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| 0060892994
| 9780060892999
| 0060892994
| 3.98
| 111,648
| Oct 1959
| May 09, 2006
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really liked it
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This has probably been noted by many better thinkers than I, but the way I see it is this: history takes a long time to happen. I know, I know. Mind: b This has probably been noted by many better thinkers than I, but the way I see it is this: history takes a long time to happen. I know, I know. Mind: blown. We are lucky in this day and age that we have so much information available to us about history. Go to any of your better museums and you'll see artifacts of a bygone age, books and clothes and various objects carefully displayed under glass. Through the meticulous work of historians and scholars throughout the ages, we have created an unbroken chain of knowledge through the centuries that is so thorough and so strong that we feel like the days of Shakespeare, of Charlemagne, of Pericles all happened just the other day. But what if that chain were broken? What if something so big, so terrible were to happen that we had to rebuild history from scratch, using oral tradition and whatever pathetic scraps of memorabilia we could find? Whom could we trust to keep it and put it all together, and then what should we do with it in the end? These are the questions that humanity is forced to confront after the Flame Deluge - a nuclear inferno that claimed the great nations of the world near the end of the twentieth century. All would have been lost if not for the work of Isaac Liebowitz, an engineer-turned-monk who dedicated his life and the lives of his brothers to the preservation of knowledge. Over the centuries, his part of the Albertan order would become the caretakers of a bygone age, guardians of history itself, and would play a key role in the future of humanity, for good or for ill. A Canticle for Liebowitz is a novel in three parts, spanning over a thousand years of future history. It begins in the 26th century, where the inhabitants of what was once the United States are bound into roving tribes and insular city-states. There, the young monk Francis makes a startling discovery from the life of his patron, the soon-to-be-sainted Liebowitz, a discovery which changes his life and the lives of everyone in his order. Through chance, or perhaps divine intervention, Francis finds an underground bunker, a shelter from the Fallout demons of old. He rummages around the cluttered remains of whomever had sealed themselves inside, and happens upon a strongbox, within which are handwritten pieces of paper, including a blueprint for an electrical circuit designed by Leibowitz himself. Suddenly, Francis' vocation was clear. Or at least clearer than it had been before. Then the story jumps forward to the 29th century, an age of discovery and renaissance. The learned both inside and outside the Church are beginning to rediscover science, and apply it to rebuilding some of the technology that was thought to be lost so long ago. At the same time, local leaders are vying for power, and trying to ensnare the monks of St. Liebowitz in their plots. The world is changing, progressing, and not everyone is comfortable with this change. The third part of the story propels us into the 36th century, an age undreamed-of by even those who lived before the world was cleansed by fire. Humanity is traveling between the stars and giving life to their machines, making full use of knowledge both new and old. Unfortunately, mankind may succumb to the same pride, the same flaws that nearly destroyed it a thousand years before. On the eve of self-annihilation, a desperate group of pilgrims is sent out to the stars to try and keep some spark of humanity alive in the cosmos, despite humanity's nearly unstoppable urge to destroy itself. And at the center of all of this is the Order of Leibowitz, holding on to old works and memorabilia, waiting for either the right hands or the wrong ones. The book sounds depressing in its nature, but it isn't. Yes, mankind makes the same stupid mistakes over and over again, not remembering the horror that befell them the last time. But despite that, there are still good people and there is still hope. You turn the last page knowing that the world, and humanity, will go on in one form or another. Even with our propensity for self-destruction, we are equally capable of brilliance and discovery. In a larger sense, too, this book is one long journey into philosophy, bringing up some questions that are truly fundamental to who we are as a species. For example, the book addresses the topic of euthanasia in one section, with the Abbot of the order violently opposed to the Mercy Camps that the government is building. Is it better to make the sick and injured live in their sickness, or should we give them a way out? Is suicide – assisted or otherwise – ever permissible? The characters that debate this topic each have a clear and rational reason for thinking the way they do, and yet they come to no agreement. The characters, for the short time we get to see them, are fascinating. You feel sorry for them, hopeful for them, and afraid for them, because Miller has written them as human beings. We don't have Interchangeable Scientist A and Interchangeable Scientist B arguing opposite points. We instead have scholars and religious, each desperately trying to protect his point of view. Or what about the nature of technology itself? The monks are charged with being the memory of mankind, yet when people start trying to recover the lost sciences, the abbot feels uncomfortable with the whole idea. After all, their predecessors in civilization followed the path of science, and look where it got them. Might it not be better to just let things stay as they are? Hard, yes, and certainly not a perfect world, but when you don't even have electricity, blowing up the world is hard to do. What I also found interesting was how Miller placed the Catholic Church at the center of this story. In the world after the Deluge, the Church is the only organization left, and it fills the power vacuum nicely. Through its system of priesthoods and orders, it remains the last island of civilization in a world that's turned to chaos. I'm not a big fan of the Catholic Church for many reasons, but he really made it into an establishment that I could appreciate. It represented continuity and caution, as well as taking up the guardianship of human history. For all its faults, if the Church could keep humanity from failing utterly, I would be grateful for it. It's intellectual science fiction at its best, really, exploring the kind of big ideas that science fiction is meant to do. Miller has sung a song – a canticle – not just for the fictional Liebowitz, but for humanity as a whole, and asks his readers to sing along with him. ------------------- "If you try to save wisdom until the world is wise, Father, the world will never have it." - Thon Taddeo, A Canticle for Liebowitz ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jul 2012
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Jul 06, 2012
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0812550757
| 9780812550757
| 0812550757
| 4.10
| 259,148
| Mar 1986
| Aug 15, 1994
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it was amazing
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In his introduction to the book, Card says that the main reason he wrote his most famous book - Ender's Game - was so that he would one day be able to
In his introduction to the book, Card says that the main reason he wrote his most famous book - Ender's Game - was so that he would one day be able to write this. I think this is something that probably happens a lot to authors. They get a Big Idea in their head, something with great depth and complexity and meaning, and quickly discover that they don't actually know what they're writing about yet. There's too much to say, there's too much that even the author doesn't know yet, and to go forward from that state of ignorance will result in what is, ultimately, an inferior narrative. Andrew Wiggin, the Speaker for the Dead, comes to the human colony Lusitania in order to speak the death of a local man, Marcão. While given the same reverence and privileges as priests, Speakers are not the same. Their job is to learn about the dead, to understand who they were and who they wanted to be, and then tell the truth as plainly and as clearly as possible. They do not give eulogies, where they try to paint the dead in as good a light as possible. They reveal who this person was, and in the process try to help those left behind understand them. It's a calling that requires an insightful mind, great empathy for others, and the ability to tell the truth despite how hard that truth may be to hear. As a Speaker for the Dead, Andrew Wiggin is very good at his job. It was he who was the first Speaker, who wrote a text that is as revered as the Bible - The Hive Queen and the Hegemon - in order to understand how humankind could kill the only other intelligent species it had ever encountered. The book reveals who the Buggers were and why they attacked humanity. It tells how their understanding of what it means to be intelligent led to a century of warfare and, ultimately, their own destruction. The book also reveals humanity, the dreams and fears that it faced when it met the Buggers. And it tries to understand why humans were so afraid that they took one of their own - a little boy named Ender - and turned him into the greatest monster in human history. The Xenocide. The one who destroyed an entire alien race. This book changed the way humankind saw the universe, and themselves. With the Buggers gone, but their technology still available, humans expanded out to a hundred worlds. Though their starships could only go just under the speed of light, the ansible provided instant communication between the stars. It formed a communications network that held the Starways Congress together and allowed humanity to become a multi-system species. Ender - Andrew - is ultimately responsible for all of this, and is therefore the linchpin of this entire universe. In order to write this book, to understand the culture and the history and the politics that would be necessary to write Speaker for the Dead, Card first had to understand who Ender was. So, with the blessing of his publishers, he was able to turn Ender's