"The Book Thief", Gaza, Ukraine, Iraq

It doesn't need me to say how good this book is. It was a fascinating and beautiful book to read, particularly having just finished a literature course. Both "contemplation" and "enjoyment" (as C.S.Lewis describes them) were present - that is, I found myself able to accept the odd narrative perspective of the book, and also wonder at the structure, and the structures within the structure, that Zusak has created. 

It seemed a particularly relevant book to read at the moment. Set in the Second World War in Germany, it portrays the impact of the War from the perspective of the "losing side" - both those who believed in Nazism and those who didn't - but in almost all cases, shows their humanity, and the price of the war.

I have no desire to multiply words regarding the fighting in Gaza or the Ukraine/Russian border or Iraq. Enough has been said: what is needed is for people to recognise the fellow humanity of other people. I included the word "simply" in that clause originally - but of course, there is nothing simple about it. Unfortunately, hope and history don't rhyme.
How long?

Moxyland - a scary vision of the near future

The first few pages are always heady. The author invites you into the world he or she has created - will you like it or loathe it? Will it be convincing or confusing?

Lauren Beukes has created the latest in a line of dystopian visions. In part, we have the violent control of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four; but the underlying culture is closer to Huxley's Brave New World or even Jennifer Government by Max Barry. And for more commentary, see Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman or How Should We Then Live? by Francis Schaeffer.

It has a harder edge - commentators have muttered things like "Post-cyberpunk". I dodged Coupland, though I think he was recommended to me, so I can't really judge. But Beukes has certainly captured the zeitgeist and sharpened it. It is a world of recreational drugs, sex and sexuality, where corporations act as they see fit with little regard for the law - or more accurately, pretty much as the law - where the rich have got richer, and the poor have got poorer but have been rendered pretty much impotent through being disenfranchised.

We meet four characters, whose lives intersect - Kendra, Toby, Lerato and Tendeka. All have issues with the status quo on one level or another. From the history of dystopic worlds, we know that this is not a good situation to be in. Will they survive? Can they learn to love Big Brother? Or can they overthrow him?

This is good SF - the extrapolations are all too real, all too obviously deriving their heritage from the world we see around us. The language is - well, put it this way, if you are going to have a problem with the "F" word, I wouldn't recommend this book (even so, I think it's not a bad idea to get it off the cover ...). But the book should take an honourable place in the catalogue of dystopian visions.

"The Hero with a Thousand Faces"

It's the title of a seminal book by Joseph Campbell, which I'm hoping to read shortly. I mentioned it previously, having heard of the book in the context of some reading about Harry Potter.

As I said in that post, Campbell apparently suggests that the reason for the universality of this archetype is that "every one of us shares the same ordeal." Note that this isn't based on my reading of his book - I hope to say more of substance at some stage. However, my thesis, which I am certainly not in a position to defend at the moment, would be the opposite of that - none of us actually shares an ordeal like this in any sort of significant respect. And yet, we all recognise these heroic narratives. Why is that? Why do they have a universal cultural significance?

According to the reviews on Amazon,

one unique aspect of it at the time it was published was its approach to Christianity. For Campbell, Christ's life had to be seen as a myth. Before him, most Western scholars wouldn't have dare to say such a thing. Others had written on that, but in a skeptical manner. Campbell's view is that the Virgin Birth, miracles, Resurrection, etc have meaning only because they ARE myths.

This represents a particular historic/philosophical approach to Christianity, which I believe has largely been considered unsuccessful. You simply can't reduce the historical figure of Jesus, and the events surrounding his life, to the level of myth. The canonic gospel-writers evidently took some trouble to establish the events they record as real events that happened at a particular time and place, with real people. As far as I know, no attempt to show the gospels, or for that matter the rest of the historical accounts in the Bible, are unsound has proved successful.

The Jesus narrative, I would argue, makes clear that Jesus is a universal hero, according to the archetype Campbell establishes. And yet where all the other heroes that he considers are myths or stories, Jesus is grounded in history. This makes him a unique figure in literary terms, as well as historical terms. The reason we are responsive to other heroes - in all different cultures - is to prepare us for this one specific, trans-cultural figure who is the hero that all humans should be looking for. The significance of a hero isn't that they have experiences that are representative of ours, but is that they have experiences that are in place of ours - instead of us.