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.)

The Last Policeman

I was not drawn to the book by the title, clearly. The title puts me in mind of an I am Legend-Rick Grimes-Deadwood mash-up. The apocalyptic surviver/cowboy thing has been done - although not to death. Those who have watched the entire Space Odyssey and can still talk about it without PTS breakdowns call the detective story, cowboy epic and science-fiction culture siblings. It makes sense, really. Yes, really. Trap activated and now you shall listen to my theories even though I have only watched five minutes of Space Odyssey before genuinely wanting to inflict physical harm upon myself.

Five minutes of my life I lost: Space Odyssey

Then again, if I were an expert, I wouldn't be putting all this down on a blog for fickle readers. Yes, again. That's you.

The Last Policeman is a detective novel. The mystery is staid: a 'hanger' has been found dead in a McDonald's bathroom and our intrepid detective believes he was murdered. The evidence being a black belt. Oh you're waiting for more? There is none. Justifiably, his colleagues think he is young and overzealous and way too committed to the whole justice thing (they have a point).

Did you notice it? The tide of silver-grey herrings? A 'hanger' is a suicide by noose. Why would one have slang for types of suicide? (I have been drawing this one out.)

An asteroid is flaming through space aimed like a stone in a slingshot slung by Hercules for Earth. And everyone is offing themselves - hanging being a popular method. (Not smart, peeps. Like, at all. It is incredibly difficult to successfully hang yourself, for reasons I shall not explore.) When the novel begins, the asteroid (sentimentally named Maia) is seven months away and 103% on course to hit Earth.

Now, I am not against a natural disaster wiping out the destructive toddler that is the human race. In fact, if I were somehow given the choice, I would choose to resurrect the dinosaurs. Partly because I have always wanted to see a dinosaur, from a secure hiding place obviously. This reminds me of the meme that if human beings had to fight for survival against the dinosaurs, the egg-laying creatures would win.

I also never understand the reactions to the apocalypse. You know we aren't immortal, right? As someone once said, we are pretty much hamburger meat. We make it until we don't. And there are lots of places on Earth where the apocalypse is pretty much every day. "Kill the cockroaches", Russian gulags and Ebola being good examples.

But while we're - I'm - discussing this, our unconscious delusions of immortality counter our death drives, like the self-correcting nervous system and Gaia. Freud said that we have to believe we are immortal in order to face our mortality and lots of psychologists whose names I don't know agree that the popularity of horror movies and apocalyptic fiction is in seeing someone else die so we can feel relief at still being alive and reinforce the idea that we are immortal.

True as Bob.

Ok, so by the time Maia gets here, she won't have many people to irradiate, and if she doesn't, there won't be anyone to say 'I told you' to. But believe it or not, some really sadistic people are still doing their jobs, including this very naive detective (I actually think he has a mild form of autism or Asberger's). Well, not doing their jobs, which is why they don't believe - or care about - the murder. Perhaps this is how he deals with his imminent demise: by obsessing over someone else's death. Oh Freud, you could write a trilogy of books about this.

 As the narrator repeatedly reminds us, the fallible scientists slid down a slide of probability until they reached the mud of almost certainly (because never say never - or just anything unequivocal. Always leave room for retraction). Our socially stilted detective seems stuck on this, probably because he likes a long shot. Which is a criterion of a good but definitely not romantic hero. These heroes are perpetually - or almost perpetually - dissatisfied.

Think of the many John Wayne or Clint Eastward characters (let's be honest, they are all just one guy with different ponchos). To be a cowboy, the hero needs to be isolated from society, even ostracised, with some trauma in his past that he assumes some guilt for. He is self-reliant in his isolation and eternally awkward in society. He is cruel, but he shows that humanity is cruel. The cowboy always faces the march of civilisation and the extinction of his little corner of desert. He is the last outpost of the old ways, in which people have one-on-one relationships with the environment. Dang society. Where is that asteroid when you need it?

Sigourney Weaver kicking some gross alien ass

Now consider Sigourney Weaver's character in Alien 2. She travelled through time when she travelled through space in the wake of blowing up a really horrid, slimy flock of flies.  Her daughter may as well be dead because she is old and crabby. No one believes her about the flies so they think she is a murderer - an insane one. She is lost in this new world and stuck in the one before having to kill things. In the end, she displays some epic gunpower (she straps two guns together - why has no one ever thought of this?!) in an epic fight wearing a robot suit. Cowboy much?

Back to the apocalypse (to my mind, facing those fracking aliens would be far worse than an instantaneous death). In I am Legend (the book), Robert Neville is all of these things, except he really is utterly alone. You could argue the zombies are a metaphor for society, being a much better catalyst than sheep, but you could also argue that without a society as backdrop, he cannot be a hero. Neville is not your Will Smith martyr; he can only be selfish to survive.

