The Magic of Reality

"How we know what's really true." (We don't and nothing, she said, discombobulating? discorporealising? dematerialising!) But Philip Pullman says it's better than Bill Bryson's tome and Ricky Gervais says he knows enough science now to write his own book (the same book, I'd think, but maybe he can get the illustrations redone. Or just done. And insert some witticisms). I don't enjoy detective thrillers (that's what the blurb says it is), but I do enjoy popular science.

A popular science book is an odd choice for a plane ride when you're aweary and the airline has ignored your many pleas (ok, barbs) for help (ok, vengeance). My Kindle I had mislaid? misplaced? left on the hotel bed! I slept through the flight anyway.

The Magic of Reality is basically a much much (much) thinner A Short History of Nearly Everything, but it focuses on answering specific questions that a layman with a high school F in science might ask. Mostly because she has forgotten. Perhaps intentionally. "What is a rainbow?" was enlightening. (Har!) Also "What are things made of?" because it is about atoms. Atoms, people - person. Endlessly fascinating.

As a friend pointed out, this type of book will be bought by this type of reader. It's pitched at young people, to improve 'scientific literacy'. Only if your parents are scientists or you are failing science and have bought every study guide on your and the nearest continent (via Amazon.com obviously). Chances are you spend your nights hunched over something that steams or rattles, with a single study lamp that casts a halo of light around you. The equivalent of reading after bedtime under your bed covers.

There is one other reason you might read this book. The reason I have held off mentioning the author until now. (Was I sneaky enough? Or did you cotton on in paragraph 2? That's usually where it happens. Yep. Blogger Stats tells me so. No, not really. We're waiting for the pupil tracking implants. Not, not really.) It's one of the reasons I chose this book for my aweary, vengeance-d, Kindle-less flight. Richard Dawkins.

I hesitate here, wondering whether his name should begin a paragraph, have a whole paragraph to itself (room to stretch) or be hidden as it is. Should it even be on the cover of the book? Although endorsements from two other famous atheists would still be a giveaway.

Richard Dawkins is a famous - infamous - scientist. Yes, scientist. Contrary to popular opinion, he is not a professional atheist. We don't have popes. And if we did, he already has a job. Writing. (He's written more books than Danielle Steele. Ok, not quite. But still.) Notice how this is the first thing we tackle? No review says: "Bill Bryson tackles a range of subjects with thoroughness, but the airy-fairy-I-feel-'energy'-in-the-landscape factor is annoying." (Which he did FYI. And I was annoyed FYI.)

But this is actually relevant. If you had been consistently challenged over something like this with the virility of someone who feels passionately about something (feels, folks), would you be defensive or would you brush it off? Not being a saint, I would do the former. I might actually start graffiting walls or wearing leather jackets or hanging out in the hipster part of town. (*&$@ I already live there.)

Or poking at my bullies from the pages of my book. With a tone. You know the one. The one with feelings behind. The Magic of Reality is a good book and it addresses some of the fallacies in the Bryson book. Even though the book covers things I have already read about, precisely because I enjoy this type of book, the explanations and metaphors have changed how I visualise the concepts, so they are easier to pull out and elucidate at any moment. He has also given me better ways of evading? excavating? elucidating! them.

However, the 'true' here is between science and myth as explanations for, well, the world. You guessed it, with specific digs at Christianity. Enlightening sometimes, but often bullying. The true I was looking for was objectivity and our subjective viewpoint - not our experience of the world as metaphor, but what we can assume to be objective when our viewpoints are subjective.

Like the light spectrum and colour pondering, about whether colour is perceived differently by different people. (Answer is no FYI.) Or the tree falling soundlessly in a forest pondering. (Yes.) The philosophy of science pondering. (Maybe. All of the above. Who knows.)

Looking at it, that's a tall order for a book aimed at teenagers. If Pullman got away with blatant criticisms of Christianity without a peep from people with feelings though...

Both these authors capture a youthful exuberance (more abundant than the petty digs, I promise) at the world and how it can be explained. Even when talking about some of the myths, you can almost see Dawkins bobbing up and down with excitement. And if he graffitis a few walls, it's because he is so excited about the jigsaw puzzle of the world and being able to describe it, that he cannot contain himself. Feelings, again. Like colourful parasites.

