machine (which is a very close approximation of the Roomba, by the way) becomes an instant success, and the company that Dan forms to take care of it is looking to become fantastically wealthy. Unfortunately for Dan, his business partners - Miles and Belle - are far more interested in becoming filthy rich than helping mankind. So when it looks like Dan's newest creation, an all-purpose household robot named Flexible Frank, is going to be a wild success, they manage to freeze him out of the company. Literally. They steal his inventions out from under him and force him to take the Long Sleep - to be frozen cryogenically for thirty years. He wakes up in the year 2000, without money, without a job or prospects, and without his beloved cat, Pete. A word about the cat angle to this story - if you're a cat person, like me, then the relationship between Dan and Pete will really resonate with you. Its clear that Heinlein himself was a cat person, as he shows a wonderful understanding of the human-cat relationship, including the absolute uncertainty as to which one is in charge at any given time. While the cat is not absolutely necessary to the plot, it's a nice addition to the story. If you're not a cat person, well... you should be. Anyway, in the wild future of 2000, Dan discovers that something very strange was going on around the time he got frozen, and the more he uncovers, the more it looks like there can be only one explanation - time travel! This is really classic science fiction at its best. The narrator is a brilliant man who never meets a problem he cannot solve, at least not eventually. He's a certified genius, and were it not for his blind spot for pretty women and his trust in his business partner, he would have had a fantastic life as an inventor. But his love of making stuff gets in the way of how the real world works, and sets him up for a series of thefts and betrayals. But you never really worry about him, because he is a man with no uncertainties. He doesn't wallow in self-loathing and moral dismay when he encounters a problem like being thirty years in the future with no means of supporting himself. No! When he sees a problem, his first thought is, "How do I solve this?" In other words, he's an engineer. It's a remarkably optimistic book, too. While the future of 2000 isn't perfect, it's still a whole lot better than 1970. And while 1970 certainly isn't perfect, it's a whole lot better than 1957. The book rests on that wonderful mid-century assumption that while human innovation can't solve every problem (and indeed often succeeds in creating more problems), it is, in the long run, a force for good. For the modern reader this may seem terribly naive, but I found it refreshing. So while the story is really pretty predictable, it's a fun ride. Even the time travel element isn't quite as risky as Heinlein tries to make it out to be, since the reason Dan opts for time travel is that he's found evidence that he's already done it. Therefore no matter how dangerous it might be, he knows for a fact that he'll be successful. He doesn't mention this, or even seem to notice it, but the sharp-eyed reader should pick it up pretty quickly. While most of the driving force of the book is what I would normally consider pretty boring - patent law and engineering - there is one element to it that is distinctly Heinlein: the universality of love. Dan is done in by his belief that he loves Belle, who turns out to be a gold-digger of the lowest order. But in the end, Dan knows who he truly loves. The only problem is that she's an eleven year-old girl. Whether in the publication year of 1957, the year Dan starts in, 1970, or the far-flung future of 2000, a grown man marrying a pre-teen is something that is generally frowned upon. They're able to settle this problem with a little time travel/cryogenic jiggery-pokery, but when you stop to think about it, the situation can be somewhat... unconventional. If you stop to really think about their relationship, there's some strange moral ambiguity going on there. Fortunately, the characters don't really care and the book ends without going into the ramifications of what they've done. The book isn't about moral complexity, though. It's about solving problems and finding happiness, no matter what you have to do to get it. It's about overcoming adversity, betrayal and even time itself to get the life that you know you deserve. It's about finding that door into summer, when all the other doors lead you only into the winter. While we may not be able to solve our problems quite as neatly as Dan Davis did, we can still follow his example. Except, perhaps, with the romancing eleven year-olds. That's still not cool. ...more |
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not set
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Feb 21, 2010
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Feb 24, 2010
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Paperback
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1594743347
| 9781594743344
| 1594743347
| 3.32
| 141,441
| Apr 01, 2009
| May 01, 2009
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liked it
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Full disclosure: I have never read Pride and Prejudice. It's one of those novels that you're really supposed to read, and maybe I did read it back in
Full disclosure: I have never read Pride and Prejudice. It's one of those novels that you're really supposed to read, and maybe I did read it back in high school English class, but if I did, my brain has scabbed it over. It's a book that, for reasons which I don't understand, is adored around the world. The original book (according to Wikipedia and what I gleaned from reading this) is a tale of the Troubles of Rich People. It's a novel of manners, in which the conflict centers entirely around the personalities of the people involved. The protagonist, Elizabeth Bennet, is one of five daughters born to a house of moderate means. Since they're growing up in a patriarchal society, the only way for them to be at all successful in their lives is to get married - especially so that they might have some chance of inheriting part of their father's estate someday. Their father seems to resent that they were all born girls, and really wants nothing to do with the family at all. Their mother has but one wish, and that's to see her daughters all get married. So when a handsome young man - Charles Bingley - moves into the neighborhood, the Bennet household is all a-flutter over the hopes that he might pick one of their girls to make into an honest woman. Unfortunately he brings his friend with him, Fitzwilliam Darcy, who is immediately unlikable, especially to headstrong and opinionated young Elizabeth. I don't know if it was Austen who gave birth to this trope in fiction, but we all know what's going to happen when two characters are introduced that hate each other from the start. The story goes on, propelled forward by the ever-evolving relationship between Darcy, whose brusque and unmannered exterior hides a deep and