Hank Palace is definitely isolated: he uses boxes as furniture, his sister is a drug addict, and his colleagues are waiting for the day the penny drops and he realises the world is already disaster. One trait I didn't mention: honour. These men all have a code of honour (which is not justice. And I am ok with that). In Detective Palace's case, his code is logic and rules and that takes the form of justice when we meet him. He reads every amendment to the laws (now coming in and heavy), views everyone as equals (except the criminals), and writes down every clue in a blue notebook so he can put them together.

He seems to be in some denial about Maia. I will leave you to figure that one out, because you need something to do other than read blogs.

The asteroid, like bad guys, aliens and zombies is a reminder and fear of society's fallibility. The inevitability of its destruction. And perhaps the isolation that comes of knowing this. Of being unable to stop knowing this. We are attracted to these stories to roll around in their foreignness and convince ourselves they cannot happen. Except I always wonder at this fear. My degree (let's milk it for the tiny ounce of value it has) taught me that 'civilisation' is a fantasy, as is any sort of social Darwinism (I am thinking of technological Darwinism here). Change is as constant as death.

I would prefer to be murdered by an asteroid though.

There's more! I have mislead you twice about this. The detective genre. Cowboy much? One or two people deep in a conspiracy theory who pursue the 'truth' even when faced with physical harm. Look, they yell, way to loudly in a dark warehouse while they are being hunted. Society is fraught with red herrings, but we have found the truth. The world has order, friends! Phew. Joke's on you, buddy, but let's take the win. In an impressive flip, in the end they are welcomed into society, having found a friend or the love of his life or just acceptance. 'Told ya so,' he thinks and sometimes actually yells.

Society is not unequivocally screwed. Not as long as this hero(ine) brings order to the world. Like the movie named whatchamacallit, you do something good for a person, who does good, who does good. But this isn't Carthage and so our land is not about to be sown with salt and we aren't about to be taken slave. Society just is because we are and we are mortal. Good breeds good, but trauma begets trauma.

I seem to be playing both sides of the fence here. But look! There is no fence. (An asteroid took it out after a dinosaur stomped on it.) These works of the imagination conjur up our worst fears, which are part of being human and therefore inevitable, and then sings us a lullaby about our own agency. We can save ourselves, they say. Even in the face of the apocalypse, we can still make meaning of a mystery. And therefore we are immortal. Or something. Maybe just immune to death for the immediate future.

Kill Yourself and Count to 10

The South African Defence Force: “Inventing threats to the country and scared of its shadow since the 1950s.” People who speak about the actions of this literal force tend to be threatened (no jokes - I knew someone who received death threats for even considering writing about a NP government-planned assassination) or ugly-eyeballed or murdered, which gives us insight into the paranoia that transcends the ping-pong stupidity of US relations with North Korea. But somehow I think I am less of a threat than the urgency of their psychiatric evaluations, and in any case, I will whisper.

See, the Nationalist government was afraid of more than colour TV, rock music and the second half of the century. It was afraid of *hushed tones* the liberals. History tells us that the greatest threat to a regime is that exact same threat carried out by someone else. In this case, one half of a race divided by language and violence dating back to the 19th century, gained power by voicing its second-citizen-man-ship and retained power by intimidation. Yes, they were afraid of the oppressed because they had felt oppressed so they oppressed. I can appreciate that someone heavily invested in their culture might believe that nurturing culture means some degree of separation. But in hindsight, it is about as practical as democracy or communism. You get that now, right?

But this is heavy-duty psychology here.

Up until the 80s, the SADF enforced conscription. Yes, folks. I always think, what we need is more soldiers. Eighteen-year-old men were decked in khakis, oppressed and repressed, and then given rifles. Why? Because we were fighting a war, fool! Against their ghosts and, oh yes, anyone whose hair didn't pass the pencil test. Another book called An Unpopular War (actually a very popular book) raises the issue of the silence around conscription and our fathers’ roles in the force, but primarily what those young men went through that was so heinous they pretend it never happened.

No one talks about it. I have never had a discussion with anyone about this, unless you count my father telling me that he was exempt because he had a heart condition. Some of the forces were sent into Namibia and Angola, destroying people and villages with, um, inventive (I edited my thesaurus so that 'inventive' means 'horrifying') tactics (not as efficiently as Boko Haram though - 16 villages destroyed in one weekend. 16, two days). Some were sent into townships and villages to stir up trouble that they could blame on the 'insurrectionists' (again, I edited my thesaurus so that it means 'an adult who daydreamed about walking down any street in any area without being asked for his papers as if there were a border post on every corner').

No one talks about conscription. No one.

Well almost no one, otherwise there wouldn't be a post. Kill Yourself and Count to 10 by Gordon Torr is about a specific hernia in a long medical report about the SADF. Scene: Greefwald, a small barracks near the border with Botswana and along the Limpopo River. Premise: handfuls of transgressive liberals, gay men and the mentally ill are shipped here and moulded into wholesome members of society. Near-fatal physical tasks like lifting rubble and boulders from one place to another all day, and leisurely jogs in the bright sun or through thick bush, with some mind games before lunch, being a reasonable way to mould a wayward child, right?