So perhaps I did get what I was looking for in this book. I wanted someone to help me draw the line between subjective and objective. Until then, I view the world with suspicion. Dawkins didn't give me a slice of chalk and ruler; he gave me a glimpse of what it is like to view the world with excitement instead.

World War Z

The book, not the movie. There's a book? There is a book. From the movie poster alone, I can tell they do not tell the same story. Well, ok, there are zombies (the book discourages this moniker, only partly tongue-in-cheek). But the story is definitely not told by Brad Pitt. (I can tell because of the accent.) And the story is in every other way almost completely different.

So, I haven't actually watched the movie. Everything in this post is anecdotal or based on Wikipedia (PS. open source geniuses, 'encyclopedia' is spelt 'encyclopaedia') or based on the movie poster with the remarkable visual illusion that we can see the curve of the earth.

The book is good. Read it. It sounds much better than the movie. It's a book, so it never is what it says it is. Or says it is about. The book is not really about zombies. To my mind, they don't feature except to propel the plot. The story is told entirely in transcripts collected by a man who works for the UN and never reveals where he was during the war. Like a professional researcher. (This isn't sarcasm or a plot hint. Researchers should really remain separate from their subject. Like anti-Jane Goodalls or -Pitts.)

This movie and its main character are just such easy bait.

Wait for it... Did you get it?

Because it is a report, World War Z is set after the zombies have been brought under control. (Hint: a zombie is by definition dead and therefore cannot be brought back to life. Gross. So yes, by massacring them.) The researcher travels around the world to meet key members of the resistance, who tell their stories, some about failures (most) and some about successes. The stories are technical, moving, military, esoteric, pathetic and disturbing.

Together they make a picture of how we behave in crises. Most of our behaviour is reactionary, I'm afraid. Some of it is a modern hubris, a belief that primordial threats guided by random desire can be destroyed by weapons and strategy, like night and the lightbulb (and a generator, obviously). Bravery is often pure instinct; but instinct is also reactionary.

Another common reaction is to blame. Most of the accusers are justified, but this is easy to say in hindsight. Again, reactionary.

It's easy to take the moral high ground in this story - become its saviour (my hint is: zombie's can't climb - get it?). I often take issue with dystopian novels, in that they assume the worst of human nature. Not all of us are going to start eating each other to prove our status in what is essentially the same world as our ancestors and animals live(d). You don't find tears running down their bones because they were hunted by lions and hyaena. That's life.

But you are at least one of these people (and no, not Brad Pitt, who from the sounds of it drags trouble behind him on a leash). The reactionaries. And, likely, a corpse.

If you protest (reactionary), consider that the novel contains hints of the HIV pandemic and racial segregation. How have you reacted when met with these 'wars'? Jumped to the front line? Sacrificed yourself? Found something else to blame? Hightailed it up a tree? (Smart.) This. Is. Life. There is some war right on your doorstep. Maybe this novel is about the worst of human nature.

Segregation was, predictably, the one I identified with the most, in both Israel and South Africa. Especially given my home town is point 0. We are introduced to the man who conceived the most effective strategy to end the war - and also the most horrific. He is a psychopath (not in the murderer sense, but in the clinical sense: he lacks emotions, which makes him a great strategist). He was also one of the architects of apartheid.

These facts alone - even without more back story - make me think twice. More times, in fact. I don't know. There is no right answer. This isn't even an issue of subjectivity. What justifies such brutality? The ends? The ends justifies the means? I can't endorse that. But do I want us (humanity) to live or die? I would have said I didn't care - this is life - but then why am I turning this around in my brain?

Again, take note that I have not watched the movie (although in a sense I have because I have watched other such things featuring other such headline names). Yet, I have a string of other jokes to tell and disjunctions to point out. But that is less interesting (?) than the conclusion of this movie and another, and their books. In I am Legend utopia follows in the wake of dystopia. So much work to be done blah pop another grape in my mouth.