compassionate soul, and Elizabeth, whose independent and free-thinking nature is reined in by the discovery that what she assumes to be true very seldom is. It's a book about relationships and about passions, about manners and status and about 300 pages too long for me to deal with. I like to think that I'm a cultured, intelligent person, but there's only so much I can take of this kind of thing. I find it really hard to care about people I have so little in common with - I have no property to protect, I don't really care about social class or about artificially inflated systems of manner. I don't come from a family that is concerned with marriage or status, and so I don't identify with the characters. In works of this nature the world is alien to me. I can't relate to the story and, more importantly, I don't want to relate to the story. I hope that I have better things to do with my life than worry about who has fallen in love with whom and who is hiding dark secrets from their past. And so, the addition of zombies to the tale is just fine with me. According to the co-author, Seth Grahame-Smith: “You have this fiercely independent heroine, you have this dashing heroic gentleman, you have a militia camped out for seemingly no reason whatsoever nearby, and people are always walking here and there and taking carriage rides here and there. It was just ripe for gore and senseless violence. From my perspective anyway."Smith saw a great opportunity, which I'm sure many other people will follow. Since Pride and Prejudice is a book in the public domain, anyone can do whatever they want to it without having to worry about copyright laws. If you want to make a movie or a play or a comic book or a porno movie out of it, you're free to do so. Smith saw a chance to create, for lack of a better term, a literary mash-up, bringing two types of story together into something completely new. Now, the Bennet daughters are five of the fiercest fighters in England, devoted to holding back the zombie menace that has gripped the country for five and fifty years. Trained by the greatest Chinese masters in all the killing arts, the Bennet Sisters are famous for their merciless dealings with the unmentionables that roam the countryside, looking for fresh brains to sate their unnatural hunger. Elizabeth Bennet not only has an independent and free-thinking nature, but she's also not above killing ninjas, ripping out their hearts and eating them. The combination of the two styles - the regency romance and the ultra-violent zombie mayhem - works rather well. Smith has done a fine job in not just shoehorning the zombies into Austen's tale, but making sure that the new version of the story is internally consistent. The zombies are a real and present force in this story, waylaying people on the road, occasionally delaying messages and causing very dramatic misunderstandings. And in this new and deadly environment, the dance of misunderstandings between Darcy and Elizabeth goes on, eventually - of course - ending up in the union of two of the greatest zombie hunters in England. The best part, by the way, is the Readers' Discussion Guide in the back. In case you want to read this with your book club, the authors have included some ideas for discussion, such as "Does Mrs. Bennet have a single redeeming quality?" and "Some scholars believe that the zombies were a last-minute addition to the novel, requested by the publisher in a shameless attempt to boost sales.Others argue that the hordes of living dead are integral to Jane Austen's plot and social commentary. What do you think? Can you imagine what this novel might be like without the violent zombie mayhem?" It's a very nice touch, I have to admit. With some fantastically period illustrations of zombies, brain-eating and ninja-baiting (as well as a rather odd one of the Bennet sisters' favorite game, "Kiss Me Deer"), the book is kind of surreal, and I reckon it is one that will entertain a good number of readers, though certainly not all of them. For me, I found that the altered parts of the text - the zombies and the occasional ninja - were the most fun part. The characterization of the Bennet sisters as hardened warriors occasionally given over to fripperies was strange, but entertaining, especially since Graham-Smith made sure to keep the characters consistent. Elizabeth's thoughts and actions are primarily dictated by her Shaolin training, and many of her decisions are rooted in a deep sense of a warrior's honor, rather than a society girl's manners. Furthermore, this strange new England was well made. It's a place where the zombies were a threat, but after fifty-five years, they've been downgraded to more of a dangerous annoyance. Kind of like FOX News. The zombies are a seasonal menace, less prevalent in the winter when the ground is hard, but like cicadas they burrow out of the ground in the spring to menace travelers and (unlike most cicadas) eat their brains. The problem for me wasn't so much the zombies part of the book as it was the Pride and Prejudice part. As I said above, I don't really identify with what the characters care about, and once they got off the topic of the zombie menace, my eyes started to glaze over a little. Fortunately I knew that there would be another bit of mayhem on the way to perk me back up. It made me think, though - there must be something that I'm missing. Not only has the book been around and popular for two centuries, but it's beloved enough that even a drastic modification of it would draw in readers. P&P&Z was a bestseller on the New York Times list and the mere announcement of its existence sent the blog world into an utter fangasm. The addition of zombies to an otherwise beloved tale was met with open arms, a sign that Pride and Prejudice held an honored place in the literary heart of the world. So if I don't get it, then there must be something wrong with me.... Ah, well. As I said of War and Peace, I'm not in this game to score points. So don't expect me to try and slog through the original just to see if it holds up to the zombified version. The big question, of course, is What's Next? There are so many pieces of classic literature out there, all in the public domain and all just ripe for this kind of treatment. Tom Sawyer and the Wizards of the Mississippi? The Shape-Shifting Alien of Monte Cristo? Anne of Green Gables and the Robot Hordes from the Future? Mark my words, this book is only the beginning.... ...more |
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not set
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Jun 11, 2009
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Jun 10, 2009
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Paperback
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B00588VV8O
| 3.83
| 78,356
| 1889
| Oct 01, 1994
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really liked it
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This book puts me in mind of the time my friends and I decided it would be a great idea to go to my mother's house in the Poconos during spring break.
