Where the Sun Sails and the Moon Walks: About Tolkien's Eagles

There comes a time in the life of every reader when he's re-reading his favorite book for the twenty-seventh time and he comes across a plot hole. This is the final test of a book: whether it can withstand the self-doubt of a reader's dedication. It forces you to be introspective, to decide whether you can still see yourself in the story you love, or loved.

A famous hole has been pointed out in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings since almost immediately after its publication. Don't worry: I won't spoil the ending here. The argument concerns the giant eagles who live upon the peaks of Middle Earth. They're smart, they can talk, and they sometimes help the protagonists out of sticky situations by carrying them away on their backs.

The plot of The Lord of the Rings is this, in oversimplified terms: Frodo, our protagonist, has possession of the Ring of Power, the greatest weapon of the tyrant Sauron. Sauron is ready to take over the world unless Frodo destroys the Ring, which can only be unmade where it was forged: in Mount Doom, a volcano in the heart of Sauron's territory. So Frodo and eight companions must travel by foot to Mount Doom, while every step brings them closer to danger and every day sees more people killed by Sauron and more allies become his devoted slaves.

The million dollar question is this: why did the journey have to be on foot? Gandalf, the wizard even non-Tolkien fans know and love, is a friend to the Eagles, and even calls them to rescue him at one point. Couldn't he ask the Eagles to fly them to Mount Doom? Shouldn't the Eagles want to help out, since Elrond and Gandalf make it clear that Sauron is trying to conquer absolutely everybody, which includes the Eagles on their lofty peaks?

I wouldn't give this criticism time and energy if it weren't a reasonable one. Now, perhaps you've read or heard my theories about the division between high fantasy and sword and sorcery. Read carefully: this question encompasses the entire divide between the two, as well as many other ideologies. I'll have to divide my reply into two parts: what the question misunderstands about Middle Earth, and what the question misunderstands about the Earth we all inhabit.

There are several reasons for the Eagles to withhold their services. The first and grittiest is that it's not their job. Elrond makes sure to say that only those who freely decide to take the quest must accompany Frodo, and the Eagles don't show up. I don't think that this is because, in Dungeons and Dragons mentality, Gandalf forgot they were in his inventory. Rather, the Eagles prove themselves quite capable of knowing what's going on and responding to it when they choose to do so.

Equally importantly, we're specifically kept from seeing exactly what Sauron can do on his own. My generation's audience, which has forgotten that a hidden monster in a book is scarier than the gory reveal provided in IMAX special effects, is also prone to forget that a character may have been able to do more things than they showed in the movie. Sauron's un-Ringed form may look like just a big, red eye, but Tolkien and even Jackson indirectly let you know that he's still the most fearsome person in Middle Earth. It's more impressive, not to mention less anal-retentive, not to tell you exactly how. As far as the Eagles are concerned, those key critics fail to notice that the Eagles only enter Mordor airspace after the Dark Tower has fallen (well, I guess there have to be some spoilers). To do so beforehand could have meant anything, because unlike the modern know-it-all, the Eagles weren't going to underestimate the man whom everyone fears will conquer the world. Flying over his wall would have been the quickest way to tip him off, especially since, because he is an eye rather than anything else, the only thing we have to know about Sauron is his ability to see threats coming. And since, if he had gotten his Ring back, he would have been unstoppable, our favorite Dark Lord could have considered this surprise air mail.

No, careful reading of the book tells us that the quest had to be in secret, carried out by the lowliest people in the most unlikely way, in order to avoid Sauron's all-seeing Eye. But even this wasn't the issue Tolkien took with the question of flying the Eagles.*

Tolkien called the Eagles a 'dangerous machine,' and why not? It would have been so easy to end his story about seven hundred pages earlier by flying the Ring to Mount Doom, and the book would not have been worth reading. "'Nine Walkers' and they immediately go up into the air!" he says to this suggestion. To him, the essence of the story was not the fact that good wins in the end, but the struggle that good must undertake to get there. Hence he needs "a long and arduous journey, in secrecy, on foot, with the three ominous mountains getting nearer." It is, quite literally, a journey toward the thing most feared, requiring the utmost courage because of its slow, dangerous way. If the matter of the story lay exclusively in its resolution, then the action would do nothing but appeal to voyeuristic thrill-seekers and narcissists. Instead, it speaks to people interested in actual courage to see the Ring in the hands of Frodo, a small, peaceful person who has no place in war.

I must stress again that the whole difference between high fantasy and cheap action lies in this question, and that it's a distinction that plays into every day of your life. You don't have to change what you read. Just understand that the world isn't quantified into what we can see; money, science, power, and all other numbers don't dictate another person's usefulness to you. Without these barriers you may discover what ominous mountains are on your horizon, and whether you, too would fly toward them without the slightest idea what awaits you there.

'I will take the Ring,' he said, 'though I do not know the way.'

Elrond raised his eyes and looked at him, and Frodo felt his heart pierced by the sudden keenness of the glance. 'If I understand aright all that I have heard,' he said, 'I think that this task is appointed for you, Frodo; and that if you do not find a way, no one will... Who of all the Wise could have foreseen it? Or, if they are wise, why should they expect to know it, until the hour has struck? 

-The Fellowship of the Ring

*Quotes here are taken from #210 of the collection of Tolkien's letters.

In Defense of Linguistic Prescriptivism

Those of you who know me know that one of my biggest hobbies is linguistics. I'm not fluent in anything but English, but I regularly dabble in many different languages, trying to sort them out like fluid puzzles. It helps me realize how cloistered we unilingual (read: American) folks really are, especially when I see variations on the most basic parts of human syntax.

Like anything else, language is bombarded by various colorful and interesting opinions about how it should be used. You've heard some of them. Perhaps you think everyone who moves to your country should learn to speak your language, or perhaps you think it's wrong for the supermarket express lane to indicate its use for fifteen items or less rather than fewer.

I'm concerned with both of these issues, but my real beef is with the latter. After all, I could find enough well-informed people to nod their heads if I chose to rail about how closed-minded America is, and how much smarter we could become if we tried to become bi- or tri-lingual. What bothers me is how many well-informed and well-intentioned people condemn the practice of regulating grammar. The most prominent modern linguists divide their practice into two schools:

linguistic descriptivism - the method of studying language by observation and analysis, focusing on what people actually say and how their brains construct meaning

linguistic prescriptivism - the method of meddling with language in pursuit of better communication; for example, teaching that the double negative, "We don't have no milk," is less logical than a single negative, "We don't have any milk." (This example was actually the result of English scholars trying to standardize the many foreign influences that had worked their way into English grammar. They decided to condemn the double negative because, for lack of a better preference, it was inconsistent with classical Greek logic. Many world languages and recognized dialects of English, such as Ebonics, use it.)

Now, in all of the post-1950 books and all of the blogs I've read on the subject, descriptivism is the way to go. Actually, people can be quite nasty in their dislike of people who want to influence language by way of standardizing it (see Tom Scott or Steven Pinker). They have good reasons: everyone has, at some point, been leapt upon by a grammar Nazi who wasn't even part of the conversation. But beyond this, professional linguists and hobbyists are almost universal in their wish for language diversity. The fact that English, Mandarin, and Arabic are devouring endangered languages at a rate of one every three months is, to us, as great a tragedy as the loss of endangered species to habitat destruction. After all, language diversity is the best display of the potential range of human thought, without which we waste countless opportunities for creativity and understanding.

