A Canticle for Leibowitz: Part 2 of 2

What is the attention span of a gnat? I am figuring that we find out its life span and divide that into something objective, like the attention span of a fly, or by the amount of time they can spend on a single task. Then we could wander through a few academic halls and land up considering the consciousness of tiny flying animals or fall through the moldy hall that is when a baby becomes a person. As you may have surmised (and as intended) you may have noticed I have a short attention span, which I would compare with that of a gnat's - no, I will compare it and tell you it is two minutes and 3.2 seconds, because I can and I did.

I have also realised that I have said 'would have' a few times today. There are three 'have's in that sentence alone. What the heck is the point of that word? (And before you get snarky, you, I am well aware there is a linguistic answer, but my point still holds because this is my blog and if I say a gnat can only focus on a single task (as defined by me) for two minutes, that is valid.)

So, I finished A Canticle for Leibowitz by sheer force of will. My opinion hasn't changed. Although the structure is interesting, the symbols are heavy-handed. I could not empathise with a single character until the last 2% of the book, but by then I could also not subjugate my lack of suspension of disbelief. (I am really trying here. Whenever I want to point out how illogical something is and that it is a result of laziness not plot, I hear the 'eh' of Dwight from The Office every time he wants to point out something illogical - usually to do with bears. It builds up at the back of the throat and pops from the nasal cavity like a buzzer in a game show.)

This isn't a spoiler, unless you are inclined to belief: the book is set over centuries upon centuries, where humans build up their technology over and over to a point when they can create nuclear bombs. How? How could this happen?

Geologists tell us (although this may be a fringe group of rogue scientists who do not believe in pollution) that the poles are overdue for a shift, whereupon north becomes south, confusing swallows, polar bears and brown bears, as well as pirates and hopefully radar linked to bombs. It may or may not kill us (dust storms, rampaging polar bears and swallows, bombs). Also, (and FYI) a certain degree of climate change is normal, judging by the ice age and the fact that Europe was a desert. (Interesting point: the size of dinosaurs was only possible because the density of the air was lower than it is now.)

Given this was written in the 60s, this would take us way into the 5000s, when (hopefully for the planet) we are extinct, because, entropy. More than a few of the surviving populations would have some kind of mutation (not the X-men kind, but if I could choose, something that gives me the ability to sprint and climb like a mountain goat, because, zombies) from the recurring nuclear bombs, which they would need anyway for the fittest, which no offence, cannot be almost exclusive to monks!

Here's another meaty one for the academics: technological determinism. This book assumes a single pinnacle of human discovery and creation. Bombs, intercoms, phones, planes etc. But a) I can imagine oh so many alternatives, like, what if we discovered the more eco-friendly (and therefore smarter) solutions to electricity, fuel and, errr, general human habitation, first? And b) does this 'pinnacle' really make society 'better'?

This a controversial topic and my gnat brain has moved on. Name of the Rose depicted a monk and a monastery in Italy that captivated my imagination. In this book I met three monks I did not like or only learnt to like in the very last pages of their chapter. It is one thing to kill off characters like a gnat flaps its wings and another thing to just move me to another monastery and then tell me they died of old age while I wasn't looking. It, in fact, makes me care less about your very stupid because they are very human characters. I have compared my brain to a gnat more than once today, therefore your argument is invalid.

Initially my foray in the world of insects was intended to justify A List. First, I did not want to talk about that book of invalidities as it shall be known from now on. Second, I am already bored, so I figured that bullet points would be more my speed. Since this argument is so very compelling, I shall add A List now, in the same blogpost, because I do not feel like writing out more than one tweet.

In the spirit of the above review (don't groan, you) I am going to pick five of the least dis-believable books I have read. I will however use short phrases instead of full, therefore very boring sentences.