Characters: one haunting egomaniac and possible rapist of a psychiatrist; many enraged, impotent and not well-spoken commanders, sergeants and lieutenants; a riff-raff of erratically lovable misfits ranging from those so liberal they can only be pushed to say that they don’t know any black people so they can’t comment on their moral characters, metrosexuals and repressed homosexuals, and drug addicts, psychotics and potential psychotics. In 2015, this counts as a substantial demographic of the South African population, so they stuffed this one up.

The story is told from the present, by a Greefwald survivor, to a third person who is our narrator. The survivor, Lloyd, wants to drum up support for a lawsuit against Levin, the psychiatrist, who is being expedited from Canada. Levin masterminded the camp based on outdated research and with funding from a government spooked by long-legged spiders. The camp is a bit like the retreat in which Sandra Bullock lifts a horse's hock to prove she is better, except the aim is to break you not free you so I shudder to think about the poor horse. A former Greefwald doctor pops up to add perspective on Lloyd’s character.

I hope I have this right. The story is dense and mostly innuendo, so I gave up trying to understand the chronology or characters about midway. (I convinced myself I was living in the moment. In a book about the past.) It is divided into chapters headed by names of people and places. Sometimes the chapters are one page long and cuddle some heavy plot-point that is never alluded to again (or that I could follow - always blame the author, you - have I taught you nothing?). I couldn't match places to people’s names to characters to contexts, so I mostly drifted along, picking up flotsam and fashioning it into a cabin.

What makes my cabin pretty pathetic is that it is made of an incredible story told by an expert writer. His images and constructs are slick, and his sentences and paragraphs well-crafted. (Don’t get a big head, now.) I imagine someone wandering in, saying the book is too long and whittling away at it, so well that they have translated it into a dialect of very concise, very urgent English that turns this book into flotsam on a sea that I pick up and fashion into a cabin (I almost wrote ‘sandwich’) because I can't tell that the pieces are part of a puzzle that is actually a map to land.

All this flotsam bobs around the conclusion. Often, I feel like the writer has spent so long on the rest of the book that the conclusion is, well, far gone. (Maybe I am projecting.) Too far gone. They are so sick of the tripe they have expelled that they wrap everything up with the first piece of rope they are given. Now, this writer ties knots so good they cannot be unpicked and the rest of the book is bound separately by string not rope and the parcels are accidentally sent to different continents. 

Two major ideas play out in the last thirty pages. I want to reset my reading to find the links to the ideas that are right up my street (don't worry, I don't need a pass), but that’s like scouring the Arctic Ocean without a wetsuit. The first idea is psychological and gives insight into the divide between what was planned and what did happen, and so, so much more. The second idea is so extraordinary that it mows the prime neuroses of the SADF and its decision-makers with lime into the flora of the Lowveld. I wish I could just tell you what these ideas are, but spoilers are on the ‘don’t’ side of the bibliophile code of conduct - teasing you with them, however, is in the ‘you may’ column. Perhaps we could play Jacky Hangman? (That in itself is a double clue.)

Word 1: l_ _ _. 

Word 2: _ s _ _ _ _ n _ _ _.

There is a third idea I can talk about. The narrator mentions that the camp was on the site of Mapungubwe, a thousand-year-old Shona kingdom along the Limpopo. The apartheid government was by the 70s so invested in its delusion that it needed to invest in maintaining its delusion. Here was evidence that the land had already been ‘claimed’ - yikes, let me get you a crane to lift those reparations - and that African people had a history of civilisation that the NP government had said didn't exist as they broke champagne bottles and heads against the borders of the so-called homelands - we'll have to make multiple trips with that crane.

Traitors to their archaeological profession (under the 'don't' of their code is 'knowingly fudge history'. I am pretty sure about this) uncovered thousands of artifacts, then locked them in a room at Wits University and literally threw away the key (someone found it, fyi – the room, not the key). I am taking bets that they also played target practice with or made ashtrays out of some pieces. With decades of practice in self-protection (my thesaurus reads 'delusion'), the NPers did a good job of burying history. Today, I know as much about Mapungubwe as I do about those decades of conscription – although unfortunately, I know more than I want to about the types of atrocities the SADF's victims suffered and how the government justified them via the TRC, which is a whole other can of worms.

One last clue about the clues in this can. I know intelligent people who believe the Kingdom of Mapungubwe is a myth drummed up by well-meaning liberals, based on tenuous evidence collected by easily manipulated academics. Counter-counter-history *knowing look*. Which would perhaps be more effective if the liberals publicised their discoveries instead of building casinos and BnBs on the bones. But then again, Jewish elders made and buried fake dinosaur bones… in… everywhere, and  invented carbon dating and convinced everyone it had something to do with time - and Greefwald was a constructive attempt to rehabilitate deviants. Where 'constructive' means that the deviants lug rocks (artifacts?) around like Sisyphus and his eagle.

*sarcasm hand*