Cat's Cradle, Vonnegut

Hey everybody! Now that I'm writing for Propeller magazine I'm finding it difficult to get posts up here as well as there. So here is the latest, in which I discuss Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle in terms of today's disturbing environment of nuclear proliferation, and just how we're all supposed to deal with all that bullshit, man. To be found at Propeller via the following link:
http://www.propellermag.com/Fall2012/BurnsVonnegutFall12.html


Meanwhile, I've finished NW by Zadie Smith and have a review of that, too. Shall I post it up here? Would you like that? Say that you would...

The Golden Compass, Pullman

The Golden Compass (USA)/Northern Lights (UK)

Philip Pullman

1995   

UK

“There is a curious prophecy about this child: she is destined to bring about the end of destiny. But she must do so without knowing what she is doing, as if it were her nature and not her destiny to do it.”

I’ve been talking like a crazy person lately. Ever since I started reading The Golden Compass, the first in the His Dark Materials series by Philip Pullman (thanks for the recommendation Turner and Josh!). Apparently, it’s fine to talk about quidditch, or Edward and Jacob or whoever, as though they’re real things, but start talking about Dust and daemons, and people start to look at you funny. Which is not fair, because The Golden Compass is a really good book, and definitely up there with Harry Potter in terms of depth of subject matter, if not description.

I’ll admit I had a little trouble getting into this book at first. I guess it started too “en medias res” for me, too much in the middle of things, because I didn’t know what a daemon was, or what the Retiring Room was, or tokay, or any of it. But soon I figured it out, and my engrossment progressed quickly from there. Like Rowling, Pullman explores ideas that should be of importance to everyone, from a 14 year old to a 49 year old. But he does so in a way that’s more subtle than Rowling’s, and thus open to more ambiguity and complexity. Whereas Rowling uses the figure of Dumbledore to give Harry hints about meanings of everything, all of the adult characters in Pullman’s text are fraught with moral complications; none can be completely trusted. This may be a fight between the forces of good and evil, but what is good and what is evil here is a lot harder to figure out – and that is precisely the dilemma for the rough-and-tumble female heroine, Lyra. While Lyra has to go through serious physical trauma in the novel, the moral dilemmas prove to be more troubling. There is no Dumbledore to tell Lyra that she really must trust the Master of her college, in spite of seeing him try to poison someone – she has to decide all of that on her own.

            

One can’t really talk about the novel without reference to two things – daemons, and Dust. First, a daemon is kind of like a spirit animal. I don’t know about you but there was a period of time in college when my friends and I liked nothing better than to discuss what our spirit animals might be. For some, it was easy – mine would be a cat, my friend Pfeif’s, a squirrel. For others it was a lot harder; many animals worked and we could imagine it going a lot of ways. A daemon is kind of like a spirit animal, except that it’s an actual animal that goes with you everywhere, speaks, and basically acts as your emotional support for life. It can change its form until you reach  puberty, at which time it takes the shape in which it will remain for the rest of your life. In The Golden Compass every human has a daemon; they are so crucial to being human, in fact, that they are referred to several times (by Lyra, in her own thoughts, it seems worth pointing out) as humans’ ‘souls’. Whether or not a person can remain a person, if separated from his or her daemon, is one of the central questions of the text.

The second major issue involves something referred to as “Dust.” Dust is far more mysterious, in the world of The Golden Compass, than daemons, because it is a new phenomenon. Neither readers nor Lyra really has any idea what it might be until the final third of the book, when its discovery is explained. In a fitting echo of Blake, Pullman has Lord Asriel, a scientist, and Lyra’s father, call Dust “a physical proof that something happen[s] when innocence change[s] into experience.” Asriel compares Dust to “original sin,” or “greed,” and yet it’s still not really clear what it is. It’s a physical substance that can only be seen through a scientific process, but which makes it possible to see into other worlds. Lord Asriel wants to use it to build a bridge through the Northern Lights to the alternate universe he can see on the other side. Whether this is a good idea – whether or not the price of knowledge is too high – is a question we continue to ask ourselves, and which continues to harbor grave and exciting consequences to this day. Questioning the meaning of life via the effects and benefits of science, i.e. human’s changes to the “natural” order of things - it doesn’t get much deeper than that.