This book puts me in mind of the time my friends and I decided it would be a great idea to go to my mother's house in the Poconos during spring break. It was back in the late nineteen-hundreds, and we were a college cadre of Dungeons & Dragons players who had a great campaign going. "Spontaneous Combustion" we called ourselves, because of our habit of blowing things up at any opportunity. Not a weekend would go by that we didn't burn, destroy, incinerate or otherwise defile something in our imaginary world. But we were exhausted from the rigors of trying to balance our school life with our raping and pillaging. I say "raping" because it really belongs there with "pillaging," though to my knowledge there was no raping of anyone. Dismemberment, yes, and I believe my character managed to give a lot of people syphilis, but in a rather unconventional way. The plan was simple: we'd all go down to the house in the mountains for a few days, have marathon D&D sessions, and generally enjoy each others' company in quiet isolation from the world. The house was an idyllic place - all trees and silence and snow, with the occasional deer or wild turkey. It would be a truly beautiful and serene place for us to rest our wearied bodies and stretch our wild imaginations. So, much like Jerome K. Jerome and his companions, Harris, George and, of course, Montmorency, who decide in this book that the best tonic for their youthful ennui would be a boating trip up the Thames, we all headed to the mountains of Pennsylvania to soothe our troubled souls and to bond as friends and boon companions. Also like Jerome, Harris and George (to say nothing of Montmorency), we had no idea what we were really getting ourselves into. The three men (and the dog) of Jerome K. Jerome's story are like most travelers throughout time since the idea of traveling for leisure was invented: they have a Plan. The Plan, of course, is to have a good time with one's friends while avoiding anything resembling work. Unfortunately, the world will often have other plans. In the case of this book, those plans involved angry swans, annoying lovers, unusually busy inns, bad weather and general vehicular mishaps. Now that I think on it, though, the trouble they had with their boat - and there was trouble - wasn't quite as bad as the trouble I had with my car on our way to the role-playing retreat. Thanks to a strategically placed pothole, I managed to blow out both passenger side tires on my car. Not all at once, though. The rear one went flat right away, causing the small caravan to stop on the side of a New Scotland road while I panicked and my friend Jon fixed the tire. I would have done it myself, of course, but this was the first Misfortune to befall my beloved car - whose name, for reasons too complicated to go into here, was Phoenix - so it fell to Jon to do it. The rest of our crew were milling about patiently, except for Jim, who was lighting road flares so that anyone who happened to be driving down the sunlit, arrow-straight, bone-dry stretch of road might not kill us all. The second flat tire occurred in a small town, the name of which I have forgotten. Or blocked out. There had been a slow leak, and I was on my way out of the liquor store (we had to buy liquor, there was no question of that, though whose idea it was to buy the Jeroboam of red wine escapes me) and Jon says, "Don't get angry." "Why would I get angry, Jon?" I replied, doing a passable imitation of HAL from 2001. It turned out that the other passenger side tire had gone flat while we were shopping. This left us in a small town on the outskirts of Nowhere, at 8 PM on a Friday night in need of a tire. By some miracle, the AAA man we called knew someone who could sell us a tire so we could get on our way. The man, who turned out to bear a remarkable resemblance to Gene Wilder from Young Frankenstein, was happy to sell it to us, though he wouldn't actually put it on the car. Possibly because he wanted to save us money by not charging us for the labor, or possibly because my car - adorned with a variety of bumper-stickers and interesting rear-view amulets - looked like it belonged to an angry gay druid. Whatever his reasons, we got a new tire on the car and were grateful for his help. In discussing any trip, of course, one must eventually come to the weather. For Jerome and his friends it was the rain that defied their best efforts to stay dry and forced them to find lodgings in towns were places to sleep were already scarce. For us, it was snow. Snow is common in the mountains through early spring, but we were prepared for that. Mom had called the plow service and assured us that the driveway would be clear when we got there. When we arrived (having first worked out the Problem of the Mismarked Map), we found that the driveway had not, in fact, been plowed and the snow came up to mid-thigh. We parked on the street, slogged through the snow and went to open the door. When the key wouldn't turn on the second lock, I pretty much gave up and just wandered around the snow saying, "She only gave me one key," over and over again until someone managed to get the door open. After about twelve hours of cataclysmic travel, we were There. We had arrived! Our objective was obtained and our journey was done! We could finally unwind and relax. One of the difficulties that we shared with Jerome and company was with food. They packed well enough, of course, with all kinds of comestibles, but like all people who are not used to preparing and procuring their own food, the comedy that resulted was plentiful. Beef without mustard, infinitely peelable potatoes, strange and unfathomable stews - any traveler who goes on a journey without having some kind of food misadventure has missed half the fun. For us, it was steak. Get a group of men together and their appetites will turn to meat. Oh sure, there might be a few green, hippie, godless Commie men out there who lean towards tofu, but they're really thinking of meat, no matter what they say. We had bought some steaks - the best our college-student budgets could handle. But how to cook them? For in every group of meat-loving men, everyone is a meat expert. It's a mark of True Masculinity, the ability to cook a steak, and the insinuation that one cannot cook a steak is tantamount to calling the man a queer sissy fairy-boy. What resulted from this battle of culinary wills was a dinner that consisted, mainly, of shoe leather, with everyone holding grudges against everyone else for Not Doing It Right. This was about the same time I learned firsthand why one should never chug blackberry brandy. The myriad of problems that people have when traveling are, unfortunately, universal. Poor planning, bad luck, nasty locals, bad weather, pigheadedness and the unfortunate tendency of the world not to live up to our expectations of it - all of these conspire to make travel an endurance trial. What surprised me the most about this book was how similar Jerome K. Jerome's troubles had been to my own. As bad as things can be at the time, though, there comes a time, afterward, when you can look back and laugh. Safe at home, Jerome took his eventful, awful trip up the Thames and made it into an incredibly funny classic of English literature. The fact that the book is over a hundred years old doesn't take away at all from its comedy value because the humor comes from the universal nature of travelers and traveling. We all go on our journeys hoping for a relaxed, congenial time, but we tell stories about the mishaps, misadventures and difficulties. They are, paradoxically, the most fun part of the trip. So I laughed along with Jerome and his friends, remembering all the while the infighting, bad food, bad moods, burnt countertops, spiked spaghetti sauce and everything else that made that one Spring Break trip so terribly, terribly memorable. Although, all things being equal, I would have been just as happy if we'd had... y'know, a good time. ...more |
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Sep 03, 2008
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Sep 05, 2008
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Paperback