1. A Canticle to Liebowitz
2. A Stranger in a Strange Land: life on Mars, general 60s-like (and spirited) shenanigans, a human taking on the physical abilities of another species as if sprinting like a cheetah were a combination of will and absence of will
3. Heart of Darkness and Atomised: more a lack of liking and an abundance of hatred than of disbelief
4. Zoo City: animal familiars that appear when you commit a crime, the final scene
5. Her Fearful Symmetry: ghosts, the characters' complete absence of character, other characters, plot - all of it, narrator (and all this from the writer who made me believe in time travel!)

While we're at it, let's add Gulliver's Travels

I always feel the need to point out that magic is meant to be compatible with physical laws, like gravity and the conservation of mass. Even zombies have an (albeit loose) explanation! So if something that didn't exist before is magicked into existence and it is made of atoms, where were those atoms before? Because so many other tricks rely on the existence of atoms - and I do not mean an interpretation of quantum laws, because *insert game-show sound effect*. Oh, I'm overthinking? Well - ok, the gnat has flown off.

In other words, if an animal familiar appears, was it lurking around waiting for you to do something awful? Is it missing from a zoo somewhere? Is it a manifestation of some communal judgement? Someone, somewhere, must have a clue - must have noticed a trend of disappearing animals - even if it isn't yet verified. And what trend is there regarding the type of crime considered worthy of a (really awesome - and if you're handing them out I'll take one) animal? Legal, societal, religious? Just one real clue, please. (I also want the awesome inseparable animal. Imagine walking down the street with a tiger, a polar bear, a tortoise, a wolf - do they come in extinct too and if so, hello, black rhino.)

Impressive - my attention is holding more like a fly battering itself against a window. (As I typed that, my bunny sat on my stomach, so maybe I am sorted. Still, a polar bear? I adore polar bears.)

What a meandering post. I think the most meandering I have ever written. Perhaps this is a good thing, because it gives me more wiggle room in future. To sum up: every book mentioned in this post, except for the Umberto Eco, is ridiculous. According to the woman with her gnat in her skull. The unconscious doesn't restrict itself to dreams. Do you see it? I asked for a polar bear when I had already been given a gnat. Does the extent of the crime affect the size of the animal? Could an insect be a familiar? That seems a bit of an anticlimax. Like this conclusion. (I walked right into that one.)

A Canticle for Leibowitz

Why do I find A Canticle for Leibowitz so annoying? Stranger in a Strange Land type of annoying. This is partly a rhetorical question, so hold on to your answers until I've found mine. It could be the style, which darts off and convinces you treasure is sure to be found at the end of only a hint of a track. A track trampled by buck or badgers, or my cats. Then he is gone and waiting for you when you find your way back to the starting point. 'Nah,' he says, leaving you to deduce what the hell is going on.

See, you would think I would only fall for it once. What's that saying? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times... well, you are a writer and I am a reader, and this is our eternal (well, not really, because neither of us or our work is eternally immortal, but you know what I mean) struggle.

Anti-climaxes have their place: roughly two-thirds of the way into the novel. Then feel free to clump as may as will fit there. I can attribute enough meaning to anything you can deliver, and still have room for, like The History of the Solar System, with an in-depth look at the planets, moons, dwarf planets and miscellany. The only thing that can halt my desire to find meaning were there is none is irritation. And you, Walter M Miller, Jr, have irritated me more than someone who denies the universe is infinite, by your pretentious name alone. (Can you continue to call yourself 'Jr' after your parent has passed? This is a serious question.)

The book is divided into chapters. And this is where the problem begins. There is no indication that you are embarking on a new plot-line that has only place and broad era in common. Not like Cloud Atlas or The Passage. So, the author says, orientate yourself in a new society, with no characters to identify with (well, there was that one). Then he just pushes you into the room and you feel like you are having that dream where you forgot to wear clothes.

In a sense I am exaggerating. In a very broad sense that is aware that this book is regarded as one of the best apocalyptic, science-fiction novels of its time (I would stop at year, maybe decade, but ok). May I refer you back to Stranger in a Strange Land? Please, read it and get back to me about how it is better than The Road or Brave New World.