Game into a full-length novel. Once that was done, he was able to turn back to this book and craft it into what it has become. The colony of Lusitania is a small place, a group of Catholic settlers who live in a small and insular town. They have all the troubles that any new world would have, except for two that make it truly unique. The first is the descolada, a virus that nearly destroyed the colony and, thousands of years before, life on the planet. This illness literally unzips and recombines your DNA, ravaging your body utterly. If not for the dying work of the colony's two great xenobiologists, everyone would have died. As it turned out, Gusto and Cida were the last to die, leaving their sad, strange daughter Novinha behind. Even that wouldn't be enough to make Lusitania a truly remarkable place. No, for that, we must introduce the Piggies - the third intelligent life form known to exist in the universe. They're small, look like little pig-men, and are indisputably intelligent. They learn quickly, even despite the law forbidding xenologists from influencing their development, and present humanity with an important chance: the last time we encountered an alien intelligence, we obliterated it. Let's not do that again. This becomes harder, however, when the Piggies kill two of the xenologists in what appear to be a horrifyingly painful method. Now it looks like humanity may have to revert to type again, and that there truly is no way that humans can share the same space with other intelligences. Into all this steps Ender. His years of lightspeed travel have kept him young while three thousand years have passed, and he has wandered from world to world to speak for the dead. Now he is on Lusitania to speak for Marcão, an investigation that will lead him to uncover secrets kept for decades, and to once again change the way humans understand their universe. There's really so much to say about this book that it's hard to decide what to leave out and what to keep in. For one thing, Card is trying to write a very different kind of science fiction story. In his introduction, he says that a lot of fiction is adolescent in nature, science fiction especially. It's about adventure, about people seeing a way out of their conventional lives and going off alone. It's about being freed from responsibility and living a fast and crazy life. When that loneliness of adventure finally becomes too much, the hero settles down, but that's usually the last chapter of the book, if ever. Card wanted to go the opposite way, to take a lonely adventurer and show him trying desperately to become responsible, to become a member of a community. In class, where I'm teaching Ender's Game, we've identified isolation as being one of the overriding themes of the novel. Ender is constantly taken away from those he loves or held apart from others. In the end, he becomes a solo wanderer. Even more than that, he is made into a monster, a name on par with Lucifer itself. He is virtually thrown out of humanity, and it is only because no one knows who he really is that he can travel unmolested. So we're seeing Ender in that stage where the loneliness and the wandering have become an unbearable burden to him, and all he wants is a place to belong. But as a Speaker, as a man speaking a death that could completely upend the lives of everyone in the colony, he has his work cut out for him. There is also the element of redemption. In his years of travel, Ender has carried a very special package with him - the cocoon of the last Bugger hive queen. In exchange for her story, he promised that he would find a home for her, a place for her to rebuild her vast family. And on Lusitania, there is that chance. But first he has to save the Piggies, to prevent them from suffering the fate of the Buggers at the hand of a fearful and suspicious Humanity. If Ender can do this, perhaps he can make up for the horror that he unknowingly perpetrated. There's a lot going on in this book, to say the least. It's a great book, better in many ways than Ender's Game. It is more complex and adult and difficult, with moments of true emotion, a well-built socio-political system befitting a species that spans hundreds of worlds, and addressing the needs for changes in culture, politics and even language that would arise from the need to define relationships between worlds and between species. Fundamentally, though, this book is about what the Speaker for the Dead does best - understanding. It's about how we deal with The Other, even when that Other is completely alien to us. Humans and Buggers, Humans and Piggies - hell, Humans and Humans, we have a hard time understanding people who are not like us. We find it very difficult to look at the world from their point of view and to see the world through their eyes. Understanding what they love and fear, what they value and honor, or what they abhor - and more importantly, understanding what they see in you and how they understand you - is the best and surest road to making peace with those who are different from yourself. And that's a lesson that is valuable for all of us. --------------------------------------------- "No human being, when you understand his desires, is worthless. No one's life is nothing. Even the most evil of men and women, if you understand their hearts, had some generous act that redeems them, at least a little, from their sins." - Ender Wiggin, Speaker for the Dead ...more |
Notes are private!
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Jul 20, 2011
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Jul 23, 2011
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Paperback
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| 0982167121
| 9780982167120
| 0982167121
| 3.94
| 7,339
| Oct 13, 2010
| Oct 13, 2010
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it was amazing
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How would you live if you knew how you would die? The premise for this collection of short stories was introduced back in 2005, in an installment of Ry How would you live if you knew how you would die? The premise for this collection of short stories was introduced back in 2005, in an installment of Ryan North's popular Dinosaur Comics. In it, he presents the following premise: there is a machine which, with only a small sample of your blood, can tell you how you will die. But there are no dates, no details, no explanations. Just a few words, and that's it. The Machine is never wrong, but it is annoyingly vague and has a decidedly un-machinelike love of irony. So you might get OLD AGE and think you were set, right? Not necessarily. You could be murdered by an octogenarian while trying to steal their TV. Or you might get PLANE CRASH and decide never to fly again. Fine, but that won't stop the single-engine Cessna from plowing into your house one fine spring afternoon. Pulled GUILLOTINE, did you? Hope you know to stay away from heavy metal concerts. But it doesn't matter. The Machine, while perversely misleading at times, is never wrong, and like most prophets, its predictions often only make sense after the event has already happened. With that premise, hundreds of writers across the internet set to work. How would this Machine affect people? How would it affect society or business or politics? Would we become slaves to its predictions, or simply shrug it off and live our lives as we did before, knowing that we were going to die someday anyway? In "Flaming Marshmallow" by Camille Alexa, we see how the existence of the Machine has begun to shape youth culture. Carolyn is about to turn sixteen, the legal age at which one can be tested. A milestone equivalent with getting one's driver's license or being able to vote, kids monitor each other's fates with scrupulous detail. Your eventual manner of death brings you together with those of similar fates, and new cliques begin to form. Kids who are going to die violent deaths sit together in the lunch room, far away from the ones who get OLD AGE. The kids with DRUG OVERDOSE and fates like it all mill about with each other, and nobody talks to the ones who get SUICIDE. By finding out one's manner of death, a teenager gets what teenagers always want: a sense of belonging and inclusion. But will Carolyn's fate bring her closer to her fellow students or just leave her an outsider? "After Many Years, Stops Breathing, While Asleep, With Smile On Face," by William Grallo, continues that idea out into the adult world. Ricky is dragged out on the town to a nightclub where people flaunt their deaths. They wear fake toe tags with MURDER or HEART ATTACK on them. Or, if they're feeling impish, NEVER, or BOREDOM. But while everyone else is mocking their deaths, Ricky is in the odd position of knowing that he's got a good end to his life. What he doesn't know is what will happen between now and then, or with whom he will share it. David Malki ! explores the darker side of society's reactions in "Cancer." James is a young man whose father is dying of cancer. It's what the Machine had predicted, and it was all coming true. Despite the Machine's infallibility, however, his father was seeking out a cure, a way out from the fate that had been given to him. And he's not the only one - a new generation of hucksters and faith healers has sprung up, all claiming to be able to defy the predictions of The Machine. It gives James' father hope, but whether that hope is worth the price or not is something James is unsure of. "Nothing," by Pelotard, is a touching tale of a young woman who discovers a family secret that never would have been revealed before the Machine was invented. "Despair," by K.M. Lawrence, is an examination of how paralyzed people might become by the ambiguity of the predictions, unable to act lest they inadvertently fulfill them. "Improperly Prepared Blowfish" by Gord Sellar is an entertaining moment of secrets and betrayal among a group of yakuza in Japan, and Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw has some fun with the politics of Machine predictions by giving us a politician whose fate is to die from EXHAUSTION FROM HAVING SEX WITH A MINOR. Some stories are funny, others are touching, but they all center around that most existential of questions: how do we live, knowing that we will die? Without The Machine, we still know we're going to die. Every one of us has, somewhere in the back of our mind, that constant reminder that our lives are finite, that there is a limit to the amount of time we can