Alive!

Yes, I am alive. Winter term is done! Work has been a little hectic since then, though, and I've been trying to get caught up in karate. On Monday spring term begins - I'm taking six hours a week of "Russian History Since 1917." Gulag archipelago, here I come!

I have been able to fit a few books in, though. One was David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, which I heard about from Åka. It's quite compelling. Some people might describe it as being a little gimmicky - it consists of six stories, each one chronologically later than the one before it, and each one interrupting the last, until you come to the middle story, which is told in its entirety. Then you start to get the second halves, until you come to the earliest one at the end. Each one is in a different genre. The first is rather like an Aubrey/Maturin tale from Patrick O'Brian. There's a paperback thriller story from the '70s. The final two (or middle two) are a harrowing Blade-Runneresque cyberpunk tale and an homage to Riddley Walker.

I thought he carried it off fairly well, and I'm used this sort of complex narrative style, thanks mainly to Gene Wolfe. A few weeks back Ian observed to me that "confusion" and "genre" are like salt and pepper for Wolfe, and (as usual) he's right. Mitchell drops a few more hints than Wolfe would, I think. Anyways, Cloud Atlas has numerous moments of brilliance and I want to reread it some day. It's also got interesting religious, metaphysical, and ethical themes. There are some admirable religious characters (Christian, Buddhist, and, er... henotheistic neo-pagan? something like that) as well as some utterly deplorable ones; some liberating uses of religion and some highly oppressive ones. I don't think I'm giving anything away in saying that reincarnation helps tie these stories together, though the book doesn't revolve around it. There were a few bits in the cyberpunk story that reminded me of Cordwainer Smith's "The Dead Lady of Clown Town," (always a good thing) and a searing, enlightening moment when the cyberpunk story's main character asks "Why does any martyr cooperate with his judases? He sees a game beyond the endgame."

It's well worth reading. Here's some interesting thoughts on the book and especially the cyberpunk bit, from a Christian who works as a biologist - but note that those thoughts include some spoilers.

Another book I've finally managed to read is Neal Stephenson's gargantuan Anathem. It's quite something, and I'm not just talking about the workout it gives your forearms. To call it "thought-provoking" doesn't do it justice. It's brainy and funny and all over the map, like all of Stephenson's work. I think any I review I did would have to be in the form of a month-long Socratic dialogue and at the end of it I might have to go live in a monastery, so I'll just say that I agree entirely with Gabriel's review over at SF Gospel. I particularly liked Fraa Lio, the martial artist, and Fraa Arsibalt, the overweight genius who's interested in building bridges between science, philosophy, and religion. There were a few moments near the end that reminded me very strongly of Gene Wolfe's The Book of the Long Sun, when Silk and Patera Quetzal are in the tunnels, and it made me think of Stephen Jay Gould, and Tim Lilburn, and also this book... but I digress. I will say there are numerous echoes of A Canticle for Leibowitz. Here's a good quote, only one of many (Protas is basically Plato, and a Bazian ark is like a Catholic church):

"If Protas could be respected for saying so, then what was wrong with me thinking that our Mynster, and this machine hall, were both shadows of some higher thing that existed elsewhere-- a sacred place of which they were both shadows, and that cast other shadows in such places as Bazian arks and groves of ancient trees?" - (p. 84)

Towards the end the main character (following Emerson) draws a contrast between poets and mystics. Poets understand that while symbols can bear cosmic truth, they change, so that a symbol that is true or liberating at one time can become false and oppressive. Mystics, he says, wrongly fixate on just one set of symbols. I get the point that Stephenson is making, but I personally wouldn't use the words 'mystic' and 'poet' in that regard.

I bring this up because I just saw a brilliant poet-mystic in concert last night - Leonard Cohen. It was AMAZING. The guy just keeps getting better with age. If he's coming to your town or somewhere nearby, do yourself a favour and go!