My friends, the direct opposite of this is standardization.

Yet it's possible to take all of this too far. Grammarians who speak about correct versus incorrect speech don't always have a reason beyond having learned a rule out of context in middle school, but it's worth listening to those who speak about useful speech. Whether or not I think it's correct to mention ten items or less, "fewer" is a word that creates additional associations in the brain. With scarcely any more effort, we become conscious of two ways in which quantity is divided. This is the kind of linguistic variation that speakers ought to pursue, and precisely what universal standard languages are beginning to weed out. My dream is not a limiting prescriptivism, by which immigrants must learn English and clods spend all their time worrying about the differences between "affect" and "effect," but a prescribed expansion of language. Let us create new terms and understandings! You don't even need institutional authority to do that, as any dialect could show you.

My formula for linguistic prescriptivism is a simple one, and these are its components:

1. Become proficient in at least two kinds of grammar. These don't necessarily need to be of two different languages. For example, you may have noticed that you write differently from the way you speak. This is especially true if you write a lot, or if you use tone significantly to express meaning. But if you're aiming not to be bilingual, but to examine your own English more closely, make sure you can find many potential deviations in the way you communicate.

2. Use standard grammar as a starting point. This point is where I'd like to draw the most ire from descriptivists. Communication affects individual thought, but its strength is tested better in group situations such as, for example, whether an entire community can understand each other. This is standard grammar. Descriptivists and I have it backwards; their logic implies that language is a piece of individual property which adjusts to fit group standards. Pinker supports this with his thesis that each infant creates language from scratch. But I prefer to think that language is a body of collective reasoning that each individual adjusts for himself. To me, this fits better with the examples of deaf individuals who, passing the adolescent window of rapid linguistic development, never develop the logical processes that neurologists associate with language. We all have to start from somewhere, and that place is the group of reasoning skills we get from hearing people communicating using rules that were decided before we were born.

3. Use your own reasoning to experiment. Do you think you can express yourself better? Do it! Here's an example: I think it's more efficient to refer to a hypothetical individual as someone of your own gender. Instead of "he or she," I say "he." If I were a woman, I'd say "she." That's nowhere in any English rule book I know, but it doesn't make me any harder to understand. And it's how language has always evolved.

4. Be respectful of other people's speech. You are never "right," and they are never "wrong." It can be counterproductive to tell someone that you speak better than he, when his rules make just as much sense to him as yours do to you. And if that ain't enough reason, courtesy is right.

5. Don't be afraid to talk about speech. I worry about descriptivists making the same mistake about "politically correct" fanatics: in taking the underdog's side, they refuse to speak objectively about any of the underdog's issues. In this case, people who think a certain dialect should be given higher esteem may refuse to hear any merits of the mother language, or even any valueless comparisons of the two. This is just a way for elitists to take the high road. Don't stifle communication! Act on a microscopic scale: talk to your friend about why you say "fewer" when he says "less," or vice versa. Don't do it to change him; do it to help the two of you understand each other better.

Please tell me your thoughts. This theory of mine is in its infancy, and still highly disorganized. I'd love to hear feedback from anyone, whether you think you know more or less than I do.

Review: A Man Rides Through by Stephen R. Donaldson (1987)

You may have read my take on a high fantasy novelist writing middle-quality romance. This, friends and fellow readers, is the sequel and conclusion to that story.

Terisa Morgan, a young woman transplanted from her "real" world into the fantasy kingdom of Mordant, has just watched her only friend, the bumbling nobleman Geraden, escape into a mirror after being framed for murder. This escape, though miraculous, leaves Terisa defenseless against a castle full of people who believe that she aided the criminal's flight. Tensions are high, because two marauding armies are racing to that same castle, knowing that whichever takes it first will hold the position to conquer all of Mordant. Meanwhile, old King Joyse refuses to raise a hand in defense of his kingdom. It is up to Terisa alone to escape from her desperate captors and reunite with Geraden, who is her only hope of discovering how an alliance of rogue Imagers (wizards who can pull anything imaginable out of mirrors) are able to translate alien horrors anywhere they please, and whose sinister influence is behind the war that stands at Mordant's door.

I was underwhelmed with the first book; it's not nearly as awe-inspiring as Thomas Covenant, it's too complicated to be a page-turner, and it's not bad enough to be funny. This trend continues into A Man Rides Through. Many, many plots are going on at the same time; after all, Donaldson wrote these two right after the sixth Thomas Covenant, when he was at his peak in terms of subplots. The man is a hydra in that for every subplot he resolves, he creates two more. And he never leaves a thread hanging. This sounds fascinating but is really so only if the story is worth the commitment, and in the Mordant's Need plot, you need a special interest in the characters or the mirror fantasy to feel so involved. Alone, the drama does not justify itself.

Then something incredible happens. About halfway through the book, all the plots take a turn and begin to converge again. The result is like listening to a middle-grade concerto which suddenly reveals that all its disparate melodies, when played at the same time, form a cohesive harmony. It's a load of ordinary devices that fit together with uncanny precision. For a few hundred pages near the end, it's a nonstop hurly-burly of characters picking up Chekhov's guns, only to discover that their targets were wearing Chekhov's bullet-proof vests, but in turn those characters had paid for their vests by borrowing money from Chekhov's loan sharks... It goes on. Every previous action of named character is somehow justified until the plot collapses down to the climax which is a singular event.

To me this instantly makes a fantasy book worth it, but obviously there's more to a novel than structure. Terisa becomes less annoying than in the previous book, but in doing so she loses the better part of her individuality as a character. It frustrates me because Donaldson can write women brilliantly, but Terisa's function is to be a bit shallow. If ever I were to name a problem with this author, it would be his ability to intentionally fall short of his stylistic potential in order to achieve that unerring symbolic consistency.

Overall, the story is entertaining. I enjoyed the various experimentation with monsters created out of mirrors. They're a silly compromise between something grounded in the laws of reality and something from a carnival nightmare. As usual, it takes a stretch to suspend belief of some of the physics, because the magic is symbolic in function. But to me this is refreshing when done right, rather than as a lack of better imagination.

Review: Life of Christ by Fulton J. Sheen (1958)

As Monty Python has taught us to say: and now for something completely different! Don't be surprised if a non-fiction book shows up here now and then. Sometimes I read 'em, and they always like reviewing.

Fulton Sheen, one-time bishop and wacky television personality, explores themes across the four Gospels, attempting to put together a biography of Jesus only as the Bible portrays him. His biggest theory is that rather than Jesus' bringing his glory to the Cross, the Cross cast a shadow backward across his life to the moment of the Annunciation. Sheen doesn't move systematically from Gospel to Gospel, but tries instead to construct a chronological portrait of events, bringing the perspective of each applicable Gospel to each chapter.

The best part about this book is its readability. Look up Sheen's videos online; he wasn't a televangelist as much as he was the Bill Nye of Catholicism, albeit with a chalkboard instead awesome sound effects. Sheen manages to break concepts down without dumbing them down. This sometimes lengthens his topic considerably, but I admire the way he manages to weave the longer, more intricate themes among specific, shorter examples in order to keep the flow of the book moving.