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0141018887
| 9780141018881
| 0141018887
| 3.78
| 55,777
| 1762
| Feb 01, 2005
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liked it
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This is one of Penguin's "Great Ideas" books, which I am a big fan of. They're short books, for about 1000 yen a pop, and some of the most important w
This is one of Penguin's "Great Ideas" books, which I am a big fan of. They're short books, for about 1000 yen a pop, and some of the most important writings in Western history. And I'm a big fan of important writings. So, when I went back to Junkudo, I picked up a couple more editions. Before this, I opened up An Attack on an Enemy of Freedom by Cicero, which presented an interesting dilemma - can I include in the reading list a book that I almost finished? I mean, I slogged pretty far through that book, which seemed to consist mostly of Cicero insulting Marc Antony and then saying that he wasn't there to insult Marc Antony. My favorite part was where he reminded everyone that, in his youth, Marc Antony was a boy-whore who inflamed the passions of men. You just don't see that kind of political discourse these days. Anyway, I got bored with it, so I dropped the book and decided that it wouldn't count in the official lineup. The next book I got was this one, and I was a little worried that I might have to drop it too. I mean, this is required reading for every PoliSci student, so I know I read it before. it's just that I couldn't remember it. Not a damn thing about it. As it turns out, this is Rousseau's attempt to figure out why we need government, and most importantly, what kind of government was the "best." He started, as was the trend at the time, from first principles: in the state of Nature, what liberties and motivations does Man enjoy? And how does this change once a society is formed? There has to be - there will almost inevitably be - a system of laws and governance in such a society, so which one best compensates for the loss of the natural liberty to do as we please? Long story short, democracy. In Rousseau's ideal world, every citizen would be involved with the governance of the country at all times. But even he understands that this won't always work. People are busy, you know.... Still, he says at one point, "As soon as someone says of the business of the state - "What does it matter to me?" - then the state must be reckoned lost." Pretty good, and a sentiment that needs to be resurrected. His main idea, his core belief, was that the society and the citizen were one, indivisible, and that as society had the duty of protecting its citizens, the citizens had the duty to uphold society. I think Rousseau would look at the current state of affairs in the nation he helped inspire and be very disappointed.... The end of the book is a long, drawn-out ramble on the history of the Roman republic, which gets kind of dull until he hits his section on civil religion. He falls square on the side of a separation of church and state. A Christian state, he says, would collapse almost as soon as it was formed. It would either be crushed from the outside or eaten from the inside. "Christianity preaches only servitude and submission. Its spirit is too favourable to tyranny for tyranny not to take advantage of it. True Christians are made to be slaves; they know it and they hardly care.; this short life has too little value in their eyes...." Take that, Falwell.... ...more |
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1
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not set
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Jul 2006
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Jan 31, 2008
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Mass Market Paperback
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B0DSZS98PF
| 4.10
| 76,492
| 8
| Aug 30, 2007
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really liked it
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I've always been interested in Greek mythology. In fact, it kind of ruined other mythologies for me, because none of them seem quite as dramatic or de
I've always been interested in Greek mythology. In fact, it kind of ruined other mythologies for me, because none of them seem quite as dramatic or detailed. I mean, these are epic stories where every river, reed and tree is a character. There are stories involving men, spirits and gods, some of them funny, most of them tragic and all of them pertinent to the human condition. That's what mythology does, really - it explains not only the natural world, with its many interesting insects and flowers, but also the human world. Knowing that things like rage, lust and jealousy are not unique to us poor humans but they are qualities that are shared from the lowest earth spirit up to the highest reaches of heaven. We all know the stories that Ovid tells, and I reckon they were all well-known when he collected them. Vut despite their antiquity,they're still accessible, still understandable and still important. More interesting is the overall structure of the book, which reveals not only Ovid's ability to manipulate a story, but also his ability to butter up his patrons. The book begins, as so many books of mythology do, with the creation of the world and moves on through the ages of gold, silver and bronze, showing increasing complexity as it goes. Each story of change and transformation (for that is the theme of the book itself) merges into the next, creating one continuous tale of change. Ultimately, of course, the story culminates in the birth of Ovid's patron, Augustus Caesar, suggesting that the entire ordered cosmos was put in place to make sure he arrived. It's a great story, or series of stories. Check it out. ...more |
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Jul 15, 2008
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Jan 31, 2008
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Paperback
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014027877X
| 9780140278774
| 014027877X
| 4.20
| 5,235,307
| Jun 08, 1949
| Sep 03, 1998
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it was amazing
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Gods, where do I even start with this? As with To Kill a Mockingbird, I wanted to read this during Banned Books Week for two reasons. First, it's on th Gods, where do I even start with this? As with To Kill a Mockingbird, I wanted to read this during Banned Books Week for two reasons. First, it's on the ALA's list of top banned or challenged books, and second because it's really, really good. As with all the books I read, there's always a little part of me thinking about what I'm going to say about the book once I finally decide to write about it. Sometimes I start composing in my mind, coming up with the pithy words and phrases that have made me into the international book reviewing superstar that I am. This time, however, I could barely concentrate for the cacophony in my head. There's just so much going on in this novel that doing it any sort of justice would probably require writing a book that was longer than the book that it was analyzing. And as much as I love you guys, I'm not about to write a whole book about this. Probably because I reckon better minds than mine already have. Regardless, it's hard to choose where exactly to go on this one. There are so many political, sociological, psychological and philosophical threads to pick up here that no matter what I write about, I'm pretty sure I'll get responses about how I didn't mention the solipistic nature of Ingsoc and its relationship to the philosophy behind modern cable news network reporting strategies. Don't worry, guys - I got that one. I suppose two big things came to mind while I was reading it this time, and the first of them was inspired by the previous book I read, To Kill a Mockingbird. In that book, Atticus Finch talks a lot about bravery. To teach his son about what it truly means to be brave, he gets him to take part in an old woman's struggle to free herself of a morphine addiction before she dies - an excruciating