Also, I may have mentioned this is a pirated copy. I know, I know. There is an economic reasoning behind this, although I am also assuaging my conscience. Ever wondered why publishers, agents etc do not try harder to make their products impossible to copy? Because advertisers care about audience and not how said audience gets the product. In this line of reasoning, pirated products actually increase the distribution of the audience, some of whom become loyal fans and buy merchandise - and are more likely to pay for the product in future. It's a game of chance, but I am a fan of The Walking Dead and the other day I did buy a branded product and I am also well aware that Hyundai is a sponsor and that I have my very broke eye on the ix35.

It seems to have been OCR'd - 'nr' becomes 'm' and 'rl' becomes 'd'. Any normal person would this annoying. To an editor, this is a criminal act and must be rectified, like, now. But I have no one to complain to, and so I stew and plot revenge. My revenge being this post, which not even the internet cares about, but the internet allows us all a voice blah blah. At this point, my irritation is taking over, like an alterego.

Back to where we were: we are standing a room with no clothes on. Which is a metaphor for not understanding the social nuances or being able to situate ourselves in fictional space. Let's start with the last point ('start,' you wonder, startled. 'But we are 7 paragraphs in!' To which I reply, 'if you ask nicely, I may send your lazy-ass the bullet points, but then I am also going to quiz you.') Where are we? It seems we are fated to blow ourselves up or at least make the planet uninhabitable - in kind of a if we can't have it, neither can you gesture. Ka-bloowie but we can't even get this right, because some people survive and live in what is still a habitable planet.

You can probably guess this was written during the Cold War by a conscientious objector. I concede, there is a nice paragraph in which a character glibly describes how illogical it is to blow someone up before they blow you up and vice versa until every nuke, mustard gas bomb and grenade either side has is exhausted. It reminded me of the idiocy of North Korea and the US.

The 99% coordinating news feeds

But the end of the world wasn't just a pissing contest between states: the 99% rose up and instead of sitting in parks with tents and pickets (I bet you a homeless person would have appreciated a tent and the picket to make a fire out of). No, they decided that knowledge and technology were dangerous, if not actively homicidal. They smashed anything and anyone they could find, and chose to become nomadic hunter-gatherers (highly unlikely. I like having hot running water and I doubt anyone is going to say they don't). Within a generation no one remembers what half the technology left is for, which leads to a funny scene in which a monk interested in the writings of Darwin is laughed out of the room by someone intent on creating protoplasm from six elements.

The first chapter was more boring than this post - I could not identify with the character, because the plot was as slow as he was. I have just finished the second chapter. Each chapter is a jump in time and this chapter does cast some light on the first one. The abbot in this chapter is interesting - you set out with this conventional mindset that a monastery is going to ignore science that does not match their faith. Perhaps it does, but the arguments the abbot makes are convincing - in fact the opposite argument cannot hold up.

That one character is the 1% of the novel I liked (that was obvious, but I like it). He scrubs away some of the film that coats the rest of the plot. He gives us some clothes to wear. Fiction is metaphor, it is a conversation between the reader, writer and context, it is what we make of it. Fantastic. But it's not much of a conversation when you make random broad statements in a world that fails a test by logic (like, how far does human settlement extend? Is there any communication? Why, in the whole novel, is there no evidence of nuclear war? Who are people who were once children born to?!)

What this post tells me (shoosh you, I am not here to get your opinion) is that I would rather write about anything other than this book and I would rather discuss social philosophy than most things. Perhaps there is one criterion missing from most discussions about literature: logic. Does a book make logical sense? Now I know I struggle to suspend my disbelief under normal circumstances, but I need more detail to understand a nuclear war that leaves no evidence other than polarising people, just like I needed to understand how the Martian in Stranger in a Strange Land was born on Mars with all the boxes for a human being checked, but superhuman powers gleaned from the Martians.

The moral of these stories is that Brave New World is a better book and solves both these problems while still providing a setting, plot and protagonist we identify with. Peace out.