Plenty of Sheen's contemporaries, a friend tells me, looked down on him for his surface-level theology, which engages in simple observation more often than complex reasoning. Although I don't deny that detailed analysis of theological concepts, scripture, reports of miracles, and other starting points can be the basis for useful conclusions, Sheen's work is more valuable to me than that of a Dantean super-scholar. His thesis is fresh but not tough to grasp, and it's not his main purpose for writing. As on his television show, he aims here to teach basic theology in a useful way, so that we regular folks who haven't spent decades in the seminary can keep up. It turns out most people enjoy learning: even people who aren't Catholic priests have brains!

Sheen can be a little over the top at times, but his fervor doesn't surpass cheerful enthusiasm. And, in case you're worried, proselytism isn't the name of the game, either. In fact, if you're a stranger to the Gospel and just looking for a basic education of the concepts without a guilt trip, this is a surefire hit. And if you're a connoisseur of Christian theology, this covers all the bases.

Review: The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin (1974)

Shevek is a physicist from the planet Anarres, which has a single society without government. Everybody is raised from infancy with the teaching that every individual must have freedom, but that nobody may own possessions or impose upon each other. Objects, food, ideas, and even sexual partners must be shared in order to prevent an imbalance in societal benefit. Thus Shevek is not just a physicist; he contributes whatever his society needs of him at the time. Yet when he arrives at a theory that could result in teleportation technology, he gradually realizes that the eternal bogeys of human nature, including envy and an instinct toward selfishness, cannot be eradicated. Although Shevek remains a faithful citizen, he encounters opponents who believe that his Principle of Simultaneity must be stifled in order to prevent it from falling into the hands of the people of Urras, the twin planet of Anarres. On Urras, there are such things as nations, capitalists, communists, possessions, inequity, and war, all of which are antithetical to Anarres's society. Shevek, steadfast in his belief that all good things must be shared, resolves that if his own people will not use Simultaneity, he will deliver it to the Propertarians, as the Anarres call those on Urras. Thus does Shevek become the first of his kind in more than a century to visit Urras, but he quickly finds himself out of his depth, among people for whom manipulation is a way of life. Unable to comprehend the reality of social inequality, he must learn how to survive while standing for people who stand for nothing at all.

Although I haven't always agreed with Le Guin's arguments, I find myself coming back for more. So far, all of her work I've read, with the exception of one novella, falls between 1968 and 1972 (this includes the first three Earthsea books as well as The Left Hand of Darkness.) In the tradition of hate being a variation of love, I think I'm so attracted to her writing because it handles the touchier subjects I appreciate in almost exactly the way I would handle them. She's the most talented science-fiction writer I know, so why does she fall short by just an inch?

Good news: in The Dispossessed, I think she finally hits the bull's-eye. And it's not for lack of trying, or for shirking the juicy stuff; once you wrap economic policy, sexual values, and science in the same package, there's nobody who's uninterested. If anyone's playing with fire, it's this lady.

What first impressed me was the ambiguity with which each character is portrayed. Shevek's description is simple for a long time. His life, habits, and tastes are each human and objective, and they build to a whole that is not a symbol for anything. In fact, it could be this uncertainty that makes him a perfect candidate to go to Earth. Anarres is held together by a solid goal of survival; Shevek intends to share his discovery, but he doesn't know what he wants, which makes him an outsider in both worlds. Similarly, all of the inhabitants of Urras are established like humans we all know, which makes them indescribable and alien to Shevek. But since we've already learned to relate to our protagonist, it's like looking in a mirror for the first time, without any disguise or prejudice, and not knowing what to think.

It's also great to see the underlying instability of Anarres. The subtitle for this book is An Ambiguous Utopia, and it shows. At first everybody is cheerful and cooperative, and you might be tempted to hail the society as the success of socialism's giving spirit or to damn it if you're suspicious of socialist tyranny (that's before Shevek meets real-life socialists and can't tell them apart from capitalists). But he discovers, with some help, that the manipulation of information, especially concerning his theory, is only mankind's oldest demon wearing new makeup. Power is never equal; even a supreme effort to level the playing field only distances the arbiters from the people playing the game. It warms my heart to hear a dedicated liberal like Le Guin understand this principle; there's an uncontrollability of life that the majority of the twenty-something demographic can't understand. In a way it makes Shevek all the more noble, because he would rather face the unexpected than allow his principles of indefinite equality to destroy something that could do a world of good.

Review: Luka and the Fire of Life by Salman Rushdie (2010)

Luka is a boy who lives for two things: the lively tales of his imaginative, storytelling father, and video games. One day at a circus, he curses the tyrannical ringmaster to lose control of his animals, and to lose his tent in a fire. Nobody is more shocked than Luka to discover that both of these take place within the day. Two of the freed animals, a dog named Bear and a bear named Dog, become Luka's steadfast friends. But evil cannot safely be used for good; the ringmaster is entitled to a return curse, which he uses to claim the life of Luka's beloved father, Rashid Khalifa. The agent of this transaction is a being called Nobodaddy, who looks and acts almost exactly like Rashid, but who, Luka suspects, is a monster inside. Nobodaddy allows Luka the chance to save his father by transporting him to the World of Magic to steal the Fire of Life. For this task, Luka will need all of his wits, as well as friends he can only imagine, to overcome the immense obstacles in his way, and to learn just what Nobodaddy and the World of Magic really are.

In case the name Salman Rushdie rings a bell, you may have heard of him as the guy who angered the entire Muslim world with a controversial account of Mohammed in his 1988 book The Satanic Verses. The book was banned in twelve countries, and Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of Iran, even issued a fatwā against him, or a mandate for his execution. So he hid out in the UK for a while. (Thanks, Wikipedia!)

If all this sounds intense, you may be surprised to learn that Luka and the Fire of Life is a children's book comprised of good, old-fashioned fantasy. Most of the characters in a negative position are purely of Rushdie's invention, although he makes Aphrodite and Ra the Supreme look a little silly, among others. I guess he hasn't shaken off the tendency to explore religion on his own terms. In a case like this, I can say he's engaging in healthy inquiry, though of course I haven't seen what he thinks of my own religion. His gods can be a little flat for an adult audience, even while the rest of the story thrives for all ages. In fact, I'm interested that he heaps so much mythology into the story when he's able to invent such rich characters of his own.

I heartily approve of the broad plot structure and the themes used to carry it. Rushdie paints solid themes in such a fresh, new way. One of these themes is childhood interest in video games, to which I'll accept objections. But for the rest he uses imagination, consequence of actions, vanity, time, religion, and friendship to great advantage. No matter how silly the characters, they have some way of linking the themes to values. Thus the memory birds, giant ducks with elephant heads, are Luka's conscience when it comes to his consequences on time and the past, and the Insultana of Ott keeps him humble.

The villains are wonderful as well. Aag is a great example of frothy wrath, the kind of person who can't see reason. The Aalim are characterized so well before we even meet them. Nobodaddy, the bogey behind the whole mess, is no Sauron, but not every villain has to be. I suppose that's my greatest praise for the book: it does what it can without bringing the same old story out of the essential themes. Life, after all, carries the same values no matter whose it is, and everyone's experience gives him a different way of discovering these universal adventures.