What I loved about this book was the way the author used physical (albeit magical or fantastical) objects –daemons, Dust – to talk about metaphysical questions – is this the only world that exists? What is a soul? And more. One thing I did not love, though, was the times when Pullman seemed to get a teensy bit lazy in his imaginings. If he took the trouble to come up with something as cool as panserbjørne, or armored bears, it seems like he could come up with something better than simply switching “gypsies” to “gyptians.” “Svalbard” is a real place in the North, but “Bolvanger” is made up. WHY, Philip Pullman? Why?

Other than that, though, great book. I’ll definitely be picking up the next one.

East of Eden, Steinbeck

East of Eden

John Steinbeck

1952

USA

Are people inherently good, or are they evil? What about individuals? Can we change our destiny, or are we in fact “born this way” and unable to change? That’s the question John Steinbeck tackles and (I think successfully) answers in his epic and entertaining novel, East of Eden. I could write 20 pages or more on this book, but with respect for your time, dear reader, I won’t. Just know that to get the real deal, though, you should read it yourself, and then write your own report in the comments section, to which I will happily reply.

East of Eden follows two sets of brothers – Adam and Charles and, later, Adam’s sons, Cal and Aron. The Biblical story of Cain and Abel provides a framing device for these two separate but very much connected tales. In case you forgot, Cain and Abel are the brothers from Genesis who each made offerings to God, but God preferred Abel’s gift over Cain’s, prompting Cain to kill his brother in a fit of jealousy. When he’s questioned about Abel’s whereabouts, Cain answers with the famous line, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” The story is important not only because it’s echoed in the relationship between the brothers, but also because it’s discussed at length by several of the characters, and used by them (and by Steinbeck) to make sense of the world.

The problem with the Cain and Abel story, for the characters in East of Eden, is its deceptive simplicity. If Cain was just a bad person, then he could not have helped killing his brother, and where is the instruction in that? Also, why does this story remain one of Christianity’s most popular, told again and again when so many others are forgotten?  The answer, according to Lee, an amateur philosopher and Adam’s servant in East of Eden, hinges on one particular word. Whether or not God promises Cain, before he murders his brother that Cain “shall” rule over Abel, or commands him, “thou shalt” rule over him, or whether he offers this as one out of many options, “thou mayest,” makes all the difference in the world, according to Lee. “Now, there are many millions in their sects and churches who feel the order, ‘Do thou,’ and throw their weight into obedience. And there are millions more who feel predestination in ‘Thou shalt.’ Nothing they may do can interfere with what will be. But ‘Thou mayest’! Why, that makes a man great, that gives him stature with the gods, for in his weakness and his filth and his murder of his brother he has still the great choice. He can choose his course and fight it through and win.” In other words, we have freewill. We can’t escape the fact that we’re shaped by our own natures, which may tend toward the light or the dark, but we do not have to be slaves to our natures. With intention and acceptance, Steinbeck says, we can overcome them.

Some have complained that Steinbeck’s treatment here is heavy-handed, too obvious. Indeed, his message is not shrouded in metaphor and literary invention like so much of what we take to be good literature. And yet, despite how obviously the author tries to serve us his meanings on a platter, it’s still possible to miss them, because though his writing isn’t particularly subtle, the things he’s writing about are. If acceptance of the simultaneous existence of both good and evil – in each of us – were easy and unproblematic, there wouldn’t be wars and killing and crime. In reality, the grey area is troublesome, and freewill creates a lot more complications than either of the false paths of obedience or fatalism. The quest to find comfort in a middle way between extremes is what drives all of us, then, since the time of Cain and Abel, to Steinbeck, to now, because whether we like it or not, in-between, “both/and,” sometimes but not always is the nature of the world. We don’t live in Eden, but we don’t live in Hell, either. To live fully, we’re going to have to accept this middle ground for what it is – not great, not terrible, but true. Life isn’t simple, but we may as well embrace the paradoxes, Steinbeck tells us, with an open, active mind, and a bottle of ng-ka-py. 