spend on this earth. And, for the most part, we choose to ignore it. After all, if you spend your whole life obsessing over your own death, then you can't have much of a life, now can you? But add to that fundamental knowledge of finitude the extra awareness of the manner of your death. If you get CAR CRASH, what can you do with that knowledge? You know it's inevitable, that The Machine is never wrong, but you may still struggle with that fate. You may cut up your driver's license, move out to Amish country and vow never to be within striking distance of a car again. The entire course of your life will shift drastically, based on the two words printed on that card, but the end result will be the same: CAR CRASH. Knowing that, is it better to act on the knowledge you have gained, or to ignore it? Even worse, sometimes the very act of finding out your fate leads you right to it. In "Suicide" by David Michael Wharton, characters learn about their deaths only moments before experiencing it. Had they not gone to get tested on The Machine - had they not gone to that machine - would they have avoided their fate? The Machine would say no, but you'd have to ask it first. The best expression of this paradox is contained in the book's shortest tale, "HIV Infection From Machine of Death Needle" by Brian Quinlan, wherein the very act of discovering your fate causes that fate to happen, whereas you would never have had it if you hadn't gone looking for it. It's kind of a mind trip, if you think about it. What if you get something fairly straightforward, like CANCER, and you decide to, say, jump out of an airplane without a parachute? Will that even be possible, or will random events conspire to keep you safe until your proscribed end? And if you get SUICIDE, the one form of death you have absolute control over, do you fight against it or give in, knowing that nothing you do will change the outcome? And what could this tell you about the future for everyone? In "Heat Death of the Universe," by Ramon Perez, teenagers who reach the legal testing age start getting NUCLEAR BOMB as their means of death. The government springs into action, testing, re-testing, and vowing to corral all these kids into one place. But if their deaths are inevitably by NUCLEAR BOMB, what does that mean? It means that whether they're all in one place or dispersed across the country, that is how they will die. Acting on the information doesn't change its outcome, only what the manner of that outcome will be. Conversely, it might be impossible to predict anything from the predictions The Machine gives out. As was pointed out in the same story, the 3,000 victims of 9/11 probably wouldn't have all had TERRORISM printed on their little cards. They might have had FALLING or FIRE or PLANE CRASH - all true, but none of that would have helped anyone prevent that event. Even something as clear and unambiguous as GLOBAL THERMONUCLEAR WAR creates problems, as Cassandra finds out in the story of the same name by T. J. Radcliffe. If you tell people about this future, will they even believe you? Or will the actions they take to prevent it instead be what causes it to happen? There are no easy answers, at least not without electroshock. It's a fascinating group of stories, illustrated by some of the internet's best artists - Adam Koford, Kevin McShane, Aaron Diaz, Kate Beaton, Christopher Hastings, and too many others to mention. It will do what all really good writing should do - make you think. As seductive as it sounds, knowing the means of your death is information that you really can do without. It is the end to your story, whether you know it or not, but everything until then is still up to you. While you may not have any choice over how you die, you still have plenty of control over how you live. You can live in fear or hope, make plans and take risks and hope for the best. Just like we do now. I'll leave you with a joke from Steven Wright, one that was running through my head as I read the book: My girlfriend asked me if I could know how and when I was going to die, would I want to know? I said, "No, not really." She said, "Okay, forget it, then." Thank you, he'll be here all week. ------------------------------------------------------- "What good is knowing the future if you can't do anything with the knowledge?" Dad, from "Friendly Fire" by Douglas J. Lane ------------------------------------------------------- ...more |
Notes are private!
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not set
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Nov 27, 2010
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Nov 27, 2010
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0441359175
| 9780441359172
| 0441359175
| 3.67
| 12,211
| Dec 01, 1970
| Apr 15, 1987
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did not like it
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One of the things I enjoy about Heinlein is that he likes to play with Big Ideas. While he did dip into the well of action and adventure, especially f
One of the things I enjoy about Heinlein is that he likes to play with Big Ideas. While he did dip into the well of action and adventure, especially for his juvenile stories, he treated his readers like they were only slightly intellectually inferior to him, and so explored concepts that required a lot of heavy thinking. The need for war, the inevitability of messiahs, revolution, life, death, immortality - he's not afraid to shy away from some of the greatest philosophical topics that reside in the human heart, and this book is no exception. Johann Sebastian Bach Smith is a very old, very sick, very rich man. He built himself up from nothing and rose to financial prominence in what is a little more than a regular human lifetime. Smith had it all - a rich and exciting life, complete financial security, good friends and good memories in a world that had, frankly, gone to hell. He had very nearly everything a person would want to have. What he didn't have was time. He lived in daily pain, kept alive by only two things: an ever-increasing number of machines and a plan to release himself from the geriatric horror his life had become. He knew that this plan would probably fail. He knew that he was facing death no matter what happened. He knew that it was crazy, and not necessarily crazy enough to work. But it was all that stood between him and suicide. That plan was, in theory, very simple: transplant his healthy brain into the body of a healthy young person. By doing so, he would gain a whole extra lifetime to enjoy the fruits of his first lifetime's labor. Not being a monster, he was prepared to do this in a legal and ethical fashion. With his legal, medical, and judicial contacts, he made arrangements with a medical advocacy group to get the body of a healthy young person who died due to some massive brain trauma. And - and this is important - who consented to having their body used for medical experimentation. Everything would be above-board, legally sound and ethically certain. All Smith had to do was stay alive until a body became available. When it did, however, he was in for a double surprise. Not only was the healthy, youthful body that of a female, it was that of his healthy, youthful, beautiful secretary, Eunice Branca. Eunice had been murdered, but her body was in excellent condition. She had the right blood type, and had consented to have her body used for Smith's experiment. The one doctor in the world who could perform the surgery was brought in to perform it, and against all odds, it worked. Johann Sebastian Bach Smith was reborn as Joan Eunice Smith, and her new life began. But she was not alone. By some means, Eunice's mind survived to live with Joan, and tutor her in all the ways of being a woman. Joan dove happily into her new life, exploring her new femininity and sexuality as best she could. In that sense, this whole book is an exploration of sexual identity. Here we have a man who is now a woman, even though that was never his intention. He soon finds himself thinking like a woman, though, bringing up the question of whether gender is determined by a person's mind, or by the body it inhabits. If you put a male mind into a female body, with the vastly different hormones and sensory inputs, will that male mind start to act like a female? And even if it does, should it? Smith makes a decision to, with Eunice's help, be the best woman he can be, mostly because he feels that is what is expected of him. After a lifetime of conforming to male societal roles, Smith wholeheartedly embraces the female ones, up to and including seducing his best friend of many decades. Gender identity in this book is a tangled mess of biology and intention, and it looks at being female from a distinctly male point of view. Which brings me to my first problem with this book: the casual misogyny. I know it's a pretty loaded word to throw around, and it's not entirely accurate, but it was the one that kept coming to my mind. While Heinlein is certainly capable of creating strong and independent female characters, and emphasizes over and over again that both Eunice and Joan are actively choosing the lives they lead, those lives are almost entirely dependent on and revolve around men. One of Smith's first actions when he goes from Johann to Joan is to latch on to a man - her old friend Jake Saloman. She views her identity as a woman as incomplete without a man to base it on, and spends most of the book trying to figure out who she is in relation to men - Jake, her security guards, Eunice's widower, and more. She repeatedly mentions how helpless she is without a Big Strong Man in her life, and all of this culminates in what is possibly one of the most misogynist moments I have ever read in sci-fi: a spanking scene. And not a sexy one, either. In a moment of adolescent pique that Jake won't sleep with her when she wants him to, Joan throws a fit, disrupting their dinner plans. Jake proceeds to throw her over his knee and give her a spanking because, and I'm quoting here, "You were being difficult... and it is the only thing I know of which will do a woman any good when a man can't do for her what she needs." Joan accepts the spanking meekly, not only thanking Jake for his spanking, but also claiming that she had her first orgasm while he did it. Wow. That's nearly as bad as the other major female character, Winnie, who talks about a gang rape experience with what can almost be imagined as fondness. Oddly enough, this