process that is more likely to fail than to succeed. But she does it anyway. Atticus says to his son about bravery, "It's when you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do." The question in my mind, then, was "Is Winston Smith brave?" It's a hard question to answer, really. By Atticus' definition, you could say that he is. A member of the Outer Party that rules the superstate of Oceania, Winston Smith is a part of a greater machine. He works in the records department of the Ministry of Truth, diligently altering and "rectifying" the data of the past to bring it into alignment with what the Party wants to be true. His is a world where there is no such thing as objective truth - the truth is what the Party says it is. A good member of the Party sublimates his will to that of the Party. What Big Brother wants, she wants. She has no love but love for the Party and no dreams but to do what the Party wants of her. A good Party member doesn't have plans or hopes or dreams. He doesn't ask questions or idly wonder if things could be different from what they are. A good Party member doesn't think. He is born, lives, consumes, and dies. Winston, however, cannot be a good Party member. He wonders why the world is the way it is, and begins down a road to assert his own identity as a human being. He knows full well that he will fail, that in the end he and the woman he loves will be delivered into the hands of the Thought Police, and he is appropriately terrified. But he goes through with it anyway. He keeps a diary of his thoughts and actively tries to join an underground movement that is determined to overthrow the Party and Big Brother. He declares himself willing to undertake acts of heinous treason, all in the name of resistance against the Party. And in the end, he fails, just as he knew he would. So does this make Winston, a man who is so far in character from Atticus Finch, a brave person? Well, yes and no. He does meet Atticus' definition of bravery - persisting in what you believe to be right, even in the knowledge that you will probably fail. Winston puts his own life on the line multiple times, committing Thoughtcrime of the highest order. But is he doing it for some higher ideal, or is he doing it for more selfish reasons? Flashbacks to his younger days suggest that Winston Smith was an unrepentantly selfish child, who was willing to disregard the dire straits of his own mother and baby sister in order to get what he wanted. Could we not say that the adult Winston does the same? That he is more interested in freedom for himself than for others? Is his rebellion against Big Brother political or personal? He claims that he wants to see the world changed and freedom brought to all people, but how far can we trust a mind that's been well-trained in Doublethink? This, of course, gets right back to the Big Question of why people do the right thing, when it might be so much easier and profitable to do otherwise. Atticus Finch could have let Tom Robinson swing, thus saving himself and his family a whole lot of trouble, just as Winston could have just given up and emulated his neighbor, Parsons, becoming as good a Party member as possible. Neither man could do that, though, because is was not in their nature to do so. It was impossible for Winston to continue to live the way the Party wanted to and, given time, he may have been able to reach beyond meeting his own personal needs and seen to the needs of his greater community. Unfortunately, we never get the chance to find out, as the Thought Police eventually get tired of watching him and take him in. To his credit, he does hold out to the last extreme before he betrays Julia in his heart, so perhaps he is brave after all. The other thing that came to mind while I read was the modern use of the word "Orwellian," and how it falls vastly short of what is depicted in this book. It gets thrown about any time a city puts up a few CCTV cameras downtown, or a business decides to put surveillance cameras in their store. It comes up when we put RFID chips in passports and credit cards, or when we think about how much data Google can hold about us. The word brings to mind a sense of constant surveillance, never being able to move or act without some government or corporation knowing what we're doing. While the concept of the two-way telescreens in this book certainly are a logical extension of surveillance culture, to call a customer database or red light cameras "Orwellian" is like calling a Bronze-age chariot a Ferrari. It betrays an incredible lack of understanding of what exactly is going on in the world that Orwell has built. We may be watched by these people, but in comparison to the average citizen of Oceanea - prole or Party member - we are still remarkably free. There are still freedoms available to us that people like Winston never had, and couldn't understand even if they were offered. We can protest, we can voice our disagreements, we can channel our energies into whatever pursuit we choose, or not channel them at all. We have the freedom to decide who we want to be and how we want to live, at least within the limits of a well-ordered society. We do not live in daily terror that we might be abducted from our beds, our lives ended and our very existence erased from record and memory. Honestly, I think a few security cameras pale in comparison to the horror that is Oceanea and the world of Big Brother. There is so much more to talk about with this book. I find Newspeak fascinating, and its foundations both amazing and terrifying. The idea that a concept can only truly exist if there's a word for it brings to mind those "untranslatable" words you find in every language. For example, there's no equivalent to the English "miss" in Japanese, as in "I miss my mother." Does that mean that people in Japan are incapable of missing people? Of course not, but the underlying theory of Newspeak suggests otherwise. Once the party reduces the English language to a series of simple words with no nuance or subtlety of meaning, the idea goes, Thoughtcrime will be literally impossible. After all, how can one wish for freedom if the concept itself is impossible to articulate? Then there's the idea of the mutability of the past. The way the Party exerts its unbreakable control over the population is by virtue of the fact that they control all media - newspapers, radio, television, publishing of all sorts. If the Party wants to, say, claim that Big Brother invented the airplane, all they have to do is revise all relevant media to reflect their desired past, and then replace and destroy anything that disagrees with them. With no evidence that Big Brother didn't invent the airplane, all that's left is fallible human memory, and those who do think they remember the "right" version of the past will eventually die anyway. Whoever controls the present, the Party says, controls the future. And whoever controls the past controls the present. By remaking the past, the Party guarantees that they can never be gainsaid or proven to have erred in any way. Fortunately for us, Big Brother never had the internet to contend with. As anyone who's been online for a while knows, nothing on the internet ever goes away. Ever. The words of any leader or influential person are all there, in multiple copies, all of which can themselves be copied and distributed in mere seconds. While it is possible to fake a photograph, the awareness of that possibility, as well as the technology to suss out the fakes, are just as available to anyone who wants them. Even in cases where there are disputes about the past, or re-interpretations of past events, it is impossible for one version to systematically replace all others. While this sometimes results in competing versions of the past, the one with the most evidence tends to prevail. Continuing in that vein, the understanding that the Party controls all information about itself leads to a very interesting question that's not addressed in the book - is anything that is not directly witnessed by Winston Smith true? We are led to believe, for example, that there are three world powers - Oceanea, Eastasia and Eurasia - which are locked in a state of perpetual war. The nature of this war and how it serves the interests of these three nations is laid out in Goldstein's Book, which is the text of the Revolution that Winston and Julia want to join. But here's the thing - Goldstein's Book is an admitted fiction, written by the Party as a kind of honeypot to bring suspects through the last stages of their Thoughtcrime. So we have no proof that the world of Nineteen Eighty-four actually is laid out the way it appears. The Party could in fact dominate the world, using the pretext of war to keep the world's citizens terrified, needy and compliant. On the other extreme, Oceanea could just be Britain, turned in on itself like some super-accelerated North Korea, its borders sealed and its citizens kept in utter ignorance of the world outside. We don't know. We have no way of knowing, and neither do any of the characters in the book. Even the Inner Party members might not know the truth of their world, and wouldn't care if they did. One more thing, and I'll keep this one short - Doublethink. The ability to hold two contradictory ideas in your mind, believing in both of them simultaneously and yet being unaware that there's any conflict at all. Knowing, for example, that last week chocolate rations were at thirty grams, and at the same time knowing that this week they had been raised to twenty. All I can say here is to look at the current health care debate in the United States. Here's a fun game: see how often someone says, "We have the best health care in the world," and then see how long it takes before they tell us that health care in the United States is irrevocably broken. Your average politician and pundit does this kind of thing all the time and, in accordance with the basic principles of Doublethink (also known as Reality Control), they immediately forget that they had done it. This game is much easier if you watch Glenn Beck for half an hour. There is just so much to be gleaned from this book. Probably the most important is this - the world depicted in Nineteen Eighty-four is certainly not an impossible one, but it is unlikely. The people of that world allowed the Party to take over for them in a time of crisis, and in that sense this book is a warning to us all. It is a warning to keep the power that we have, and to resist the temptation to let a government decide who we should be. ...more |
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0930289234
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| 586,187
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| 2005
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it was amazing
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What with the movie on its way, I thought it'd be time to go through the book again. And, as always, it was a great pleasure to read. This is a graphic What with the movie on its way, I thought it'd be time to go through the book again. And, as always, it was a great pleasure to read. This is a graphic novel that has an immense impact on comics history. It's considered to be one of the most important works in the genre in, well, ever. Read any analysis of Watchmen and you'll read that it revolutionized comics. It changed everything, they say. They're right. Before I get to the actual story - and it's a formidable story - I want to address the immense technical achievement that is evident in this book. Look at any panel, any page and you can spend a long time just admiring the artistry that has emerged from the Moore-Gibbons partnership. The words and the images fit together like the finest puzzle pieces, each one reinforcing and supporting the others. There are no unnecessary words, and there are no unnecessary pictures. Goddamn it's good. It's a fantastic piece of work. Just as much as the technical aspects of the book are a marvel, so is the story. It was written in - and set in - the mid-80s. It took the core genre of the comics industry, superheroes, and bent them to reality's will. These were not the iconic, ageless figures of Batman and Superman, people whose hearts and intentions were pure and who never aged. The superheroes - or "costumed adventurers," more appropriately - were very, very human. Not only did they age, but they made mistakes. They lied, they failed, they gave up. They were, with one notable exception, human, and their reasons for doing what they did were also very human. It's tempting to say, "These characters are us," because they're not, but they're still a lot closer to us than traditional superheroes are. And this was especially true in the mid-80s. The Darkening of comics hadn't begun yet, and it was probably Watchmen that kicked it off. Suddenly, after decades of two-dimensional storytelling and Manichean moral codes, the idea of heroes with ethical failings, personality problems and a faulty moral compass flooded the market. Unfortunately, they were inferior copies of an exceptional original. Anyway, the story. The world in 1985 is a different place. The rise of the costumed adventurer had a big impact on the social fabric of the United States, and the Cold War has reached levels of tension that nearly break the world in two. America owns a superweapon in the person of Jonathan Osterman, also known as the nearly godlike Doctor Manhattan, but even he can't stop the political super-powers from the intractable mess they have created. Everyone can feel it, the great burning and the end of the world. Everyone knows it's coming. And then someone kills The Comedian. The death of this adventurer-turned-mercenary sets off a chain reaction that leads to the discovery of a horrific plan to save the world. People who believe themselves to be heroes have to decide what it means to do good when there are no good choices left to make. It starts off as a murder mystery with hints of conspiracy and ends with a bang, as well as a deep moral quandary - do the ends justify the means, and if so, how far can we take that argument? There are points to criticize the book, if you want to. One that my friend Joe mentioned is that, for all that the main characters are supposed to be heroes, they're utterly un-heroic. They're the antithesis of what a comic-book hero is supposed to be: morally sure and above reproach. Any mistakes that they make, even the ones that result in tragic consequences, should make them more heroic in the end. That's what makes characters like Spider-Man and Superman such a pleasure to read. We know that, even if they screw up, they'll ultimately do the right thing. The same can't be said for the people in this book. Rorschach is a homicidal existentialist, Ozymandias is a megalomaniac, Doctor Manhattan is a detached nihilist, sort of, and Nite Owl is a pudgy guy in an owl costume. These people are not, by and large, people that you can cheer for. They're not people you can look up to, mainly because they're just like us. They're flawed, very deeply flawed, and we expect our heroes to be better than that. So, it is possible that you will dislike each and every character in the book, and I can't blame you for that. Still, it's worth your time to read, even if it's just to admire the technical ability of Moore and Gibbons. As for the movie, I can only pray that they do it right. I have a high tolerance for adaptation - and I know there's no way the entire comic can be fit into a movie - so I will give the filmmakers some leeway. But I pray that they do it right.... ...more |
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| 115,514
| Feb 1928
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liked it
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As I write this, the hour draws later, every minute, every second casting my life further into the black, frozen abyss of the Past and bringing me one
