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.