is not my biggest problem with the book. I mean, it was written in the late '60s, and it reflects the thinking of that era. For all his progressive beliefs, Heinlein was still a man of his time, and it really shows here. Legend [1] has it that he was really sick when he wrote this book, and that may have had something to do with the fact that no matter how many complex hot-button issues he touches (gender roles, homosexuality, same-sex marriage, overpopulation, government overreach), the fact remains that there is no story in this book. Let me explain. A story needs conflict. It needs not only a protagonist that is trying to achieve something, but obstacles that impede that achievement. There were so many potential goals and obstacles to be explored in this story - a man's brain in a woman's body - but Heinlein manages to artfully dodge all of them. The story of Smith's inner struggle to resolve the gender he grew up with with the gender he now possesses would have been fascinating. But it didn't happen. Smith pretty much accepts the change right away, with few if any reservations. Even so, he could have struggled with how to live as a woman – should he adopt the identity that a patriarchal society would confer upon him as a woman, or forge his own as a uniquely gendered person who has gone from the privileged to the unprivileged sex? Unfortunately, the conflict doesn't even occur to Joan. She decided to be the best woman she can be, constantly asking others what that entails, rather than asking herself. Or how about the concept of Identity itself? Smith is an old brain in a new body, so is he legally the same person he was before the surgery? That would be an amazing story as he tries to prove that Johann has become Joan, and that even though Eunice's body is still walking around, she's actually dead. But no - Smith has some powerful legal friends with ironclad arguments, and the legal proceedings are pretty much a foregone conclusion. Or how about rejection by society? Regular transgendered people have a hard enough time getting society to accept the modification of the body they were born with - what about when someone takes on an entirely new body entirely? Joan could have struggled to get her friends and family to accept who she has become, to stand before the world with her head held high. But no.... She has enough money that she doesn't really need society's approval, none of her friends have any trouble with what she's become, and even Eunice's widower has only a moment of uncontrollable emotion before accepting that his wife is dead, but still walking around. And he might get to sleep with her again. One last one - the soul. Joan hears Eunice's voice in her head, but it's unclear whether it is really Eunice or if it's just Joan's imagination. What's more, they never fight. They never have a serious disagreement and have to resolve their differences so that they can continue to occupy the same skull. Eunice and Joan live together like wisecracking sisters and never have to deal with the problem of living with someone you can't get rid of, even if you're not sure if they're real. In other words, there's no there there. It's a long, talky, philosophical exploration of some fascinating topics, but as a novel, it's incredibly dull. You keep waiting for the blow-up, for the accident, for the Big Problem that Joan and Jake have to struggle to overcome, and it never arrives. Everything works out either through money or force of will or Heinlein's trademark Sheer Damn Reasonableness. Between that and the constant thought of, "He did not just say that," I found this book rather stressful to plow through. It offers up a lot of big ideas to think on, raises some very important questions, and Heinlein's gift for dialogue makes some fun conversations, but I think I would have liked it more if it had been completely different. ------------------------------------------------------ "Sir, if you want to give me a fat lip, I'll hold still, smile happily, and take it. Oh, Jake darling, it's going to be such fun to be married to you!" "I think so too, you dizzy bitch." - Joan and Jake, I Will Fear No Evil by Robert Heinlein ------------------------------------------------------ [1] Wikipedia ...more |
Notes are private!
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not set
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Oct 11, 2010
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Nov 06, 2010
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Mass Market Paperback
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| B003NE61HQ
| 3.57
| 590
| Jun 01, 2010
| unknown
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really liked it
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If you had asked me a year ago which television show you should absolutely make time to watch, I would have immediately told you to start watching Mad
If you had asked me a year ago which television show you should absolutely make time to watch, I would have immediately told you to start watching Mad Men. Deep, complicated, and made with great attention to detail, it is a show that rewards viewers. The characters reveal themselves over time, minor plot elements emerge as major turning points, and they give us 21st-century viewers a chance to look at the '60s in a whole new light. The show had had three outstanding seasons, and up until that point, I would have recommended it unreservedly. Until they dropped my brother from the cast. I understand that I did not really default to my rational soul in this instance. The third season was one giant setup for the surprise ending in which Sterling Cooper is bought out (again) and Don and Lane hatch a plan to break away with all the staff and clients they could carry. In this situation, they needed their strongest people, and when it came down to choosing writers, there was no question that Peggy Olsen was a better writer than Paul Kinsey. It had been shown again and again during the season, so that when Kinsey was left twisting in the wind at the end, it made sense - from a writing perspective. That didn't mean I had to like it. So when season four rolled around, I started to download the episodes, but I resisted watching them. I just sulked. Was I being childish? Immature? Petty? We may never know the answers to those questions, but I can tell you this - the reason I finally gave in and started watching it again was this book. Part of the Pop Culture and Philosophy genre of books, this volume takes a deep, intellectual look at the series, examining its characters, its ethics and its messages, to see what kind of lessons we can learn from it. From Aristotle to Ayn Rand, thousands of years of human thinking are illustrated in this tv show, and the authors who have contributed to the book are able to tease fascinating concepts from whiskey and smoke. How do Betty, Joan and Peggy represent second-wave feminism? What are the responsibilities of advertisers to their target audience? How might be Peggy a Nietzschean Superwoman, and why does Pete fail so hard? Is Don Draper a good man, and would Ayn Rand have salivated over him, as Bert Cooper claimed she would? The book is full of interesting ideas, and I'll share a few of my favorites with you. In "Pete, Peggy, Don, and the Dialectic of Remembering and Forgetting," John Fritz examines the Nietzschean virtue of willing forgetfulness and how it applies to these three characters. The way it goes is this: Nietzsche believed that the past should serve the present, that you should be able to use your memories to push yourself forward. Not all memories do this, as we all know, and to hold on to memories that simply hold us back - to live in the past - is detrimental to leading a good life. Pete Campbell, for example, perpetually lives in the past. He can't forget anything, especially if it is something he perceives as a slight against him. When Ken Cosgrove gets a story published, Pete stews over it, bitter that Ken did something worthwhile and he did not. Rather than do the adult thing - congratulate Ken and move on - Pete cannot let go. He ends up nearly forcing his wife into the arms of another man just to try and match Ken's accomplishment. Pete's inability to forget causes him almost constant distress. Don is a little better. Don knows that you need to forget things, and tries to live that way. When his estranged brother shows up, Don tells him, "My life moves in only one direction - forward." He chooses to forget the things he has done if they will interfere with the way his life is going now. When he gets into a car accident, and Peggy has to bail him out, he doesn't remember to pay her back until she very pointedly reminds him. It's probable that he used this willing forgetfulness as part of his strategy to cheat on Betty. The only way to live both lives at once is to forget the one that will cause you trouble, and then recall it when it's time to get some nookie again. But Don's not perfect. His memories are triggered again and again - sights and smells bring him back to his childhood, to his abusive father, and to the traumatic day in Korea when he became someone else. Don's past follows him, like a loyal dog, occasionally nipping at his heels and reminding him where he came from, no matter how much Don would like to forget it. Peggy, on the other hand, is the champion of willing forgetfulness. The birth of the child she had with Pete is a fantastic example of this, and my favorite moment is when she finally tells Pete what had happened. She sits him down, and very calmly explains that she had his baby and then gave it away, and the tone of her voice is less exciting than someone talking about the new shoes she has bought. Peggy forgot about the baby - she chose to forget about the baby, no matter how much her family and Father Whatawaste tried to remind her. But for this one moment, she unpacked it, held it out at arm's length just long enough to tell Pete, and then she wrapped it up again and buried it in her mind. Peggy knows that there are things in her past that will hold her back if she clings to them, so she doesn't. In this way, she is the model of Nietzsche's virtue of willing forgetfulness. In "'In on It': Honesty, Respect, and the Ethics of Advertising," Andrea Novakovic and Tyler Whitney ask about what ethical rules bind advertising, if any, and how advertisers relate to consumers. The essay centers around the season 2 episode, "A Night to Remember," wherein Don uses his wife as a