The Tibetan Book of the Dead, trans. Thurman

The Tibetan Book of the Dead

Padma Sambhava

Translated  by Robert A.F. Thurman

Tibet

8^th or 9^th century

What did I think The Tibetan Book of the Dead would be like? Well, not like what it is, that’s for sure. Yet if I had to say in a general way what I thought before reading it I guess I expected it to disclose some secrets or insights about what happens when we die, and it definitely does do that. According to The Great Book of Natural Liberation Through Understanding in the Between, as it is known in Tibet, dying is extremely weird, scary, and dangerous. Unlike in Christianity, where it’s what you do before you die that determines what will happen in the in-between (and if you’re Protestant, like I was, then there are only two possibilities) in Tibetan Buddhism the real work of deciding the fate for your next life begins after you’re physical body is dead. That’s not to say that what you do before you die doesn’t matter; it does, but mostly because it either prepares you, or leaves you dangerously unprepared, for what comes after. 

Though Tibetan Buddhists believe that life is “boundless,” and that, since we do not come from nothing and therefore cannot become nothing, our lives must go on in some form, they are nonetheless quite worried about dying. Indeed, because the in-between stage, when a being passes from one life to another, is so fraught with choices, Tibetans are probably even more concerned about death than we are. Thurman tells us, “But the core of Buddha’s discovery was the essential reality of freedom – that underlying the lived reality of existence is the immediacy of total freedom, especially freedom from suffering, from bondage, from ignorance. This essential freedom can be realized by the human mind as its own deepest and most true condition. This realization makes it possible for freedom to prevail over the habitual suffering of personal experience. So the realized individual is thenceforth held apart from suffering; not held in anything, but held out of binding patterns” (14). The death point is one of the opportunities to separate oneself from suffering, but it is also a time and place where “binding patterns” are more comforting and tempting than ever before. Enlightenment realization doesn’t just happen. One has to condition herself in order for non-suffering to become reality. How to do that?

The Great Book of Natural Liberation has a few suggestions. The first, naturally, is to prepare for death during your life. This means, among other things, practicing personal mind control. “In order to create something, first you have to imagine it. And imagination can be extremely powerful in life-between reality,” as well as in this life (14). If one is practiced in imaginative meditation, then he will be better able to deal with the powerful images his mind presents to him in the in-between, and be more prepared to fend them off with calculated ideations of his own.

The second part of the book is the readings and prayers that the living read to the deceased person in order to help them navigate through the six realms of the in-between and make the best choices possible. “For at the death point every being, especially a human being, has the ideal opportunity to discover real freedom from addictive habits, delusive perceptions, and misleading conceptions. Therefore, in Tibetan culture it is considered important to help a loved one through the actual process of death, to avoid distracting and frightening places such as hospital emergency rooms, and to arrange circumstances where the assistants can stay with the body at least for some hours” (120). Though in our culture crying and showing our sadness over death is expected, in Tibetan and other Buddhist societies this type of behavior, at least around the dead person, is frowned upon because it distracts the deceased from the crucial work of navigating the in-between, and may make them cling to the life they’ve left, which is counter-productive in the quest for enlightenment or, if complete freedom cannot be attained, then the best possible rebirth in this or another realm.

The deceased needs her full concentration at the death point because as she traverses the in-between realms beautiful and terrifying images of deities, light, and demons will appear to her. What the prayers in the Book of Natural Liberation remind us is that all of these – pleasant and terrifying – are emanations of our own mind, and it is our reaction to them that will determine our next phase of being. One thing I found really interesting about the translation I read was that while the author described the images of the Buddhist deities and figures in precise detail, he also mentioned again and again that if one was from a different religious background then they should practice becoming comfortable with the gods, angels, and demons from their own tradition, as the images that will appear to you are those that are already in your mind.  So if you’re Christian you will want to spend time visualizing and becoming comfortable with the distressing imagery in the book of Revelations, as well as with the comforting spirit of Jesus Christ as, according to Thurman, these figures can help you find your way to a place of peace and liberation rather than fear, aversion, and clinging when you realize that they are merely images from inside you, and not real in any other way.

