(no subject)
Enlightenment, by Roy Porter. This short history attempts to cover the English Enlightenment, from the end of the seventeenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth - the Scientific Revolution to the Romantics. It is justified by the author’s claim that the English contribution to that movement is something of a blind spot: that the Enlightenment is seen as a continental (primarily French) affair, with a later Scottish contribution at a stretch. I will have to take Porter’s word for the existence of such an assumption, but it seems to me that this book would refute it entirely. It is intended as a popular account, and is certainly nicely written, but popular accounts on academic topics are dangerous things: I probably now think I know far more than I actually do.
Organised thematically rather than chronologically, the book attempts to cover all the major intellectual elements of the English enlightenment, linking together upheavals in religion, with those in government and theories of government and economics, epistemology and psychology, in the context of radical social upheaval. This leads to a fascinating but confusing read, which is fairly heavy going, even though I was already familiar with some aspects of the period.
Porter’s approach is probably mandated by the need to remain above the fray (it really is a fray, if impeccably polite), but the historian’s approach to providing a purely causal account of intellectual movements means he is no more prepared to endorse as true Newtonian mechanics than Piers Plowman. Approaching science as just another belief system is productive, but grating, at least to me. Porter’s account stops short of outright statements of postmodernism, however - from his other work I think quite intentionally.
That said, this book does not function as an account of why a particular view occurs at a particular time, or among a certain group: this may be quite intentional, since one implicit point of the analysis is that in the Enlightenment, no particular strand of thought disappeared once it emerged - and indeed most persist up until today. Most of the individual thinkers were committed to a rationalist pluralism themselves, perhaps chiming with their tendency to work in many different fields of knowledge (exemplified by Joseph Priestly, theologian, eminent chemist and political radical, and Erasmus Darwin, botanist, evolutionary theorist, poet, and, inevitably, political radical). These aspects in particular have lead me to my annoyance at the recent rash of articles imputing to Enlightenment thinkers a monolithic, nuance-free dogmatism on free speech.
For all its readability, this is a very dense book: a problem exacerbated by the fact that it consists of a series of essays, evidently only ordered after they were written, so that a passing reference is sometimes made to a minor figure or event that receives a proper introduction later on in the book. The book is comprehensively end-noted and referenced, but in the main these buttress its academic merit, rather than assist the casual reader (or at any rate they didn’t help me much). So it is difficult to recommend it as something to dip into, or as an introductory text. In short - probably one for people who finished The System of The World willingly.
The Book of The New Sun, by Gene Wolfe.This is formally a four-book fantasy epic, which did not inspire high hopes. The back of the first volume informs me “In the great Citadel of the City Imperishable, Severian, Apprentice of the Torturer’s Guild, betrays his oath. Exiled, Severian begins his odyssey” - and so in the same vein. Nevertheless, I picked it up on the strength of Wolfe’s novella The Death of Doctor Island. I’ll try to give a brief account, but the thing is huge and I’m still digesting it.
Severian narrates the story, recalling events from some unspecified time in the future, but he possesses a perfect and gapless memory (or claims to; but I do not think we are intended to doubt this). He is also, I think, completely honest in his narration. This gives Wolfe a completely reliable narrator, which turns out to be no help whatsoever in rendering what follows any more straightforward. Instead, it serves as misdirection: with this and so much else, the reader is watching the wrong hand. The book resembles a conjuring trick.
By the same convention, the narrator has the benefit of hindsight: he gives us the benefit of knowing how the story is to end (“There is nothing up my sleeve!”). Severian is to rise to rulership of Earth (‘Urth’) by the time his account is written, some unspecified distance in the future. The book is very heavily concerned with the passage of time, both in the course of the narrative and in the setting: some millions of years into the future, when the Sun is a dim red star. Civilization on Earth is decayed in many respects, but past technologies and knowledge remain, not necessarily recognised as such.
In trying to describe the story, I feel I am enumerating clichés. There are plenty more, but I think their treatment is original, the narrative elements serving as magician’s props. Apparently plain facts almost always carry an implicit interpretation that later proves foolish: to avoid being fooled would require a degree of critical distance and care that I am incapable of, especially over a thousand pages or more. I think it would make the book less enjoyable in any case.