demographic model for Heineken beer. During her meticulously-planned dinner party, full of international cuisine, Betty reveals that they are drinking Heineken, from Holland, which comes as a welcome surprise to Don and Duck Phillips. Betty is upset by this, and after the party accuses Don of purposefully embarrassing and humiliating her, and Don doesn't quite get what the problem is. No surprise there. But does Betty have a legitimate beef with Don and Sterling Cooper? Well, that depends on why she bought the Heineken. If she bought it because she likes it, or because she had heard good things about it, then no. But she suspects that Don had done his research too well, and that the only reason she picked up those nice green bottles was because he knew her so well that he could make her think she wanted to buy it. From her point of view, he manipulated her, (which in fancy-pants philosophical terms might be called depriving someone of agency) and then laughed about it. Don has shown no respect for his wife and her ability to make choices on her own, and this reflects the larger issue of respect between advertisers and the consumers they target. It is, of course, a challenging topic, even within the show. In the pilot episode, "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes," Don actively rejects psychological profiling in coming up with an ad for Lucky Strike, yet in that season's finale, "The Wheel," he is quite clearly using psychological manipulation to sell his idea for Kodak's Carousel. So what is the difference between profiling Betty to sell beer and using nostalgia to sell a slide projector? It's a matter of respect. It is easy for people watching the Kodak ad to understand what is going on in an ad that uses their memories to evoke an emotional response. The advertiser respects the consumer's intelligence and agency, and uses that to sell their product. In Betty's case, however, the manipulation was more subtle. Display techniques, signage, subtle and professional methods which start from the assumption that the consumer doesn't know her own mind. Finally, in "What Fools We Were: Mad Men, Hindsight, and Justification," Landon W. Schurtz asks the question we all asked about the people in this show: how could they be so dumb? I mean, when Betty's daughter shows up with a dry-cleaning bag over her head, Betty is angrier about the possible state of her clothes than the chance her daughter could suffocate. When we first meet Sal Romano, he is so ridiculously gay that we can't believe no one notices. And Sterling-Cooper gleefully take on Richard Nixon as a candidate when we all know what the man is clearly a crook. From our perspective, these things seem completely obvious, yet the characters on Mad Men just don't seem to know any better. So why is that? Well, it depends on what you mean by the word "know," and that's what Schurtz tries to figure out in this essay. We can know things through direct experience, for example, but Betty has probably never had a daughter asphyxiate on plastic, Don and the others have probably never met an openly gay man, and, well, historians still don't know how Nixon convinced America that he wasn't a weasel in an ill-fitting suit. We can know things through the testimony of others, but again - those bits of knowledge hadn't quite permeated the culture yet. Even if they had, whom could you trust for accurate testimony? Don rejects Doctor Guttman's suggestions for the Lucky Strike campaign because he rejects the significance of psychological research. The elders of Sterling Cooper continued to reject Pete's ideas because they didn't believe young people could know anything worth knowing. In short, no - the people in the '60s weren't stupid. They just didn't know any better. This book got me to give up my sulk and start watching Mad Men again. Even though it is clearly diminished with the absence of Paul Kinsey, I was reminded that the show is immensely complex and worth the time to watch. So I am recommending it to all - watch the show. And read the book. Together, they defy the common wisdom that modern entertainment has nothing to offer us. Indeed, they give us a new perspective not only on the show, but on our own lives. Pretty impressive for an hour a week. ----------------------------------------------------------- "The basic desire to feel okay is deeply human, but if Don Draper can take this generic human longing and create a desire for a particular product, are we genuinely free?" - Kevin Guilfoy, "Capitalism and Freedom in the Affluent Society" -------------------------------------------------------- ...more |
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Sep 11, 2010
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Sep 17, 2010
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Kindle Edition
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| 1596914521
| 9781596914520
| 1596914521
| 4.05
| 19,750
| Sep 29, 2009
| Oct 05, 2009
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it was amazing
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I have a question for you. It's a simple-sounding question, but hard to answer, so I really want you to put a good amount of thought into it before yo
I have a question for you. It's a simple-sounding question, but hard to answer, so I really want you to put a good amount of thought into it before you do. Okay? Yes, I'm still in Teacher-mode, but that's not important right now. My question is this: What is truth? It's one of those unanswerable questions that has bugged us ever since we started being able to ask unanswerable questions. Along with "Why is there evil in the world?" and "Do we have free will or are our lives pre-determined from the beginning?" or "What's the deal with that Justin Bieber kid? I mean really?" this question is one that people either ignore or obsess over. Didn't think I could do a pop-culture reference like that, did you? Shows how much you know.... This graphic novel is about one man's pursuit of this question, and the ways in which it nearly destroyed his life. The man was Bertrand Russell, and we follow his life from his childhood to late adulthood as he searches for an unshakable foundation to mathematics and logic, and thus an absolute truth that he could rely on. As a child, Russell lived with the question of why things are the way they are, and got no good answers from his domineering grandmother. It wasn't until his introduction to geometry and the wonder of mathematical proofs that he could finally say there was something about which he could be absolutely sure in the universe. Mathematics, he thought, would be the answer to everything. Pure, unsullied and utterly, utterly reliable. But there was a flaw in math - the Axioms. Mathematics in the 19th century was a direct descendant of Euclid's work, and rested on a series of axioms in order to function. An axiom, then, is something that is assumed to be true so that you can go on to prove other things. For example, if you have a line, and a point not on that line, there can be only one line drawn through that point that is parallel to the first. Why is this true? Well... it just is. If you have to prove that, then you have to prove a thousand other things first, and you never end up being able to prove the thing you were trying to prove in the first place. It was like, he thought, the cosmological model of the world on the back of a turtle. Which stood on another turtle. Which stood on another, and another - turtles, all the way down. That didn't satisfy young Russell, and he went off in search of the floor upon which the last turtle stood, as it were - new mathematics that would be able to define the foundations of math, and thereby give a concrete understanding of the universe. Along the way, his desire to apply the certainty of math to human thought and interaction led him to the discipline of logic, a strange chimera of mathematics and philosophy. By becoming a logician, he thought he might finally be able to pin down some absolute truths about not only abstract math but human nature itself. Of course, he failed. Spectacularly. Broken marriages, broken friendships, ill health - his obsession with an absolute truth to the universe nearly destroyed everything he had. Fortunately for him, Russell pulled back from the abyss before it could swallow him whole, and became one of the early 20th century's greatest philosophers in the process. His failure to find an ultimate foundation for logic and math was not entirely without fruit - thanks to work by Russell and others, these disciplines were pushed forward in ways that made our modern lives possible. New ways of understanding the universe, from the unfathomable depths of infinity to the simplicity of 1+1=2, everything was open to examination in those days. Because of men like Bertrand Russell, humanity advanced in great leaps and bounds. In the end, it's a compelling book. I read and re-read it, convinced each time that there was something else I had missed. I was very often right. Doxiadis and Papadimitriou have put together a compelling tale of a man often overlooked by the general public, and they did so in a medium that's close to my heart - the graphic novel. The art, done by Alecos Papadatos and Annie Di Donna, is wonderful. It has a simplicity that belies the complexity of its topic, and shows an excellent sense of storytelling. Hats off to the two of them, without a doubt. This book, it should be noted, is not a primer on logic. If you're looking to know how logic works, or you want to know a bit more about higher mathematics and how to do them, then you'd best look for another book. As the authors tell us right in the beginning, this book is a story, a great tragedy that owes its inspiration to the ancient productions of the Greeks. It's the story of a man who pitted himself against the universe and lost, but who did so in such a way that he - and the world - came out better for it. The book ends with a scene from The Oresteia, a classic Greek drama about another man who found himself in a no-win situation with no absolutes to rest upon. Much like Orestes, when faced with two choices that could lead to his destruction, the only way forward for Russell was to compromise and to move forward. By doing so, he not only became a happier man, but became involved with humanity again, as a philosopher, a teacher, and an anti-war activist. In the end, this book is about the compromises we all have to make as human beings. The world may be a logical place, but we are not. There is a limit to our logical understanding of ourselves, and sooner or later we have to accept that and deal with people as people, rather than as problems to be solved and equations to be balanced. Bertrand Russell's quest, as interpreted by this novel, is an example of how far we can push the need to know exactly that's at the bottom of it all. The fact that the foundations of our world appear to be unprovable and unknowable is, ultimately, unimportant. What is important is that we are here, now, and we need to make sense of our own lives. ...more |