Review: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (1813)

Elizabeth Bennet is one of five sisters presided over by their fussy mother and nonchalant father. The family has a problem: if Mr. Bennet dies before one of his daughters marries, the entire family will lose their estate to his nearest male heir. Although this conundrum sends Elizabeth careening between parties, balls, and rumors, she is determined not to accept the hand of any suitor that doesn't suit 'er (and I have a blog, too!). Among the throng of eligible men is Mr. Darcy: a rich stranger who tends to offend people by his aloof discomfort in social situations. Elizabeth disdains Darcy more than any of the other airheads who come knocking at her door, and is completely surprised when he proposes, too. Her reaction is to chew him out for all his offenses, to which he responds in kind. But their separation, and realization of his pride and her prejudice, are enough to bring this famous couple to improve themselves enough to be likable when they inevitably meet again.

Remember when I talked about the dangers of reviewing something everyone knows? Today I up the ante by reviewing something everyone loves. Among my friends and neighbors, Jane Austen is probably the single biggest reason by which ladies seem to be more literate than gentlemen. Statistically, that's incredible.

But get out your rotten tomatoes: Pride and Prejudice underwhelmed me entirely.

In order to be fair, I consulted a friend who is much more literate than I am, and who can't seem to keep herself away from this story. I must admit that the lessons she draws are both timeless and vital. The fundamental crux of the novel is the shift in character (sorry, Lawrence*) that love makes possible. It's easy, says my friend, to woo someone who loves you. It's worth it to change for someone who loves you. But Elizabeth and Darcy both had no reason to believe that after their initial altercation, either would see the other again. To improve who you are for someone who has essentially vanished from your life is virtue of the highest class. It's work without a paycheck. It's religion without reward.

In spite of all this, it's not Austen's direct commentary that bothered me. Sure, her characters are well-developed. Yeah, I guess she's witty enough for the 19th century. Mr. Bennet in particular is hilarious. You might say that what got under my skin was the exact society Austen portrays so well. It was like reading a script of the family parties at which you're forcibly reminded that there are relatives who love nothing better than offhandedly trying to evaluate your life. That doesn't bother me for five hours to make my parents happy, but it was rough to read three hundred pages of it on my own time. On the first hand, however, Elizabeth's conversation with Lady Catherine, being exactly how I would like to behave on some of these occasions, is an appropriate payoff. It just doesn't satisfy the trouble to get there.

This book may not hinge entirely on social obstacle courses, and that's probably the whole point. But if you dislike meddling relatives, gossiping neighbors, or really the thought of anyone who reads their own perspective onto your actions, then start running. In this sense, Pride and Prejudice acts like a fantasy novel in which the hero graphically slays his enemies while fighting for peace, or any romance literature that praises chastity in titillating terms. There's a way to raise up vices by condemning them, so don't be fooled by the moral of any story.



*Actually, I'm not sorry. D. H. Lawrence was a jerk.

Review: Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife by Sam Savage (2006)

Firmin the rat, runt of the litter, is born in a bookstore and must munch on the inventory when his siblings hog all the other food. It turns out that a diet of paper more than makes up for its lack of nutrition: Firmin soon discovers that he can read, and becomes voracious for stories rather than their bindings. When his family moves out to join the next phase of their gutter-dwelling lives, Firmin embarks on his own quest to devour all the classics. But so many vicarious adventures leaves him unfulfilled, and he endeavors to make his way in the wide world with a heartbreakingly human understanding of himself as an outsider to people and rats alike.

I've never seen Ratatouille, but after reading Firmin, I can only hope that Remy the Rat (as I believe he's called) speaks exactly like Firmin. The book is great precisely because Savage knows just how to write like a rat with a tendency to romanticize. Firmin narrates in long, colloquial sentences and a double dose of self-deprecating sarcasm. He walks a tightrope of knowing he's romanticizing and doing it anyway, which style gives this character a level of depth beyond what you often see, even in the most celebrated novels. Firmin's contradiction is one between lowliness and great dreams, which is healthily modern without being modernistic. He's adorable precisely because he tries so hard to avoid self-pity.

The plot itself is modest, which is appropriate given that it's supposed to be the autobiography of a rat. There's a touch of the inverse-culture trope in which the rats find the humans disgusting, and Firmin is a freak for wanting to cuddle with human women rather than violently mate with his own siblings, but fortunately the theme there isn't overdone. Most of Firmin's time is spent speculating on the gutters through the lenses of the great authors, and later on through an author of Savage's invention, a broke old man named Jerry Magoon. Magoon is the spitting image of both Savage's picture on the dust jacket and of Vonnegut's Kilgore Trout, even down to the fact that he writes short, bizarre science fiction books that elaborate on the poverty of the human condition in a not-so-subtle way.

In spite what you might think from the summary, Firmin is definitely not a children's book. Even from a lowly perspective, it can make you want to laugh or cry. It's a picture of the individual with spirit: perhaps not someone who can shake the world, but who feels its weight nonetheless.

Review: A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (1859)

When I first created this blog, I held a single idea that would make it readable. I would review every book I read, more or less without discrimination, and the reviews that mattered most would sort themselves to the top. Ideally, there would emerge, unintentionally, a handful of books nobody else has bothered to write much about, and I would help people by adding my fifty cents to the Google bin.

Of course there's a catch. In order for that to work out properly, I review everything I read, including work that already has its fair share of attention. So, forgive me if I occasionally don a literary hat a few sizes too large.

I present to you: A Tale of Two Cities.

It's the late eighteenth century, and Western Europe is cooking up a ruckus. The rich are swallowing up all they can and leaving everyone else with nothing, which results in a state of near-anarchy outside of mansions and manors. Men and women must distrust everyone they see on the street. Lucie Manette, a French teenager, journeys to the Defarge wine shop in order to recover her old father, a physician who, when under great stress, hallucinates that he is a shoemaker. Lucie brings her father safely to England, where her presence restores his mind and the two aid in the acquittal of Charles Darnay, a French nobleman who has sworn off his aristocracy and his allegiance to either country's elite. But unbeknownst to the Manettes and Darnay, Madame Defarge and her husband are stirring the oppressed French people into a national revolution gone wrong; when the power balance finally crumbles, nobody is safe from a new invention and embodiment of mob justice: the guillotine.

My surface impression of this book is that, more than anything I've ever read, it resembles a Disney film. We start with a simplistic, emotional landscape of historical romanticism, followed by the strong damsel with whom everybody is going to fall in love. There's a father figure, some crowd scenes that could make one or two lovely musical numbers, and an evil woman with a relatively ambiguous plan and some humorously animated, wicked facial expressions (Dickens repeatedly describes Madame Defarge's eyebrows). Two characters fall in love, while the villains storm the Bastille and do lots of violent things to nonspecific people. Then by some twist of fate, one of our protagonists winds up in the villain's clutches, and it's up to all of his spunky friends to save him at the last second.