This is life. Life doesn't award you some oasis in green and leafy parks, at the centre of which is the Fountain of Youth. (Fittingly mythical, but one that men with an eye on knighthood killed themselves to... not find.) Life (my life, at least) is philosophical crises, as well as physical ones. Some personal and some social. What is humanity? Where do you fit in? And what would you do to maintain your status quo? Is it worth maintaining?

PS. The definition of futility

The definition of futility

Stupidity or futility? Sometimes they're the same thing - but not synonyms. Maybe just cousins so far removed that the only have one gene in common anymore: ginger hair or astigmatism or bad taste in men. They never meet (in the dictionary) but they are unwittingly reunited here. Not by me.

No, they are being reunited by the most powerful book in English literature.

It's also long, but definitely not the longest. Agaat and Song of Fire and Ice, even in Kindle form, were weights that strained my thumb and index finger. Crime and Punishment literally bruised the web between those two fingers. Google is indecisive (personification intended, because none of us are responsible for our statements here, right) about the longest novels, and they all hurdle the 1 000 page mark as if this were the Olympics. On the podium are Proust, Ayn Rand, Tolstoy and David Foster Wallace. I genuinely think they haven't accounted for Ms Marlene van Niekerk.

Now I'm purposefully stringing you along, because I anticipate your doubt, your accusations of hubris, your dire prophesies, and your own stories about stupidity and futility.

Suspense cut like a ribbon around a statue: I am about to read all 4 000 pages of In Search of Lost Time by Michel Proust. Nah, not really. Ribbon still intact. The title is deceptive (I'm thinking dinosaurs here), but apparently a lot of nothing happens except a brief affair, perhaps unconsummated.

Now, really, scissors in hand and no glue. Ulysses by Joyce. Ribbon is taken up by wind and blown into the crowd. James Joyce. He deserves that Bond-esque calling card.

I received this copy for my birthday and tried twice to read it. The first time, I confess, I understood nothing, except something about milk, a dog, and two poorer and wealthier college boys who are friends. I wanted to believe in this book. I want the anecdotal character of the man to be alive in his books. I believe in the Modernists, with an indefinable emotion best represented in the cave of Passage to India.

I am a Modernist born with Post-modern baggage.

The second time the milk, the dog and the relationship between the boys stood out. But more than that: I discovered a whole new way of using language. Scoff - I have done it myself. Don't justify the scoffing with Portrait of an Artist - I did too. But Ulysses...

I am trying to find you an example of the best of his prose, but it can't be extracted without being meaningless or trite. The story may jump in some places and delay in others, but every sentence is inseparable from the next. The sentences are short but tight: a design lecturer once told me that the best design is not the one with the most elements, but the one from which you have removed every element except the ones you need. That's Joyce. If he doesn't need a verb, preposition and so on, he doesn't use it.

So why did I stop re-reading? Joyce's may not be the longest book, but it is a weight even for the reader. By 90 pages I was exhausted. The denseness of the prose is its genius, but also the thing that turns the reader away, clutching the ribbon. Based on my last attempt, I think each chapter needs to be re-read to be understood on even the most superficial level of plot.

Ribbon blown away, like a plaster ripped off.

You have noticed the title again and are wondering whether I am prophesying my own failure. (After all I predicted your scoffing.) You know the saying: Stupidity is failing, and then using the same methods and expecting a different outcome. Or is it futility? Stupidity, futility - they're more closely related than their birth certificates indicate.

Because maybe the more you beat at a brick wall, the bricks begin to crack and crumble. Maybe one brick loosens enough for you to pull out, and your fingers toughen and once you've weakened the base, the rest crumbles too. It may take longer to pull down the Great Wall of China than it took to build. But did the job need to be done any faster? And I'm guessing that when builders had only completed a thousandth of the wall, someone commented about the job's futility.

This analogy, I realise now, describes the writer's efforts more than mine. Many people thought he was a profiteer and others tolerated him. I can compile some nasty reviews based on Portrait myself. But he trusted his instincts and wrote prose that would not change the needle on a balance scale. I suppose it's a bit like knowing there is treasure on the other side of the wall and that there is only one way to get there. Well, there are always more options, but reading Sparknotes defeats the object of the exercise.