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not set
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Jun 10, 2010
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Jun 26, 2010
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Paperback
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| 0307377342
| 9780307377340
| 0307377342
| 4.12
| 21,484
| Apr 2009
| Feb 10, 2009
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really liked it
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So. What happens after we die? I'll wait. Is it a Heaven of clouds and harps and angels? A Hell full of fire and brimstone and horrible torture? Do you So. What happens after we die? I'll wait. Is it a Heaven of clouds and harps and angels? A Hell full of fire and brimstone and horrible torture? Do you get to come back again and live a new life, perhaps building on the mistakes of your previous one? Yeah, guess that's all well and good. I mean, the classics never go out of style, right? Perhaps some pearly gates with Morgan Freeman hanging out nearby, or an place of endless torment where David Warner is ready to turn you into a cockroach. Variations on an old and well-worn theme. But how about an afterlife where you get to live with every possible version of yourself? You know the "many worlds" theory of the universe, right? For every choice you make, a new universe is born, and in that universe there lives a different you. Perhaps one who made better choices, perhaps worse. Well, after you die, you get to hang out with them all! Including, unfortunately, all the yous who made much, much better decisions than you did. Or perhaps you get the afterlife where you re-live your entire life, but with all moments of the same quality grouped together. So that means you get to spend thirty years sleeping, or two hundred days taking a shower. Doesn't sound too bad, except for the eighteen months you spend waiting in line, or the five months you spend on the toilet, or the 27 hours of intense pain. Maybe you discover that there is no afterlife for us, just as there is no afterlife for a computer chip. We've all been components in a great computer, wherein every nod of your head, every word, every blink is merely a signal sent to other processing units (AKA people). Of course, the programmers don't know why we've thrived as we have - they didn't make us to be sentient, and still don't realize it's happened. But our world is the greatest of the computer worlds they've built. There are forty other afterlives in this book, all described in two or three pages. Each one is an attempt to break free of the traditional sense of what the afterlife "should" be, and shows a great deal of creativity. What's fun is reading this and understanding that any one of them could be true. Just as true as the traditional heavens and hells we've been building for the last few millennia. After all, why couldn't we have an afterlife where we're given the opportunity to come back - but with one change of our own choosing? Or another where we get to choose the form of our next life, but are betrayed by our inability then to remember why we had chosen it? Just because they don't have the weight of a Church's doctrine or thousands of years of philosophy doesn't make them wrong. Because, after all, we don't know. We can't know. We may think we know, or believe we know, but that really doesn't mean anything. Hell, I came up with my own afterlife scheme that sounded pretty good to me, but does that make it true? Nope. The one big constraint that seems to apply to all afterlives is that no one ever gets to tell the living how it worked out. Why this should be is unknown to me, but that just puts me in league with every philosopher who ever lived. Not bad company. But since all afterlives could be true, it can be argued that none of them are. And if you can't know what will happen to your soul after death, and how to ensure that your eternity is a pleasant one, then perhaps you should stop worrying about it. The nature and requirements of your afterlife are totally out of your control. The same cannot be said for your life. That is something that you have knowledge of and control over. So appreciate that little fact and go do something with it. Go ahead and entertain speculation about life after death. Go ahead, let your imagination go wild. But don't for a moment think that you know what will come when you breathe your last. Because it probably won't be anything you ever expected. Or maybe it will. Who am I to say? In any case, this is a fun little (and I do mean little) book, suitable for reading in one sitting or in forty tiny bites of time. And who knows, maybe it'll spur you on to thoughts of your own afterlife. If you have one, I'd love to hear it. ...more |
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Jul 21, 2009
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Jul 24, 2009
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Hardcover
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| 0812695739
| 9780812695731
| 0812695739
| 3.86
| 914
| Jun 01, 2001
| May 10, 2005
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really liked it
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So there you are. You've been bitten by a radioactive, alien wolverine that's been cursed by a gypsy and struck by lightning and you have finally, aft
So there you are. You've been bitten by a radioactive, alien wolverine that's been cursed by a gypsy and struck by lightning and you have finally, after years and years of waiting, been blessed with super powers. You can do things no one else can do, and you can do them faster, stronger, better and in more spandex than you ever dreamed possible. Now there's only one thing to do: pick a name, put together a costume and go fight crime! But... why? Ever stop and think about it? I mean, I know I would want to go out there and fight the good fight, emulating my four-color heroes, but... why? What is it about getting super-powers that makes so many men and women do what they normally wouldn't do - fight crime? Why risk their lives (or the lives of those they love) in the never-ending battle against the forces of human (and super-human) wickedness? For that matter, why should anyone, super-powered or not, bother to do good? It's hard, thankless work, after all, and despite the old cliche, crime can sometimes pay very, very well indeed. The fundamental question about why super-heroes do what they do is a reflection of one of the oldest questions in human philosophy: why be good? And the fact that it's the most popular theme in this book of essays suggests that there really is no single, simple answer to that. Mark Waid, in "The Real Truth About Superman," looks at the greatest do-gooder of them all, the Big Blue Boy Scout, Superman, and talks about the philosophical journey he took when he re-invented the character's history in Superman: Birthright. To sum up, he believes that the primary drive that puts Kal-El out in the skies is not so much a desire to help the world, but to help himself, for only by being a hero can he embrace his true nature. The use of his powers to his fullest is a demonstration of his Kryptonian legacy. To hide that under the bushel that is Clark Kent would be to completely deny that part of who he is. And what of Batman, the poor, paranoid loner? When you think of the Bat, do you think of his friends? Probably not, but of all the best-known heroes, he's probably got the biggest cast of confidantes - from his ever-present assistant, Alfred, to the unstable love of his rival, Catwoman, Batman has a tangle of friendships that normal people could not sustain - but that's Batman for you. Always has to be better than the rest of us. In Matt Morris' essay, "Batman and Friends: Aristotle and The Dark Knight's Inner Circle," we get a look at the traditional Aristotelian levels of friendship (those of utility, pleasure, and virtue") and how the people with whom Batman surrounds himself fit into these categories. The First Family of Marvel get their due as well, when Chris Ryall and Scott Tipton look at "The Fantastic Four as a Family." In this essay, they look at the bonds of family, and what exactly that means. What is it to be "family," and how is that bond so different from others? They see the Fantastic Four as an excellent example of how the bond of family (by blood, marriage, or other means) can transcend nearly any difficulty. But in the case of the FF, what is it that's held them together for so long, despite numerous break-ups and substitutions? Is it Reed's guilt over how he nearly killed the people he loved, disfiguring one of them horribly? Is it Ben's loyalty to his friends that keeps the whole thing together, acting as a reminder of the price of failure? Or is it something else? The book, much like the science books I've read, aims to accomplish something very important - to show that there are lessons to be learned from comic books, that they aren't just mindless entertainment for empty-headed children. Questions of good versus evil aside, I enjoyed some of the more unexpected philosophical questions - what is identity, and how can we morally hold Bruce Banner responsible for the crimes of The Hulk? How does Barbara Gordon exemplify moral perfectionism, and of the female X-Men, what to they tell us about women and heroics? And is it ethically permissible for a hero to have a secret identity, the maintenance of which requires lying to the people she loves the most? These aren't questions that occur to the average comic book reader, I'm sure, but the average comic book reader should be able to instantly understand them. More importantly, he (statistically speaking) should be able to understand why they need to be asked. Super-heroes are us, writ larger. Their problems are our problems, only bigger, faster, and looking much better in form-fitting clothes. We must all struggle with the questions of doing good in this world, and how far our responsibility to the world extends. We all try to balance different parts of our lives, our "secret identities" that divide the different people we are from day to day. We ask ourselves about who we are, and what it is about ourselves today that makes us different from who we were yesterday, or ten years ago. Classical philosophy suggests that humans all tend towards wanting to do the right thing, and I agree (with some reservations). The thing is, doing the right thing is often hard, and doing the wrong thing often is so much easier. In order to be good humans, we must ask ourselves these questions about right and wrong, good and evil, responsibility and plain old selfishness. And if Daredevil or Spider-Man, Wonder Woman or Barbara Gordon are able to serve as models for the best decisions we can make, then I see no reason why we should not follow their examples. ...more |