There is much to enjoy here: the prose is in a pseudo-archaic fantasy idiom, but remarkably fluid and occasionally inspired. I suspect that it is one of the main pleasures of fantasy in general is a large and full world of wonders: many such are on display here, and more are hinted at. There is a continuous parade of striking scenes, images and events, and considerable variety of tone, high seriousness to low comedy (though Severian himself is practically humourless). At times this lends the chapters an episodic feel, and can disrupt the flow of the narrative. Some sections are far less interesting than others. I kept reading such passages in the hope that the next would be excellent, as it usually was.
Characterisation is a weak spot, and at times the book feels uncomfortably misogynist. I cannot tell whether this is sincerely meant, as Severian appears to be bordering on the psychopathic in his lack of expressed empathy sometimes (and possibly paranoia as well). Or it could simply be reserve. I am inclined to give Wolfe the benefit of the doubt at the expense of his narrator.
I haven’t really conveyed here the complexity of the novel, or made any attempt to tease out what is actually going on under the surface. Nor have I discussed its treatment of the main themes in any depth. That would take a far longer essay and a far sharper reader. I find that I can enumerate a lot of flaws, but that my overwhelming impression was of a fantastically ambitious novel that justified its twelve hundred pages.
The Spire, by William Golding.Two hundred pages from this rather sinister-looking Nobel Prize winner, and probably the weakest book so far. The plot is Grand Tragic Folly: Dean of spireless cathedral has vision, attempts to build said enormous spire to praise His glory, cathedral cannae take the strain, everybody runs away, Dean is isolated, learns his lesson but too late! and so he dies, a pathetic broken figure. Did anybody see that coming?
The novel itself is sufficiently well written to be enjoyable despite this fault. In particular, the stern, almost austere prose conveys the oppressive atmosphere of the doomed, collapsing church and the increasingly fragmentary state of Dean’s doomed, collapsing mind vividly. The basically simple story is economically told, although the inevitability of the ending sadly reprives it of any lasting tension. Additional narrative elements that could have provided such tension are held back, not even hinted at, until the final unravelling of the Dean’s vision, presumably in order to increase their surprise value. In a novel predicated to some extent on fatalism this seemed a bit of a fudge to me.
The main flaw, however, comes from the various thematic and psychological elements, that could have lead (for example) to a treatment of the conceptual frameworks that surrounded mental illness (some kind of delusional schizophrenia?) in the period, or something else interesting - but instead resolve themselves into a rather trite psycho-sexual metaphor. This was of course unavoidably a component, but turns out to be the main point. All of which leaves the book interesting in some of its details, but fundamentally dull.
These reviews are getting far too long, so I’ll leave the rest for tomorrow, when, God willing, I will still be unemployed and loafing. No, wait, that’s not good.
Organised thematically rather than chronologically, the book attempts to cover all the major intellectual elements of the English enlightenment, linking together upheavals in religion, with those in government and theories of government and economics, epistemology and psychology, in the context of radical social upheaval. This leads to a fascinating but confusing read, which is fairly heavy going, even though I was already familiar with some aspects of the period.
Porter’s approach is probably mandated by the need to remain above the fray (it really is a fray, if impeccably polite), but the historian’s approach to providing a purely causal account of intellectual movements means he is no more prepared to endorse as true Newtonian mechanics than Piers Plowman. Approaching science as just another belief system is productive, but grating, at least to me. Porter’s account stops short of outright statements of postmodernism, however - from his other work I think quite intentionally.
That said, this book does not function as an account of why a particular view occurs at a particular time, or among a certain group: this may be quite intentional, since one implicit point of the analysis is that in the Enlightenment, no particular strand of thought disappeared once it emerged - and indeed most persist up until today. Most of the individual thinkers were committed to a rationalist pluralism themselves, perhaps chiming with their tendency to work in many different fields of knowledge (exemplified by Joseph Priestly, theologian, eminent chemist and political radical, and Erasmus Darwin, botanist, evolutionary theorist, poet, and, inevitably, political radical). These aspects in particular have lead me to my annoyance at the recent rash of articles imputing to Enlightenment thinkers a monolithic, nuance-free dogmatism on free speech.
For all its readability, this is a very dense book: a problem exacerbated by the fact that it consists of a series of essays, evidently only ordered after they were written, so that a passing reference is sometimes made to a minor figure or event that receives a proper introduction later on in the book. The book is comprehensively end-noted and referenced, but in the main these buttress its academic merit, rather than assist the casual reader (or at any rate they didn’t help me much). So it is difficult to recommend it as something to dip into, or as an introductory text. In short - probably one for people who finished The System of The World willingly.