Of course, Dickens came first, and this is no criticism. It's also important to read the book as a novel and not as a historical text. These characters never existed, but they make great analogies for problems that have survived the French Revolution. If I'm a sucker for any trope, it's for average characters who are caught between two dangerous ideologies. The notion of a wealthy elite that steps on everybody else is common, easy to understand, and probably won't ever go away. But its sinister counterpart, the people who can justify their sins and violence by the fact that they have been wronged, is more important to unravel because it applies to more of us. Sure, Charles Darnay is heroic by refusing to be Evrémonde, but see how few poor people resist sweeping France with violence. Dickens warns about possible side-effects of reaction, which at its heart can be little more than personal resentment.

I've met people who find Dickens' style to be boring or overwhelming. Neither was the case for me in this, my first Dickens book. Most of his prose is simply descriptive, but not boring, and he strays from it only for key points of heightened tension, or for sarcasm. It's droll British sarcasm, but this only makes it better.

I enjoyed this read quite a bit, beyond simply checking it off my list of books other people have read that I haven't. Its success as my first post-college classic proves to me that re-education is never a thing of the past.

Review: Against All Things Ending by Stephen R. Donaldson (2010)

I've already written a little bit about the Thomas Covenant series, of which this is number nine out of ten. Consider it bias, or don't, but just assume that this review will be somewhat more positive than the mark.

Against All Things Ending picks up where Fatal Revenant left off: Linden Avery has just linked the magic of three powerful artifacts to summon the soul of Thomas Covenant from the Arch of Time, back to a human body. But in reviving her lover and the Land's savior, Linden has activated two unforeseen consequences. First, in becoming incarnate once again, Covenant goes nearly mad shedding millennia of personality and experiences because they don't fit into a human mind; he's back to being a deranged leper. And the combination of wild magic and Law to reach past the boundaries of death and time has shifted the balance of the earth and awakened the Worm of the World's End, an unstoppable monster that will now consume the earth in only a few days. Even Covenant himself, were he in full possession of his mind and his complete power, could never out-muscle the Worm. Faced with apocalypse, Linden leads her companions in search of her possessed son, whose talent for inter-dimensional contraptions could be the only way to trap the Worm and save the world. But her trip, effected by costly bargains with many magical beings, brings her within reach of She Who Must Not Be Named, a slumbering titan as old as Lord Foul (the main antagonist) himself, who embodies all the fear, grief and rage of a world betrayed...

For those of you who even read that paragraph, you probably figured out to start with the first book. Hell, this is my favorite series, and I struggled to figure out what was going on.

But guess what: it was worth it.

No, this wasn't the best Thomas Covenant book for me. It has neither the cohesion of Lord Foul's Bane nor the climax of White Gold Wielder. And somehow it manages to be more melodramatic than either, without the payoff. Consider this: the book is about apocalypse, but it's not the last in the series. I'm not spoiling anything by telling you that the Land is still intact at the very end of the book.

This is more than can be said for most of the characters. Donaldson has never squeamish about killing his main cast (which he's done to Covenant twice now), but this book takes it a step higher. The real tension of the book, much greater than the threat of armageddon, is the fact that the book begins with a lineup of characters whose abilities and stories make each of them crucial to the defense of the Land... but one by one they die horribly. It's like a cosmic game of Jenga, which, now that I think of it, is a great way to describe Lord Foul's plans to someone unfamiliar with the series.

Donaldson never drops a storyline without finishing it, and it's incredible to see the way he continues to weave the threads together, even while creating new ones. For certain, the real reason for all the deaths is probably to untangle the knot a little bit. He also picks up dozens of Chekhov's guns, including some he dropped a full eight books ago. If you give it the time and space in your brain, it's a dazzling act of juggling, but it gets confusing if you're distracted for even a page.

One feature that gave me mixed feelings is that by now everyone has superpowers. It was nice back in Lord Foul's Bane when everybody knew a little bit about Earthpower, and Covenant's wild magic was still locked away. Now, aside from Lord Foul, there are three villains (Joan, Kastenessen, She Who Must Not Be Named) trying to tear apart the world with their bare hands, even if you don't count the Worm, which seems to be succeeding. The Insequent are wizards who can teleport, travel through time, and defeat armies singlehandedly. Linden has even more firepower than these, and can heal any wound. Roger Covenant can shoot lava from his hand, and he seems to find armies to serve him the way you or I would order pizza. The Elohim all have powers like Watchmen's Dr. Manhattan, and Esmer has all their magic plus the ability to negate Thomas Covenant.

It becomes a little overwhelming.

This is why to me, the only two pervading important trends are Covenant's mental lapses and Linden's encounter with She Who Must Not Be Named. I think that's what Donaldson was going for with She Who Must Not Be Named: a character he could definitively say was top dog (except for Covenant, Lord Foul, the Worm, Horrim Carabal... never mind) in order to get our minds off of searching for a deus ex machina already hidden in everybody's Superman complexes. Sure, it's not quite as good as her fear of death in the Second Chronicles, but part two of anything is rarely as exciting. As for Covenant, anything but a relapse of leprosy would have thrown away his credibility as our grouchy protagonist.

This may be a wasted post, because those of you who read eight Covenant books were going to read the ninth, or you weren't. But this is a story which, I firmly believe, receives too little attention, so go ahead and introduce or re-introduce yourself to the darkest dream you'd ever give your life to save.

Book Review: Life of Pi by Yann Martel (2001); also, a quibble with Wikipedia

Piscine Molitor Patel, who calls himself Pi, is the son of an Indian zookeeper who decides to move his family and business to Canada. But a storm sinks their Japanese ship on the Pacific, and Pi finds himself in a lifeboat with only a hyena, a zebra, and an orangutan for company. But there is a stowaway he does not see at first: Richard Parker, a 450-pound Bengal tiger. The food chain runs itself through in miniature, and soon there are only Pi and Richard Parker left. Pi, who is so passionate about religion that he had become a Christian and a Muslim on top of his original Hinduism, is driven to a predatory standoff with this killer carnivore and an even bigger predator: the sea itself. From this focal point of human debasement, with no civilization surrounding himself, Pi must adapt his self-understanding and his vision of God in order to tame the tiger, the sea, and his inexorable hopelessness.

I have a weakness for viewing with skepticism books I am told I will enjoy. First there was the Academy for the film adaptation, and then there was my mother, who told me that it would change my life. Suppressing my instinct to run from relevancy, I gave it a chance instead. I guess I'm growing up.

My first problem was with Martel's style. A recent semester full of German modernists and feminist critics left me with a bristling offense at flashy metaphors and improbable outcomes. And although the book has helped speed my recovery from those, the grouchiest writers in town, I still hold to my belief that Martel is a little too scintillating for his own good. This is more of a problem early in the story, mostly in descriptions of the zoo itself. And it certainly doesn't kill the book for me; I understand that Martel was struggling as a writer before this, and wanted to grab his audience in the way we all must try to do. I also understand that a lackluster description of zoo animals and competing religions would be quite a failure. All this is to say kindly that the book does not take on its substance until the lifeboat, at which point it comes alive.

At that point, Martel strikes a balance with the narrative flow, the story, and the deeper subjects that I would be glad to carry for a page; he carries it along for more than a hundred pages. As I pointed out of Peter Beagle, a story often does better with a few themes and little action rather than cramming as much as it can into every page. Pi's thoughts of God, of hope, and of keeping himself and Richard Parker alive are exactly enough to float the story along without sinking it. And Martel does all this without intruding with his own voice, and without losing Pi's perspective as a sixteen year-old.