'Et vu' and other translations

Sooner than expected and probably more meandering than I intend, here is my post (not the first, I see, because there is a label in my selection of labels labelled 'translations') on, yes, translations. Translations of books, to clarify, for the semantically minded. Bear in mind that I only have a first language (yes, smarty-pants, English); a smattering of a second language and a smatter of a third language, Zulu. To further convince you of my qualifications, I studied linguistics, briefly. Although I have no interest in learning languages, I am interested the idea of language, like any good graduate with a useless degree.

First, let me explore my credentials. English is my home language. My mother grew up in Durban, which was a British port - before war upon war of someone against an other, which is how rational people and not playground bullies solve their problems - and her mother was some degree of Jane-Eyre Victorian. So, like all good mothers, she insisted we say 'hair' as in 'air' with a silent 'h' and 'r', instead of 'ghe'. A 'kid' was a goat not a child, 'mom' just sounded bad and 'ja' (Afrikaans for 'yes') was not English.

I am an editor with a degree in English (and the slightly less meaningless Media Studies). I have read Chaucer and understood it, have a firm stance on Joseph Conrad and Chinua Achebe's review (Conrad is always wrong, always) and adore AS Byatt. So, instead of taking time to learn other languages, I have explored the redundantly spelled and bastard language that is English. And, to add another 'so' to this conversation, my knowledge of translations is limited to the, well, translations.

Taal Monument, which is dedicated to the 11 South African languages

My second language (and I use the term so loosely that we should insert spaces between the letters) is Afrikaans. We started studying Afrikaans in Grade 2 and followed it (albeit loosely) to Grade 12. The teachers declared there was no hope for us - one of them ran out crying, but that had more to do with a difference in political opinion (FYI, Mrs Botha, I was on your side: I would divorce myself from my parents if they were top-level management of a mining company. Any level really).

By the end of matric, I could write complex sentences (by which I mean with conjunctions) in very boring paragraphs and when I spoke no one could understand anything beneath my English accent (FYI, if you care, my sister and I bizarrely have British-sounding accents, and I am often asked where I come from). I started waitressing the day after my last exam in an Afrikaans-populated area and then moved up in the world to bookseller.

When people spoke Afrikaans to me, I shook my head but only because I needed to adjust my language setting. Occasionally, I tried to speak to them in Afrikaans, but it took me two minutes to sound out a sentence, with the customer helping. Usually I asked and then pleaded with them to speak Afrikaans because despite my muteness, I understand Afrikaans. The same has been true of friends who say they need to practise English, or some such tripe.

Let me interrupt myself to explain that my dialect of English has an even more dodgy heritage because it has pilfered words and phrases from local languages. There's 'ja' for 'yes', 'skelm' for someone between a 'petty criminal' to 'naughty person (even child)' and you can add '-tjie' to the end of pretty much any noun to create the diminutive. Personally, I pilfered 'dankie tog', which does not actually mean anything, 'jok' instead of 'grap' to mean 'joke.' This is a joke that is only funny in my head, but I think my Afrikaans friends feel sorry for me and do not correct me.

Then there's Zulu. We started studying it as a third language in Grade 8 and could choose to study it from Grade 10. Our teacher was a very enthusiastic white woman whose husband was rich which is why she could afford a BMW while teaching. There are different dialects of Zulu (and in fact it and another language are pretty much the same Nguni language, but the colonialists conquered by setting groups against each other and general bloodshed - but this could get me assassinated, so moving on) and I think we learnt the wrong one because no one understands me.

Zulu is interesting. Most of the languages I have been exposed to (I can also say 'et vu' which is French for 'and you') are European. They developed alongside, over, below and within English, so the sentence forms are similar, even when they are mixed around. English is noun and then verb, for example. The parts of speech are often distinct words with distinct functions. In Zulu, a single word can be sentence. 'Ngiyabona' means I (ngi), ya (you) and bonga (thank). 'Siyabonga' is we thank you.

But - and here is when it sets fire to the linguistic part of your brain - the tense of the sentence is continuous present: I am thanking you. This explains why Nguni-language speakers often use this tense seemingly at random. I, however, do not, because that is as far as my knowledge of the language extends. No, that's not true, I can say 'water', 'it is hot/cold', 'hello' and 'boy'. I also know that 'ama-' indicates the plural. Other than that, our Zulu dictionary was a mostly useless waste of 128 pages with a pastel green cover. I hope the publishers have addressed that, what with Zulu and Xhosa being the most widely spoken languages in South Africa.