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not set
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Jun 28, 2009
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Jul 03, 2009
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Paperback
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| B000FBFNXS
| 4.04
| 80,987
| Oct 1980
| unknown
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liked it
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When my brother gave me this book for Christmas, he told me to "drink in the writing." Or something to that effect. Whatever it was, he heaped praise
When my brother gave me this book for Christmas, he told me to "drink in the writing." Or something to that effect. Whatever it was, he heaped praise on Robbins' use of language. Several people in my family had read this, or some other Tom Robbins book, and they all enthusiastically agreed that reading him was a pleasure unto itself, above and beyond the enjoyment one gets from reading the actual story. I was promised an actual Reading Experience, and that promise was fulfilled in spades. Reading Robbins is like sitting through a storm. His words flow down the page like the acid dreams of a long-reformed hippie. They dance and spin, curling into strange and exotic shapes that you can't quite take in on the first read, so you look at the page again, convinced that there must have been something there that you missed. You find yourself at the end of a section, convinced that you've read it, but not entirely sure what you've read. Or you go back and read it again just because reading it the first time was just such fun. Most modern writers do their best to keep you involved in the story, to keep the writing from drawing attention to itself. Much in the same way that many filmmakers try to keep you from thinking, "Oh, I'm looking through a camera," so do writers try to keep you from thinking about the words - their lens through which they transmit their message and images. Robbins completely eschews this principle - not only does he make sure you notice his words, he goes out of the way to make the words themselves more interesting than the story. This is not to say that the story isn't interesting, of course. It is a romance, albeit a strange and brambly one. A young princess, the only child of an exiled king and queen, has vowed to devote her life to the betterment of the Earth, to use her royal station to help the world and to absolutely never fall in love - or even have sex - again. For very good reasons, of course. Nothing like having a miscarriage while cheerleading for your college football team to dampen your reproductive urges. This plan works up until she gets to a ecology conference in Maui, where she meets the man of her nightmares - a notorious terrorist who is nicknamed the Woodpecker. The Woodpecker (his real name is Bernard) is a self-professed outlaw, a man who takes joy in subverting order, thumbing his nose at authority and living with a complete disregard for legal niceties such as not blowing things up. He's been in prison and escaped, and has only a short time until the statute of limitations finally runs out. This doesn't stop Bernie from bringing dynamite with him to Maui, and under the influence of alcohol and lust and rage, he tips his hand too soon. The only thing standing between him and prison is the beautiful red-headed princess - Leigh-Cherie - who hates him at first sight and swears that there is absolutely nothing about him that she finds redeeming. We all know where that kind of thinking leads. They fall in love, of course, a whirlwind outlaw romance that is only put to rest when Bernie finally lands back in prison. As a show of solitude to her lover, Leigh-Cherie locks herself in her room, turning it into a cell to mirror that of her beloved, and swears not to leave it until he leaves his. The only things in the room are a bed, a chamber pot, and a pack of Camel cigarettes. That's where things start to get weird. The nice thing about this book is that you don't really have to ponder what the themes were - Robbins points them out quite clearly by the end of the book, so if you didn't get it the first time, you'll be able to get it the next time 'round. It's a story about love, of course, and the irrational, weird turns it can take. It's about history, about the great, never-ending "why" that drives us from one act to the next. And, interestingly enough, it's about our relationship with the physical world, from the greatest of the Egyptian pyramids to the most mundane pack of Camels. During her self-inflicted time in solitary, Leigh-Cherie constructs a vast universe inside the label of her cigarettes (which she never actually smokes) and it leads her to truths and realizations that would confound the greatest philosopher or the most devoted mystic. By contemplating the mundane, she finds the key to the universe. Speaking of relating to objects, the story itself is a kind of romance between Robbins and his typewriter - a Remington SL3 - which doesn't, insofar as I have been able to tell, exist. Theirs is a tumultuous love. It begins with a tentative love, a hope that the machine is The One for this book. It passes through admiration and infatuation, only to end with rejection as Robbins finishes the book in longhand. As Robbins relates to his Remington, and Leigh-Cherie to her pack of Camels, so do we have relationships with objects. We become familiar with our possessions, imbuing them with character and personality. Not only that, but once we give consideration to the history of that object - its design and manufacturing, where the idea and the materials came from - we find that we can read the history of the universe in something as simple as a paper clip. It's a weird and wonderful book. The characters are vibrant and real, in a kind of hyper-real way. It's funny and bright, changing pace and rhythm from page to page and really is a delight to sit and read. Even more fun to read aloud, actually, so if you have a chance to do that, jump and take it. ...more |
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Feb 14, 2009
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Feb 20, 2009
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Kindle Edition
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| 3.76
| 16,607
| 2006
| May 01, 2007
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liked it
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Like most Liberal Arts undergrads, I took a few philosophy courses while I was in college. In fact, my sophomore philosophy final has the distinction
Like most Liberal Arts undergrads, I took a few philosophy courses while I was in college. In fact, my sophomore philosophy final has the distinction of being the only one I have ever actually slept through. My roommate woke me up at 11:30 and said, "Didn't you have a final this morning?" I don't remember anything between that moment and arriving in the professor's office, apologizing profusely. The point is, philosophy never really made an impact on me. I mean, I get it - Philosophy is supposed to be the essence of what makes us human, the ability to think about the way we think about the world. Dolphins and monkeys may be clever, but do they sit around and ponder whether there's actually a real world out there or if it is only a product of our senses? I doubt it, as it seem like they're more preoccupied with frolicking around and having sex, which means that Douglas Adams really was on to something. I don't quite get the kick out of philosophy that I feel like I'm "supposed" to, being an educated, intelligent, un-American Elitist and all that, so I'm glad that someone has boiled down four millennia of human thought into a 200-page joke book. Definitely more my speed. The book begins with Aristotle and his belief in a telos, an ultimate purpose for everything, and continues on through ethics, political philosophy, and religious philosophy, as well as existentialism, logic, epistemology and much, much more. Be warned - if you already know a lot about philosophy, then there's really nothing new in this book for you except the gags. It's written as a kind of Philo 101, for people who've always wanted to know about the different branches of philosophy, but always fell asleep fifteen minutes into the lecture. By using jokes, the authors make complex philosophical and logical ideas much more immediate and understandable. Take post hoc ergo propter hoc, for example. I know what the Latin means - "After this, therefore because of this," which is a definition that never struck me as being any clearer than the original Latin. As a logical fallacy, I never really convinced myself that I understood what it meant, until I read this joke. (warning: high bawdiness content follows): An older man marries a younger lady, and they're truly in love. However, no matter what the old man does, he is unable to satisfy his young bride sexually. He tries everything, but cannot finish the deed, so to speak.See? Now I get it! Post hoc is where you assume that because event B happened after event A, event A caused event B. No amount of hypotheticals or dull as dirt lectures have ever explained that to me quite as well as this one ribald joke. I think these guys are onto something, too. Philosophy has always been the pursuit of the super-intellectual, and anyone who tells you, "I'm a philosopher" is assumed to say next, "And would you like fries with that?" Being an intellectual in America is hard enough as it is, but once you start trying to deconstruct the very essence of what "good" means, much less whether it is actually worth being good, people start to look at you funny. But tell folks a joke, and all that erudite navel-gazing becomes crystal clear. Of course the GOP is run by Utilitarians - this joke makes perfect sense: A young widow belongs to a country club, where she enjoys sunning herself by the pool. One day, she sees a handsome stranger poolside, so she sits next to him and says, "I don't think I've seen you here before."Just replace the young widow with Dick Cheney and the handsome man with, say, Halliburton and you have yourself the GOP in a nutshell! If you're an old hand at philosophy, check it out for the jokes - there are plenty of good ones in there. If you're new to philosophy, or you were put off by the classes you took in college, check it out. You're not as dumb as your philo teacher made you feel. All you needed was the right sort of explanation. ...more |