Now I come to a problem not with the book, but with a less-refined unit of culture: the book's Wikipedia article. More specifically, it's the first sentence that has me rankled, and that points to something more significant than this corner of the internet. Our qualified editors list Life of Pi, in the first sentence most moviegoers will read instead of the book's reviews, as a fantasy adventure novel. To this I adamantly object. I'm always ranting about the degradation of fantasy, but this is an entirely different tiger. This is the same kind of arrogant disregard that shelves rock band Jukebox the Ghost's first two albums as "oddball science fiction."

What causes people to reshape fantasy in illogical ways? This is not a rhetorical question. Nor is it insignificant, even for people with no interest in fantasy. It seems to be a feature of my generation and those slightly older, perhaps by as much as two decades. The real problem, I suspect, goes very far back. Three forces that were once inseparable now stand at opposite corners of the room, waging war of attrition on each other. This triumvirate is science, politics, and religion. Each of these is flattening, which is why they have separated; science no longer means method, as it once did, a process for discovering the truth, which is never completed. Now it's used as a substitute for "truth," to which politics and religion now aspire, too. But tell a stranger that truth has nothing to do with method, or with government, or with faith, and maybe they'll write you off as a religious zealot, or a communist atheist, or a Tea Party member, or whatever already falls into their framework of the enemy, who disagrees with their Truth.

Into this cold war steps fantasy, because these quibbles aren't enough to make the stable minority stop reading Tolkien. Fantasy is not Truth, but it's harmless enough, because we already have enough superheroes and wizards to make room for one more at a time. That's what I think fantasy is for the unwitting: a harmless, entertaining adversary. By dispensing with scientific explanation, it presents no danger of discovering a new scientific law that dispenses with the old (even though this is the original purpose of science). Its kings resemble medieval monarchies, and its gods are insignificant. Its only use is a vehicle for sex and violence, and we are only decadent Romans.

The problem for the layman is that metaphor itself is hauled to the trash with fantasy. Jukebox the Ghost should take "oddball" as a compliment, although I don't think it was meant that way. But the band's only scraps of science fiction are mentions of the apocalypse, of God, and one lyric that says "strange fish I've never seen," referring to an inter-dimensional storm. To a culture so hampered by such revolutionary lyrics as "whoa, sometimes I get a feeling," maybe Jukebox is too much of a shock to the system.

Or it could be an excess of individualism. If it can't happen within the scope of my life's experience, can it happen at all?

My approach is neither revolutionary nor sufficiently reactionary, but I think it needs to begin. After all, Life of Pi concludes with a scene which I will not spoil here, but which calls into question the ethics and logic of rational belief. It's Martel's best point: we should accept that most of life lies beyond the scope of our individual perception. It's okay to doubt. More audacious would be to declare irrevocably that a thing does not exist, or worse, that this means we should take no notice of it. To do so would be to ignore the Bengal in the lifeboat.

Review: A Fine and Private Place by Peter S. Beagle (1960)

Compared with the Resurrection of Christ, Tolkien's Return of the King, or Grover Cleveland's second election, my return to internet regularity is duly humbled. Nevertheless, I'm back! If you look, you'll notice there's something different about me: I now have a bachelor's in English literature. Thus I come triumphantly down the mountain to do the only thing for which this degree qualifies me: writing this blog.

Into the fray comes Peter S. Beagle, author of The Last Unicorn, one of the cornerstones of my pantheon of fantasy books. I present A Fine and Private Place.

Michael Morgan is a newlydead who wakes up in his grave to discover that Hades is not a netherworld of fire and physical torture, but the next stage of being in which the consciousness gradually forgets all vestiges of its past life. A stubborn narcissist at heart, he struggles with all his will to remain as human as he can, although only a few people can see or hear him. These include a sarcastic raven, a tragic young ghost named Laura, and Mr. Rebeck, a wispy little man who hasn't left the Bronx cemetery for nineteen years. Eternity is put to the test when Mr. Rebeck begins to flirt with Mrs. Klapper, a feisty woman visiting her husband's morgue. Michael and Laura work and talk to discover whether even death can span the abyss that separates people's true experiences from each other's.

The main thing that attracts me to Beagle's books is his ability to stand somewhere very humble and do great things. Not every book has to be Narnia or try to contain the entire scope of human morality within a single adventure. In plain words, the book's three themes as I see them--death, love, and human decency--look like impossibly high mountains of rich thought. But so many fantasy books try to leap such heights, and so many, that there's room only for a single one-liner for each. Not so with Beagle. The narrative perspective leaves the cemetery only a handful of times, and so little happens in the plot, that there's plenty of room for wisdom. But don't let the slow speed of the action fool you. The ongoing dialogue, especially its hopes and doubts, is better than a sword fight. To me, that's an art to which any writer should aspire.

Beagle also scores points in my book with the freshness of his writing. Each of the characters has a voice, and the voices dance with each other in a way that illuminates real conversation rather than setting it up as something quippy, narcissistic, and unrealistic, as modern movie audiences seem to want. Beyond that, his description is simple but catching. It makes you want to slow down and appreciate it.

Unless you're looking for wild adventure, read this book. It has neither real thrills nor spills, but it's as thought-provoking as they come and easy to follow.

Relevance, Part 2: Ted Talks

It seems that in spite of myself, I can't stop hopping on the hippest controversies in town. That's consistent, because today's theme is the result of ideology that messes with its own ends.

We now return to: Dr. Ted Everett's paper "Against 'Sexual' 'Assault' 'Awareness'": now with a link to the full presentation! http://www.geneseo.edu/philosophy/ted_everett

For those who haven't heard: last week my college went into an uproar anticipating this paper as the focus of a small Philosophy Department colloquium. Students protested and petitioned, the event was moved to the gymnasium to accommodate angry supporters of women's rights, and everybody got bad press. To be equally fair, I'll rag on both Dr. Everett and his antagonists, since everybody has been tripping up. And don't worry: more book reviews are coming soon.

We'll start with the man himself. My biggest complaint, probably as a slave to infotainment, is that this paper was not worth the hullabaloo it got. None of his points is particularly striking, and together they add up to a rather inconsistent whole. After all, as stated in its preface, the thing is a philosophy paper, not a lambent speech. The content itself reveals problems with both sides. While he's quite right in saying that the goal is to prevent sexual assault rather than correctly determine whose fault it is, nothing should obscure the secondary goal of letting people know what's crossing the line and what isn't. And while that analogy about a kiss from grandma is worth a giggle (if you've already had a beer every time he's said "roaring drunk"), it's a key misleading point. Where I come from, your grandma is probably not going to the same parties that have SAA worried. And even if you're just going to kiss somebody, absolutely make sure it will be wanted. We don't live in Pirates of the Caribbean (if you do, let me know). Whether or not you define an unwelcome result as sexual assault, it's still the wrong thing to do for emotional reasons, if not those of sanitation, personal space, etc.