The Book of The New Sun, by Gene Wolfe.This is formally a four-book fantasy epic, which did not inspire high hopes. The back of the first volume informs me “In the great Citadel of the City Imperishable, Severian, Apprentice of the Torturer’s Guild, betrays his oath. Exiled, Severian begins his odyssey” - and so in the same vein. Nevertheless, I picked it up on the strength of Wolfe’s novella The Death of Doctor Island. I’ll try to give a brief account, but the thing is huge and I’m still digesting it.
Severian narrates the story, recalling events from some unspecified time in the future, but he possesses a perfect and gapless memory (or claims to; but I do not think we are intended to doubt this). He is also, I think, completely honest in his narration. This gives Wolfe a completely reliable narrator, which turns out to be no help whatsoever in rendering what follows any more straightforward. Instead, it serves as misdirection: with this and so much else, the reader is watching the wrong hand. The book resembles a conjuring trick.
By the same convention, the narrator has the benefit of hindsight: he gives us the benefit of knowing how the story is to end (“There is nothing up my sleeve!”). Severian is to rise to rulership of Earth (‘Urth’) by the time his account is written, some unspecified distance in the future. The book is very heavily concerned with the passage of time, both in the course of the narrative and in the setting: some millions of years into the future, when the Sun is a dim red star. Civilization on Earth is decayed in many respects, but past technologies and knowledge remain, not necessarily recognised as such.
In trying to describe the story, I feel I am enumerating clichés. There are plenty more, but I think their treatment is original, the narrative elements serving as magician’s props. Apparently plain facts almost always carry an implicit interpretation that later proves foolish: to avoid being fooled would require a degree of critical distance and care that I am incapable of, especially over a thousand pages or more. I think it would make the book less enjoyable in any case.
There is much to enjoy here: the prose is in a pseudo-archaic fantasy idiom, but remarkably fluid and occasionally inspired. I suspect that it is one of the main pleasures of fantasy in general is a large and full world of wonders: many such are on display here, and more are hinted at. There is a continuous parade of striking scenes, images and events, and considerable variety of tone, high seriousness to low comedy (though Severian himself is practically humourless). At times this lends the chapters an episodic feel, and can disrupt the flow of the narrative. Some sections are far less interesting than others. I kept reading such passages in the hope that the next would be excellent, as it usually was.
Characterisation is a weak spot, and at times the book feels uncomfortably misogynist. I cannot tell whether this is sincerely meant, as Severian appears to be bordering on the psychopathic in his lack of expressed empathy sometimes (and possibly paranoia as well). Or it could simply be reserve. I am inclined to give Wolfe the benefit of the doubt at the expense of his narrator.
I haven’t really conveyed here the complexity of the novel, or made any attempt to tease out what is actually going on under the surface. Nor have I discussed its treatment of the main themes in any depth. That would take a far longer essay and a far sharper reader. I find that I can enumerate a lot of flaws, but that my overwhelming impression was of a fantastically ambitious novel that justified its twelve hundred pages.
The Spire, by William Golding.Two hundred pages from this rather sinister-looking Nobel Prize winner, and probably the weakest book so far. The plot is Grand Tragic Folly: Dean of spireless cathedral has vision, attempts to build said enormous spire to praise His glory, cathedral cannae take the strain, everybody runs away, Dean is isolated, learns his lesson but too late! and so he dies, a pathetic broken figure. Did anybody see that coming?
The novel itself is sufficiently well written to be enjoyable despite this fault. In particular, the stern, almost austere prose conveys the oppressive atmosphere of the doomed, collapsing church and the increasingly fragmentary state of Dean’s doomed, collapsing mind vividly. The basically simple story is economically told, although the inevitability of the ending sadly reprives it of any lasting tension. Additional narrative elements that could have provided such tension are held back, not even hinted at, until the final unravelling of the Dean’s vision, presumably in order to increase their surprise value. In a novel predicated to some extent on fatalism this seemed a bit of a fudge to me.
The main flaw, however, comes from the various thematic and psychological elements, that could have lead (for example) to a treatment of the conceptual frameworks that surrounded mental illness (some kind of delusional schizophrenia?) in the period, or something else interesting - but instead resolve themselves into a rather trite psycho-sexual metaphor. This was of course unavoidably a component, but turns out to be the main point. All of which leaves the book interesting in some of its details, but fundamentally dull.
These reviews are getting far too long, so I’ll leave the rest for tomorrow, when, God willing, I will still be unemployed and loafing. No, wait, that’s not good.