It looks like I am running out of time, so I will introduce The Point for the next post now. You express your thoughts in language and so your language reflects some of your cognitive structures, and vice versa. I have a case study here: me. We use 'he' as a general pronoun, right? There is no more meaning than this? Even though when I say 'doctor', you assume he is a he and then are surprised he is a she but you think 'you go, girl' or something equally patronising, and applaud her for, you know, studying.

A while ago, I consciously adopted 'she' as my general pronoun. I am a woman, after all, why should my go-to word not be female? I slipped, often, at first, so my endeavour looked like just that: a liberal attempt at who-cares. After a while, though, it became natural. The other day I caught myself assuming a doctor was a woman and being surprised when he wasn't. And if you don't think that reflects the way you think: when I assume a person or animal is a 'she', people ask me how I know or why. When I explain, they widen their eyes, nod slowly and turn around as I were sprouting green air on my cheek. If they are honest they say 'Do you really believe that?' and then turn away.

Not all of this is the next Point, so you can let out the breath you are holding. I withhold my rants for when you're not expecting them, because then I can remind you that I am the sheriff here. At the least, I am holding the keys. I am not sure what relationship this mishmash of languages has with my brain, except in reflecting it is a mishmash. I suppose you also know that I am not a polyglot, because I would rather study sentence trees than learn how to say something that I can already say in English.

For those of you who enjoyed the hiking trail of my brain, perhaps you want some closure. But if you are looking for the cognitive implications of the tense in Zulu, what do you think I am, a savant?

Show pigeons are walking existential crises, if you think about it

I am suffering a dry streak, my friends. Dry as all those rivers that were dammed to make dams because some committee wanted a dam and be damned the ecosystem. Dry as the absence of vowels in the word. I can't find anything good to read. And I don't mean 'good' as is literature, but I don't mean cult classic either. I have been abandoned by books I actually want to read.

In the not-too-distant past there has been The Passage and Night Film and Mara and Dann. But search back through these archives (maybe you will find something more interesting back there) and see that they are segregated by months. Years, maybe? Possibly. Probably. Perhaps - no, definitely - I am being melodramatic, but see, this is how I count my days, months and years. This is how I catalogue my memories.

A show pigeon

I don't think: "In February last year, I sat outside on a bench and watched a show pigeon trying to be a dove while I wrote." I think "A hardcover Kurt Vonnegut was on the table and I was listening to Ben Howard. It was windy, a cold wind, but I liked being outside." Before this, I had read Fahrenheit 451, which although I don't talk about it much is one of my favourites. It is a lonely book, as any book set in a policed dystopia must be. I had read it sitting on my bed between naps.

Some of my collection of must-I-finishes? includes A Widow for a Year by John Irving, The Luminaries by Elenor Catton and 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. Even before I finish the first sentence, I am on the tracks of my own stories, the book held in front of me like a disguise - rendered useless by the fact I am alone. Since I am being picky now, the author needs to go big or go home. I want a plot that knocks on my breastbone and yells that he will huff and puff if I don't give him my heart to chow on.

Metaphorically. Of course. Definitely. I mean, who doesn't love the bolschy character who is a bit of a bully but who also has a heart that tells him when to use it?

I had to think for a moment to remember what I am technically theoretically and painfully reading now. A Canticle for Leibowitz. One of the big bloopers in The Passage was that nothing had decayed much 100 years later. The ragtag team ate dented cans of peaches. Electricity grids still ran, albeit failingly. Did you know that the acid in modern paper actually makes it less durable? Books made of paper from the last century or so will crumble sooner.

Did you also know that in 1000 years, men in habits will be finding receipts and to-do lists hoarded in a time capsule where nothing else has survived time? And - oh this is my favourite - that all of human knowledge will disappear into warring factions of Neanderthals, in which women are once again just wet nurses. And that we will be forced to walk with a silly man in a brown habit who we cannot love even as a baby brother who likes to recite poetry he doesn't understand.