Then come the enlightened students. What has me most frustrated is the fact that I'm not allowed to talk to my friends about it unless I say certain exact things. In some circles, I must chant, "They don't know what he said!" In others, it's "It doesn't matter what he said; sexual assault is still wrong." Whether I agree, or whether I see both of these as changing the subject, I tend to miss my cue. This makes every detail I offer an object of suspicion, forcing me to return to my position before the event: if we can't talk about sexual assault, how aware are we? I'd certainly flunk that test, having skipped the colloquium entirely to avoid hearing possible shouting matches. All I ask is to do what will be written on my diploma, and analyze the pieces of what I can read of Everett's paper and of my friends' opinions, as fairly as I can. Unless I can do this, I might as well not listen to anyone.

Here's all you can do. Learn from it if it works for you. You can refuse to cross any interpersonal boundaries, sexual or otherwise, unless you have reason to believe you may. You can keep in mind the common sense to make this distinction. It comes from listening, the aural version of awareness, which is what everybody thinks they want nowadays, but which is still frightfully scarce. Awareness is a result of thinking for yourself. In combination with respect, there's nothing it can't do.

Intrigue! Controversy! Relevance!

It's the return of that guy who used to write about the books he reads! Don't worry, that will restart soon enough. But first, I've decided to hop on the bandwagon of getting myself more attention, "likes," and Google hits by talking about the same thing as everyone else for a change.

Happy Earth Week/Sexual Assault Awareness Week/Earth Year*/Cheeseburger Awareness Week!

While these are all made up, some are more exciting to discuss than others. For example, there's a finite number of things to say about a cheeseburger before hunger and dietary restrictions have to duke it out mano a mano, sin palabras. But it would seem that there's no end of things to say about a lecture that hasn't been given yet, especially if you already know your opinion about it.

With that I present Geneseo's earth-shaking, fist-shaking scandal-to-be: a presentation entitled "Sexual" "Assault" "Awareness." http://www.geneseo.edu/news_events/update-philosophy-department-colloquium

This one needs a whole family of disclaimers. Firstly, I haven't spoken at length with Professor Everett, the presenter, since I took his introductory class in 2009. And I must admit I liked him. He contrasted well with my English professor at the time, who was a professed Marxist whose angsty male ex-Catholic devotees are exceeded only by the amount of times per class he looks for laughs at his insulting affectations. The point of Everett's class, which was lost on the overwhelming majority of us as an "honors" audience, was to use the history of philosophy as a framework for thinking for ourselves. That's no fun, I say. I want a flag under which to rally! Actually, I was serious at the time, unaware of the paradox of devoting myself to an author who could tell me my "individualism" was okay. It's a good thing I didn't find one. The theme of preconceived notions was a good prelude to my college experience, as well as to the thunderstorm approaching three and a half years later.

The second disclaimer follows logically: I don't know how many other people have spoken with Dr. Everett about this lecture. The natural tendency is to talk at someone, and look for self-affirmations in or against his response. My friend helped me realize the most dangerous part about this lecture: because it's so controversial, and is appearing everywhere from traditional news media to blogs more successful than mine, the title alone will reinforce the beliefs of anyone who spots it. The cleverest feminists and those who have put down that flag in favor of loving thy neighbor, won't be able to ignore the fact that many people aren't even close to a standard of treating women well. And the clueless feminists, at whom this lecture is targeted and who aren't aware of sexual assault in any personal way, will take it as a crack in the brittle foundation of a purely conceptual ideology. They're interested in rights rather than what's right, and will fight to micromanage and flatten out morality until it's all written in law, when everything will be beautiful and nothing will hurt.

But don't forget the people of which the clever feminists, the clueless feminists, and the rest of us random schmucks have always been worried: those who will take this lecture title, three words, as a sign that it's okay, that we're all safe now, and that awareness can go home without a problem.

You've been good, so here's a third disclaimer: I don't know of anybody who has experienced sexual assault. Readers, do yourselves a favor and do the main thing I learned from Dr. Everett: don't take me seriously. I'm not here to dictate my opinion, but to stir yours around a little and make sure it hasn't sunk to the bottom of your brains.

On the other hand, it would be slippery of me to write all this without any stated opinions, so here are some for the road. Rape is on par with murder. Don't forget it. On the other hand, if trying to get coffee with a girl who is repelled by your hygiene is sexual assault, then I'm in deep trouble. There must be a line somewhere. The same friend I mentioned somewhere in that muddle farther up the page told me that everybody, even those who commit it, know sexual assault is bad. My contribution to her thought is that the entire fight is over what constitutes this sin, this crime.

But since that's still a rather abstract opinion, and hence has nothing to do with me, I might as well announce why I'm not going to Dr. Everett's lecture, and why I'm fed up with Womyn's Action Coalition and a large percent of the people who will be there to oppose him. I don't think anybody will listen to each other. Negative energy only begets more negative energy, as anyone with the sense to interpret any given week of history will tell you. It's got nothing to do with gender, nor with the supposed spectrum from liberal to conservative. And while I appreciate those who want to end sexual assault, in this case they're swatting a fly on the expensive china.



*Why is there only one Earth Week?

Review: The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin (1969)

Genly Ai is an emissary to the planet Winter, which is covered in ice and whose inhabitants are all humanoid hermaphrodites. His mission is to befriend these people and persuade them to join the Ekumen, an alliance of planets designed for the sharing of culture and information. But his dubious position as an outsider keeps him on shaky ground, and when global politics repeatedly get the better of him, his only chance for survival comes in the form of Estraven, a former prime minister banished for treason. Together, these two exiles undertake an epic voyage across the ice that gives Genly a closer look than ever at the minds and values of these androgynous people.

If you've seen my selection of Le Guin's blog, you already know that while I respect her as one of the most insightful speculative fiction writers I've ever had the luck to read, her outlook frequently falls just short. This could be disappointing, but it's more important to look at the massive questions she does ask. This book is crammed with those.

The main issue raised in the novel is that of the differences between our visions of gender. Her foreword, which is a beautiful little piece about the use of fiction to frame real life, explains that science fiction and its cousins test our capacity for thought by contrasting what we think is impossible against what we cannot conceive at all. With a detailed explanation, it's easy to imagine someone who can transition between biological femaleness and biological maleness, and perhaps even exhibit both at once, but can you imagine someone who is psychologically a man and a woman at the same time? I don't know enough psychology to dispute which traits Le Guin identifies as feminine and which as masculine, but I give her all the credit I can for not pretending that women and men are the same people with different plumbing downstairs. I don't know about other parts of the world, but a lot of Americans have slurred this latter one together out of a strange need to justify civil rights. (Psst: Treating people well is not at all like treating them the same, and you don't need to make up an excuse to do so.)

Given a pretty good sense of what makes men and women different, Le Guin does quite a job of uniting these behind an alien mindset. This happens mostly because she shows it in the characters rather than describing it, for the most part. So while it's established here that competitiveness is primarily masculine and hospitality is primarily feminine, Genly the narrator cannot quite figure out what's motivating a Gethenian (as the aliens are called) in any given action. It's a function of Le Guin's subtlety that there's still an obvious, complex difference between Genly and the Gethenians that stems from the difference that while they are both male and female, he is only ever male.

Put The Left Hand of Darkness high on your list. It should be up there with Dune on the list of complex and intelligent science fiction creations.