As I write this, the hour draws later, every minute, every second casting my life further into the black, frozen abyss of the Past and bringing me one more step closer to the illimitable void that is my inevitable death. I can only pray that the sweet oblivion of sleep is able to scour away the memory of the horrors I have endured, of the horrors that I have perpetrated. And if there is a God, and if He is merciful, he will allow me the privilege of perishing before I wake so that I may not see those horrors in the cold, unflinching light of day.... So, yeah, I enjoy reading Lovecraft. Actually, what I realized as I read through these, is that I think I love the idea of Lovecraft more than his actual writings. Don't get me wrong, the man was a genius. He was a master of not only horror, but of the language of horror, and managed to describe things that he himself admitted were indescribable. He took a simple house in the woods and turned it into an abattoir. He created half the architecture of modern horror, and laid the groundwork for everyone who has been fortunate enough to follow in his footsteps. Still.... All I could think was this: when Lovecraft was writing, in the 20s and 30s, he must have scared eight kinds of hell out of his readers. But it was a different age back then. People had never seen Alien or In the Mouth of Madness (do you read Sutter Caine? *grin*) or anything like that. The images and the concepts that Lovecraft presented to them were new and fresh and horrible. For a modern reader, however, raised on Industrial Light and Magic and Pixar, it's not all that difficult to imagine the fungus-aliens of The Whisperer in Darkness or the vast underground ossuary of The Rats in the Walls or even the dread Cthulhu itself. The unimaginable is no longer so, and that is a great disadvantage for modern readers of Lovecraft. I don't think we are able to experience the pants-shitting terror that someone back in the 1930s, living in a little fishing village in New England might have felt when reading The Shadow over Innsmouth for the first time and then having to go out at look at the local fishermen a little more suspiciously. Hell, I can plot sunken R'lyeh on Google Maps (it's right here, if you're interested). So yeah, I think I love the idea of Lovecraft. The philosophy behind his stories and his mythos, his brilliant use of words and his ability to see the incipient horror in the simples of things. But he didn't scare me. Pity. ...more |
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really liked it
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As all dedicated readers out there know, there is a rule when it comes to books that are made into movies: the book is always better. [1:] With a book
As all dedicated readers out there know, there is a rule when it comes to books that are made into movies: the book is always better. [1:] With a book, you have more time to really savor the story, to think and consider the plot and the characters and the motivations. You can go back and re-read, stop and give the story some thought and, most importantly, let the characters come to life in your own mind. This is key, and part of what makes reading so much fun. The author gives you a basic outline of who each character is, but the details of that character will vary from reader to reader, and I guarantee - my Randle Patrick McMurphy is different from your Randle Patrick McMurphy. And my Randle Patrick McMurphy is most certainly not Jack Nicholson. I know there's a lot of love out there for Jack, but let's face it - Jack Nicholson was the non-comedy equivalent of Jim Carrey in his day. The same way Carrey is the default choice for "Wacky" these days, I'm pretty sure producers back in the 70s and 80s said, "We need someone who can play nuts - get Nicholson!" And he'd come out and give That Nicholson Look which made you think that he was liable to tear your throat out at any second and that's it. I'm not saying he's bad at what he does - he plays one note, but he plays it well. The problem is that McMurphy isn't actually nuts. He's brash, temperamental, insolent, contrary, but not crazy. And, to borrow from the perspective of the narrator, Chief Bromden, I don't think that Nicholson was big enough to be McMurphy. I'm not sure if I know who would have been. So after all this about who McMurphy isn't, let's take a look at who he is. There is a mental institution up in Oregon, which caters to all kinds of mentally ill patients. They care for them as best they can, keeping a close eye on the men in their care and making sure they stay in a rehabilitative state. Through the use of regular counseling sessions and the occasional narcotic therapy, they are trying to make these men back into functioning members of society, if that is at all possible. Not all of the patients can be helped - some suffer so badly that they will live out their remaining years in the institution. But there are others who have a chance, some self-admitted, even, who are looking to move towards the path to wellness. The hospital, and especially the Head Nurse of the ward, Nurse Ratched, are devoted to their tasks and do whatever they can. This being the middle of the twentieth century, their methods are, by our standards, barbaric at times - the liberal use of electroshock, for example, or even occasionally resorting to lobotomies. But mostly Nurse Ratched uses her own innate ability to cajole, nudge, scare and shame these men into line so that her ward operates as a smoothly-running machine. Until the appearance of McMurphy, a man who is not ill but is rather facing madness to get out of working on a prison farm. As soon as he appears on the ward, he becomes a threat to the Big Nurse's clockwork kingdom. He has no patience for her rules, and indeed sees her as a challenge - how soon can he get that perfect, porcelain facade to crack and show what's really underneath? He's sure he can, and he's willing to sacrifice his own freedom to do it. In doing so, he shows the other patients on the ward that they don't have to be afraid - of her or of the world. The book is a cracking good read, and well worth your time, just as a story of a perfectly ordered world tipped upside-down. As an allegory, of course (and a very clear one, at that) it's even better. This is a story about order and chaos, about freedom and security. Nurse Ratched has a very well-ordered world over which she exerts perfect control. The men in her ward are taken care of, if not exactly helped, by her and her crew. There is no freedom for them, but no danger either, and for many of the men, that's a life they can live with, if not enjoy. McMurphy, then, is chaos. He's the sand in the gears, the hair that won't go where you want it to go no matter what kind of salon goop you put in it. He's the rebel who will break the rules just because they're rules and who prizes freedom above all else. This isn't to say that he's a saint - McMurphy spreads his own brand of freedom mainly by manipulating the other patients. In that way, he's very much like Nurse Ratched, though I think he'd strangle anyone who said that to his face. But whereas the Big Nurse gets her pleasure from watching men get cut down and made docile, McMurphy gets pleasure from men finding their strength. And if he manages to make some money or have some fun of his own while he's doing it, then all the better. It's a novel of freedom, naturally. It's about people choosing their own destinies (even if the people in this book are mostly men - with the exception of Nurse Ratched, women don't come off so well in this book.) It's also about freedom as a society. The Nurse and her minions represent a culture than insists on conformity, that finds comfort in rules, regulations and regularity. Called "The Combine" by the book's narrator, it would rather cut people down to size, because that's the only way it can exert control. McMurphy shows us that we are the ones who should be in control of our lives. It's hard, it requires risk, but the rewards are far, far greater than blind, sheeplike obedience. The book is narrated to us by one of the more far-gone patients, a half-Native American man named Chief Bromden. He has been in the hospital for many years, and as far as the others are concerned, he's a deaf-mute. McMurphy catches on that he's faking pretty quickly, though, and manages to make Bromden feel like the big man he used to be. But as a narrator, it must be remembered that Bromden is unreliable - he occasionally drifts off into hallucinatory