I’m very glad I read the Tibetan Book of the Dead. I feel I have a stronger understanding of Buddhism itself, and have plenty of new ideas about death to process. But I also recommend the book because its central message is one that is useful well before we die, and can be summed up in a single question which I would like to remember to ask myself, and answer honestly, when my mind begins to attack me in my waking, daily life: Is this (problem, image, fear, worry) real, or is it all in my head?

The Master and Margarita, Bulgakov

Mikhail Bulgakov
written 1928-1940, published 1973
Russia

“The devil only knows…”

The first novel I’ve read since finishing my Master’s degree in English was, perhaps appropriately, The Master and Margarita. Although I didn’t enjoy every moment of the reading, I do think it is a good book because I keep thinking about it and making connections days later.

The novel is about the devil. His name is Woland. He has a three part retinue made up of Koroviev, Azezello, and a large black cat called Behemoth. These three make up the unholy trinity, except of course it doesn’t quite line up, since God “The Father” is himself a part of the Christian Trinity, and here Woland is separate from it. This troubles me somewhat, as one interested in Christian symbolism, but it’s not, I think, as important as the book’s message, which is (I think) that the devil – i.e. an opposing force to God - is not a horrible tragedy, but necessary.

How can “evil” be necessary? In the Master and Margarita Bulgakov demonstrates that sometimes “bad” can be a force of “good,” and vice versa. For example, in writing a novel about the contentious Christian figure, Pontius Pilate, the Master performs an act of “good.” In loving Margarita he commits “evil,” because Margarita is already married. Yet, both writing and love bring the Master pain and happiness. One action is considered “right” and one “wrong,” but their results do not accord to their supposed moral values. The novel questions what moral value really means – an extremely appropriate and telling approach, considering the climate of censorship in which Bulgakov, in Soviet Russia, wrote.

The fact that the novel begins with and continually returns to Pontius Pilate was a source of confusion and (mostly) enjoyable intrigue for me. Looking back at the book as a whole, I have an idea as to why Bulgakov chose Pilate to make this point. In the Bible, which is more or less populated by characters whose moral status is clear and known (especially in the Old Testament) Pilate stands out as someone both extraordinarily important, and as someone whose morality remains ambiguous. Pilate, of course, was the Prefect of Judaea when Jesus was put to death on the cross. Though the Bible (and the Master’s novel) portrays Pilate as sympathetic to Jesus (Ha-Nostri, in Bulgakov’s text) one feels compelled to cast judgment on him since, however unwillingly, he carries out the public’s request to release another prisoner, and instead crucify Jesus. In the Bible Pilate infamously washes his hands in front of a crowd of onlookers, perhaps attempting to absolve himself symbolically of his role in the death.

According to the characters in Bulgakov’s text, Pilate’s crime is cowardice: he lacks the courage to admit his beliefs and defy the public’s, and the government’s, wishes. So, should Pilate be sent to Hell? Bulgakov seems not to think so. Neither do I. Our reasons, I think, are similar; Pilate’s “bad” action was ultimately an essential cause of the “good” that came out of it –that is, the resurrection of Jesus and his triumph over death. For the premise of the Christianity of the New Testament to work, Jesus must die, otherwise he cannot rise from the dead to “conquer sin” and offer eternal life to his followers. Hence Pilate (or if it hadn’t been Pilate, someone else) had to allow Jesus to be killed. Good and evil are intertwined; one cannot exist without the other. Thus, in a sense, one is in fact composed essentially of the other. The Bible suggests this, though many Christians forget it. If we cannot tell what action is really good, and which is really bad, The Master and Margarita compels one to wonder – does the world have any meaning, order, or logic to it? Or is everything merely a great game of absurdity? What do you think Bulgakov is saying?