It would make sense if you read it. But don't. Let me finish and tell you at length how awful it is. My version will be a better read.

But this is not a dystopian novel and so there is light. A flickering solar light, maybe, or the slow beam of a long-dead star. I borrowed and started reading The Island of the Day Before by Umberto Eco. Not a recommended read, unless you enjoy pirouetting on a pinhead that is an idea with far too many rust spots to be appealing.

You know (yes, you know) that in my roving mind, ideas are important. Critical in fact. Stories of what we might do when the ties of society are loosened are vital, because that is who are, isn't it? How else can we understand ourselves as moral beings? How else can I understand myself? (That is hypothetical, because I don't and I am not sure I believe people who say they do.) Right now, steam is exploding from my nose and ears like a cartoon bull, at the frustration of being and of knowing. These are the kinds of stories I tell myself when I am pretending to read.

Umberto Eco is a true polymath, like Noam Chomsky: he is an expert in so many specialised areas of study that to call him a generalist is also inaccurate. I am in awe and jealous of the man, who by my age had probably already written two books and disproved a host of flawed ideas. I am also embarrassed (as if he were standing in front of me) by how little I have achieved. 

To take another hammer to my street cred, I only read Name of the Rose after my literature degree. Just before this, I had read My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk.

Aside, because now I know I must write a post on translations: Pamuk's writing is beautiful and made more beautiful by the strangeness (in the literal sense) of the culture, history and language. In this book, the culture is the Ottoman Empire under Sultan Marat III and a murder mystery than circles the scribes in his employ.  The novel binds itself around notions of representation and art. For example, is it art if it is mimicry? It posits that a piece of work is a form of immortality - but is it? What about those sculptures sitting in museums that we can't identify? Is that a legacy?

Name of the Rose touches on so many of the same themes, extending my experience of both novels so that they seem sort of magical (and you know I am not one to use these words lightly. Except when I am making fun. Which is often, but not now). The novel is set in a monastery in Italy, about 150 years before My Name is Red, there is also a murder mystery and the monks are also scribes. While the Ottoman scribes are also working in service of their faith, they enjoy beauty and their craft for craft's sake. Both sets of works are decadent, but the Italians are more repressed and conflicted. Probably not as repressed as the British.

In Eco's world, art does not exist for art's sake. In Pamuk's world, art for art's sake is still a form of worship. When I think of the latter, I think of rich reds and blues. When I think of the former, I think of cool golds and greens.

This venture off-the-beaten-track was not meant to be The Point, but is somehow still is The Point. (Despite what people tell you, haphazard meetings are usually more useful than laid-out plans.) The Island of the Day Before reminds me why I love to read. Why I am mostly Reader, some Writer and a fraction of other stuff that I lost years ago and am still looking for. (If you find it, keep it - I clearly don't need it.)

Books are my religion. I mean that in a quasi-blasphemy way. Most people believe in the things that they can see and touch, and that they exist, which leads to a comfortable belief that the world exists as a place with meaning. I however am an extra in The Matrix but I am very conscious of all the set pieces. Metaphorically. Where the set pieces form a dangerous a chain of existential corkscrews. Which means the 'I' that is me is usually very confused and a confused animal is an edgy one.

Books are the antidote. A novel is made-up - the story finds a way to exist in a candyland of wirly-girglies without having to touchdown. (That is just how confusing life feels to me.) It is made of words that never promise they are real but can be content in being this in-between thing. Ideas, too, are multi-coloured strands that can be strung out further, tied up and then untied. They make space and time in which to be examined, and don't hassle me to make a decision every time I put a key in my front door to unlock it.

If you are the kind of person who reads the conclusion first, this post is not about a single novel at all. But intention is nine-tenths of meaning, so know that I meant to and then got carried away. By which I mean I meant to do that, but you need not read it. I don't think this post was meant to be read; I just needed to write it.