visions, and his interpretation of events is filtered through the strange, paranoid reality he's constructed where the world is run by an Illuminati-esque "Combine" that replaces people with machines. In fact there's a line in the very first chapter that made me wonder about the whole story: "It's still hard for me to have a clear mind thinking on it. And it's the truth, even if it didn't happen." So how much of the story is real? We have no idea. The Chief tells us everything he can in the best detail he can, and is an excellent relater of the tale. But knowing that he's rather biased, we have to wonder if the heroism of McMurphy and the wickedness of Ratched are as bad as they're made out to be, or if Bromden's mind has changed them, made them into the avatars of freedom and control that he feels represent the way the world works. We can never know, and if you assume that he is reliable, the story is excellent. A small confession, though: I feel kind of sorry for Nurse Ratched. I know, I know, it's like saying, "Yeah, Hitler was bad, but I see where he was coming from." She is undoubtedly one of the best villains in modern American fiction - frankly, between her and Darth Vader, I think she'd have him sobbing like a little bitch within ten minutes ("Mister Skywalker, do you really think that this habit of choking people is beneficial to you? Would it not be more mature to discuss your feelings of disappointment? What would your mother say if she could see you like this?") But I am a fan of order in general. I know how it feels to have a well-ordered routine get screwed up, and I think it sucks. So, putting myself in her shoes, I can see how she'd view McMurphy as a threat, and try to beat him in the only manner she knew how. And she does beat him. But she has to cheat to do it, so I can't really say that she wins. [1:] The exceptions are Lord of the Rings, where I like the movies better, and Watership Down and The Princess Bride, both of which I hold equal to the books. ...more |
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0140449264
| 9780140449266
| 0140449264
| 4.32
| 993,246
| Jan 15, 1846
| Mar 27, 2003
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it was amazing
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Why did no one tell me about this book? I mean seriously, I was about a hundred pages in and I wanted to go find my freshman high school English teach
Why did no one tell me about this book? I mean seriously, I was about a hundred pages in and I wanted to go find my freshman high school English teacher and inflict terrible, intricate revenge on her for depriving me of a great book. I figured first I could assume a new identity, perhaps insinuating myself into her life. I'd make her trust me and put all her faith in me, and then I would UTTERLY CRUSH HER!!! MWAH-HA-HA-HA!!!! Seriously, this was an awesome book. I am not a big fan of the Classics, really - I usually get very bored very quickly with them, especially the Russians. I don't know if it's the characters I can't relate to, or the writing that puts me off, but I try to get through them and my interest drops off abruptly. Especially the Russians. God save me from the Russians. But this? This was 1200 pages of concentrated awesome. A grand, intricate story of vengeance - and I do love my revenge stories - that I will definitely read again. And watching V For Vendetta is a lot more fun.... ...more |
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0140183884
| 9780140183887
| 0140183884
| 3.82
| 44,868
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| Jan 01, 1990
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it was amazing
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I lost my backpack thanks to this book. It was years and years ago, probably my first winter in Japan, and I'd picked up this book at Maruzen. I had he I lost my backpack thanks to this book. It was years and years ago, probably my first winter in Japan, and I'd picked up this book at Maruzen. I had heard about Chesterton, mainly from the dedication page of Pratchett and Gamian's Good Omens ("The authors would like to join the demon Crowley in dedicating this book to the memory of G.K. Chesterton. A man who knew what was going on.") and the title looked weird enough to be entertaining. So, I was reading the book on the train, as I often do, and I had my backpack on the floor between my feet. When the train got to my station, I stood up, still reading, and walked off. It wasn't until I had to put the book down again to eat that I realized I no longer had my backpack. This was no small problem, either - the bag had a lot of important stuff in it, not the least of which was my Palm Pilot with all my friends' addresses on it. There were also about two dozen Christmas cards in there, along with other various and sundry things. And it was a good bag, too. Long story short (too late), I never got the bag back. The staff at my school, and even one of the students, were kind enough to call the Keihan lost & found a few times to see if anyone had turned it in, but with no luck. And whoever got it didn't do the obvious thing and look at the return address on every single one of those Christmas cards, nooo.... Ahem. I'm over it. Really. My point is this: beware the seductive power of this book. Beware the enchantments laid upon it, and the dreamlike web that it weaves. For if you let it, this book will enrapture you, and gods help you if that happens. The story is one that sucks you in almost from the first page, when two passionate poets argue the worth and detriment of society. Should it be torn down, and let chaos reign in the world? Is order the true glory of humanity, the crowning jewel of mankind? Should the existing paradigm by praised or destroyed, and is he who advocates the path of anarchy true to that path? From that moment, that confrontation of poet-philosophers, we are drawn into a dark heart of true anarchy, where no one can be trusted to be who he appears to be. And not even the protagonist himself can be absolutely sure where his path will end. Needless to say, I think this book was awesome on many levels. The whole thing reads like a dream, moving in and out of locales with odd fluidity, and it's honestly hard to put it down. It has a great cast of characters, each one distinct and interesting and worth your attention, and a great ending that, while not making a whole lot of sense, is entirely fitting. What's really interesting is the modern applicability of this story. Its major theme is that of law versus anarchy, and when Chesterton wrote this back one hundred years ago in 1908 the anarchist movement was seen as a real threat. These people were not the angry kids, spray-painting Anarchy signs all over the place and listening to punk rock. The fringe radicals of the Anarchist movement advocated violence. They liked dynamite and struck terror in the hearts of the citizenry, much in the way that terrorists still do today. And like modern terrorists, they were driven by a twisted and dark ideology which placed their own motivations above society. In the world that Chesterton has made, the Law is in a perpetual battle with the forces of chaos, the dark and shadowy enemies who are always out to destroy us. Sound familiar? The hunt for terrorists is a great plot for any writer, and hundreds of them - good and bad - have used this trope as a way of telling a story. Chesterton, however, reached into the heart of that idea and found the uneasy twist that we are not always willing to deal with. He found the Nietzschean paradox about what happens when you battle monsters, and saw that it could very well be true. He has shown us that it is dangerous to act without knowing the truth, even if the truth isn't what you want it to be. Neil and Terry were right - Chesterton knew what was going on. This book is just as relevant today as it was a century ago, even if Chesterton never meant it to be. No matter what the subtitle to the book may be, and no matter how he may have meant it, the book is still valuable to us. Well worth reading. ...more |
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