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| 4.02
| 6,960
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| Oct 01, 2003
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it was amazing
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It's a book about Zen, obviously, from the point of view of an American who went from punk rocker to zen master over the course of many years. It's ve
It's a book about Zen, obviously, from the point of view of an American who went from punk rocker to zen master over the course of many years. It's very different from most other zen books out there in that Warner doesn't try to affect the "wise and learned sage" voice in his writing. I imagine him more as a jittery skinny guy, chain-smoking cigarettes and telling you about the time he saw the entire history of the universe unfold around him in a dream. Any book on Zen that quotes South Park, Philip K. Dick and Bart Simpson is a book worth reading. Zen interests me, for many reasons, and a lot of them were addressed in this book. The idea that the past is the past and the future doesn't exist is one that I picked up years ago and has made life a lot less stressful. He does drift into the "We are all one" vein of Buddhist philosophy from time to time, which I'm still not entirely down on, but he's a lot of fun to read. Go give it a look. ...more |
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| 4.06
| 2,617
| Mar 13, 2003
| Mar 01, 2003
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liked it
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Is Buffy a good role model? How about a feminist figure? Perhaps she's a proto-fascist icon? And how about Faith - does she prove or disprove the nihi
Is Buffy a good role model? How about a feminist figure? Perhaps she's a proto-fascist icon? And how about Faith - does she prove or disprove the nihilist philosophy of Nietzsche? Why is Spike a better human being than Xander? And what does the tragedy of Willow Rosenberg tell us about the irrationality of the human mind? Or is all of this just so much spitting in the wind, reading too much into what just amounts to a hijacking of base Freudian impulses? It's a fascinating book, especially for Buffy and Angel fans, and it really says a lot about the series that so many thinkers and philosophers can find enough themes and theories to fill an entire book. The writers explore numerous facets of the series, asking questions about the show's morality and metaphors, the meaning of Good and Evil, and the merits of Buffy's method of extra-normal law enforcement. Most of the essays are reader-friendly, though a few do indulge in a little more philosophical mumbo-jumbo than I usually like. Enjoy! ...more |
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| Feb 01, 2005
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This is one of Penguin's "Great Ideas" books, which I am a big fan of. They're short books, for about 1000 yen a pop, and some of the most important w
This is one of Penguin's "Great Ideas" books, which I am a big fan of. They're short books, for about 1000 yen a pop, and some of the most important writings in Western history. And I'm a big fan of important writings. So, when I went back to Junkudo, I picked up a couple more editions. Before this, I opened up An Attack on an Enemy of Freedom by Cicero, which presented an interesting dilemma - can I include in the reading list a book that I almost finished? I mean, I slogged pretty far through that book, which seemed to consist mostly of Cicero insulting Marc Antony and then saying that he wasn't there to insult Marc Antony. My favorite part was where he reminded everyone that, in his youth, Marc Antony was a boy-whore who inflamed the passions of men. You just don't see that kind of political discourse these days. Anyway, I got bored with it, so I dropped the book and decided that it wouldn't count in the official lineup. The next book I got was this one, and I was a little worried that I might have to drop it too. I mean, this is required reading for every PoliSci student, so I know I read it before. it's just that I couldn't remember it. Not a damn thing about it. As it turns out, this is Rousseau's attempt to figure out why we need government, and most importantly, what kind of government was the "best." He started, as was the trend at the time, from first principles: in the state of Nature, what liberties and motivations does Man enjoy? And how does this change once a society is formed? There has to be - there will almost inevitably be - a system of laws and governance in such a society, so which one best compensates for the loss of the natural liberty to do as we please? Long story short, democracy. In Rousseau's ideal world, every citizen would be involved with the governance of the country at all times. But even he understands that this won't always work. People are busy, you know.... Still, he says at one point, "As soon as someone says of the business of the state - "What does it matter to me?" - then the state must be reckoned lost." Pretty good, and a sentiment that needs to be resurrected. His main idea, his core belief, was that the society and the citizen were one, indivisible, and that as society had the duty of protecting its citizens, the citizens had the duty to uphold society. I think Rousseau would look at the current state of affairs in the nation he helped inspire and be very disappointed.... The end of the book is a long, drawn-out ramble on the history of the Roman republic, which gets kind of dull until he hits his section on civil religion. He falls square on the side of a separation of church and state. A Christian state, he says, would collapse almost as soon as it was formed. It would either be crushed from the outside or eaten from the inside. "Christianity preaches only servitude and submission. Its spirit is too favourable to tyranny for tyranny not to take advantage of it. True Christians are made to be slaves; they know it and they hardly care.; this short life has too little value in their eyes...." Take that, Falwell.... ...more |
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Jan 31, 2008
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Wow, remember when I was reading things? One thing I noticed about my period of unemployment was that I didn't do a lot of the things I thought I woul
Wow, remember when I was reading things? One thing I noticed about my period of unemployment was that I didn't do a lot of the things I thought I would do if I had the time to do them. Drawing, for example - I barely drew anything. And reading, too. I hardly picked up a book. I spent a lot of time going out or on the computer, but I didn't read. One reason might be that the only chair I have in the apartment is at my desk, so there's a lot of distraction. But another is just that, when you have all the time in the world to do what you want, you actually find ways of doing it... later. So, with a return to gainful employment arrived, I've finally finished a book. And it's not a bad one. Much like the Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy book, this one tries to examine some basic philosophical questions by using examples drawn from the characters and concepts in The Lord of the Rings. For example - does power really corrupt, and could a good person go bad? Why would the Elves view death as a gift while Men were so desirous of immortality? What are the environmental themes of this book? And is more advanced technology automatically dangerous? I found that last one interesting, because I view science and technology as being, overall, beneficial to humanity. But is there a point where it becomes too powerful to be beneficial? Just as the One Ring was too powerful to be used for good, might, say, nanotechnology eventually do us harm against our will? It's a good read if you're a Tolkein fan and have read a lot of his work. If you've only watched the movies, you can still get a good handle on the ideas presented in this book. ...more |
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| 4.28
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really liked it
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Also part of the "Great Ideas" series, this is the writings of the Roman philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius, and it was very, very interesting. Oddly
Also part of the "Great Ideas" series, this is the writings of the Roman philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius, and it was very, very interesting. Oddly enough, there was a lot of it that meshed with the Zen that I had been reading about earlier - no past, no future, only now. You can only control yourself in this world, so do that. What other people think or do is of no importance. And besides, you're all going to be dead soon anyway. Yeah, he talks a lot about death. But he uses it to provide perspective, something it is nice to know was lacking even two thousand years ago. Rather than worrying about living up to the examples of your forebears - who are dead - or being a good example to your descendants - who will never even meet you - do the right thing, the best thing, right now. It's a beautiful, if somewhat repetitive, philosophy on how to live a good and contented life. I can understand how it lasted so long.... ...more |
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Jan 03, 2006
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Jan 31, 2008
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