The Problem

Since my main quarrel with this book is one of ideology, and didn't make me enjoy it any less, I'm separating it from my recommendation. If anything, it makes me like the book more for arousing the scrappy, perhaps competitive (heh) literary critic I wish I could be.

Taken as a whole, The Left Hand of Darkness turns into a panorama of wishful thinking. You may have read Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, which envisions the result of a profound problem with human civilization. The Gethen Le Guin creates here is a formal inverse of the dystopia; it's almost Edenic, but its circumstances are not what would really bring about paradise on Earth.

The two main features of Gethen are its ice-age climate and its inhabitants' bisexuality. Genly occasionally chronicles the differences that have arisen between Gethen's civilizations as a whole and that of his own Terra (Earth). For example, from fighting against such bitter weather conditions, Gethenians have cultivated the value of permanence rather than our 20th- and 21st-century preference of progress and innovation. But then Le Guin drops the fact that although Gethenians murder each other from time to time, the planet has never experienced a war in its several millennia of recorded history. This is partly, as she says, because the weather is already so good at killing them, but also has something to do with never having learned violence as a result of their androgynous physiology. Most importantly, it is physically impossible for one Gethenian to rape another. A large part of the plot deals with the fear that Gethen's first-ever war will break out soon, but that quickly fizzles, both in terms of the plot and of the narrative's interest.

It's all as if Le Guin is saying that there would be no violence, neither war nor rape, if we were all sexually equivalent and if our planet beat us back rather than vice versa. These ideas were fun at the dawn of the 70's, around the time of the book's publication, just as they are now. But the circumstances are impossible. And to pin strife on theories of gender and ecological destruction distracts from the reality that greed and selfishness are demons we all have to fight. Just as there doesn't need to be an excuse for selflessness, it can be harmful to disguise that its opposite is not also an inextricable piece of human nature.

Review: The Mirror of Her Dreams by Stephen R. Donaldson (1986)

Close your eyes. Imagine that The Lord of the Rings is your favorite book. You've read it more times than you can count, and you remember more about Middle Earth than you could recite in a day. (For some, this isn't such a stretch.) Now imagine you've found another series by Tolkien, read by few, that takes place not in Middle Earth, but in an entirely new fantasy world. Ravenous for this new discovery, you pick it up and begin to read.

It's a romance novel. Not only that, but it's a mediocre romance novel.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the fantasy, mystery, bodice-ripper offered to the world by one of my biggest fantasy influences. It was one of my most bizarre experiences of 2012.

Terisa Morgan is a woman who almost literally has no life. She's quiet, submissive, and friendless. She lives alone in an apartment paid for by her rich, aloof father, and spends all day working for a soup kitchen without forming any bonds with the poor she serves. Her biggest fear is disappearing entirely without anyone noticing. This all changes one night when a strange man bursts through her bedroom mirror. His name is Geraden, and he comes from a land in which mirrors can create anything imaginable. Geraden is on a mission to retrieve someone to save his kingdom from destruction, and he believes Terisa to be that champion. With no reason to stay in the life she knows, Terisa follows Geraden into a fantasy world full of familial plots and political games. Amidst a background of danger and wits, Terisa must choose between the affections of Geraden, and a master Imager named Eremis, who is always one step ahead of the plots threatening the land of Mordant.

Donaldson thrives in a setting where ordinary-world people interact with archaic-speaking people who are differently complex: who have an eye for patterns and schemes but who are blind to different subtleties than we are. For example, many of his characters seem to perceive familial ties as something tangible, which makes them stronger than you or I, but we might be quicker to see how relationships might shift, and catch onto deceit more quickly. Even when a Donaldson fantasy character is skeptical, it's in a solid, direct way. This interaction between cemented values and our own subtle shades of gray is what powers the Thomas Covenant series, and it's what saves The Mirror of Her Dreams, but not by a long shot.

You'd think, perhaps as a joke, that your favorite author could pull off a silly romance. After all, the best writers usually know how to shift genres with some skill. The problem is that this is still a fantasy, and Donaldson's fantasy, as opposed to his other work, is usually highly methodical. He ratchets up the tension by revealing one thrilling detail at a time, getting quite a bit of mileage out of each aspect of the plot. This works wonders in Thomas Covenant. But in this novel, where half the details are repetitive flirtations, it gets boring quickly.

There's a fair amount of philosophic value diluted amid the sappiness. Although Terisa's fear of disappearing makes a bad metaphor, it creates some interesting avenues for existential questioning. A good amount of space is devoted to the question of whether Terisa existed prior to appearing in Mordant. Even she is unable to resolve them. The philosophy is relatively outdated, but it's still solid.

If you're a connoisseur of romance novels, try this one on for size. If not, don't make this your introduction to Donaldson. I plan to read the concluding sequel, A Man Rides Through, which I hope will be an improvement.

Review: The Yacoubian Building by Alaa Al Aswany (2002)

One building in Cairo becomes the focus for a multitude of different people facing different struggles. Zaki el Dessouki is an aged playboy who lives with his spiteful sister, and whose golden age has long since passed. Busayna el Sayed is a poor young woman who is forced to sell her body in order to support her family. Her boyfriend, Taha el Shazli, finds his dreams squashed repeatedly because of his low social status, and gradually feels the tug toward an Islamic fundamentalism that hides something darker. Hatim Rasheed is a gay editor who can only express himself in terms of power and manipulation. And the worst of all, Hagg Azzam, is a millionaire who buys a spot in the political machine, only to discover that as rich as he is, there are always powers capable of buying and destroying him. As the book develops, these and more characters weave in and out of each other's lives, some never quite meeting despite sharing the same chaotic space in the world.

This is the last installment of my Arabic literature reviews. As far as I know, this one is not indicative of typical Egyptian novels; the professor told us that more than any book he knows, it's intended to offend everybody. So buckle in.

The fascinating aspect of this book is its unresolved question of who is a good person, and who is evil. A dedicated third-person narration washes the authors hands of this somewhat, but of course the events of the plot speak to a certain expectation of life's outcomes. So we, the readers, must decide whether each character receives his just desserts, or whether the outcomes are random. Some characters fall disgracefully, while others find a little happiness at last. For the most part, the resolution is bleak. Such is life, I suppose.

At the same time, however, there's something about almost every character that draws out some sympathy. This is especially true of the two young characters, Busayna and Taha. Both are totally demeaned throughout the course of the story. Though I disagree with my classmate who sees Busayna as a total victim, with no volition of her own, I understand her as an expression that few condemnable actions are total choices, easy to avoid, and that no lifestyle stands on its own. Certainly Busayna is hurt more than she ever hurts anyone else, even herself. Taha, on the other hand, carries this example to its extreme. Unlike Busayna, he is never offered any alternative to the path he eventually follows, other than the option to remain poor and untouchable. A variety of forces, no single one to blame, warp his brain and his values into something he thinks is holy. To me, Taha's resolution is the most heartbreaking part of the story and of any piece of this course.

The book is very explicit about violence and sex; be aware of that when picking it up. And be ready for some psychological trauma. But other than that, it's an intelligent read with a variety of subtle values. Give it a try if you're on a postmodern kick and want to read something non-Western.