Greetings, earthlings! Welcome back to The Book Report.

Semantink’s got all sorts of things going on right now. If you haven’t taken a look around the site in a while, do yourself a favor and check it all out. Season 2 of The Undergrounds has begun, and updates every Monday. Issue 4 of Mythoi is out, and you can expect to see those start to pop up on a more monthly basis as well. Sim-I is building up some steam as well. You can also expect Semantink to release some new books this year as well.

Also, Free Comic Book Day is Saturday! You can go to a comic book store near you and check out some free material. If you’re up to a drive to the Inland Empire, head over to 4 Color Fantasies. A few of the Semantink folk’ll be there handing out goodies and signing issues. A few other industry names will be there as well, so do the right thing and go.

Finally, with some sadness, I must tell you that this will be the last Book Report for a while. Your pal Akatzen has got a full plate this summer and won’t be reading as much as he’d like to (plus his sadness makes him talk in the third person). But as I get books done I’ll be coming back to tell you all about em, never fear.

Currently I’m reading Eyewitness to History, edited by John Carey (pub 1987). The book is a compilation of firsthand accounts of events in history going back to ancient Greece. The first account was written by Thucydides about Plague In Athens in 430 BCE. There are personal writings by Julius Caesar, Marco Polo, Pliny the Younger, and other famous and not-so-famous figures from history writing about events in their day. It’s a pretty fascinating read: 200 stories spanning almost two and a half thousand years. Check it out.

Until next time,
Still paddlin’ the old knew…
_-Akatzen-_

Well hello, good people! Welcome back to The Book Report.

First off, the second season of The Undergrounds is almost here! Many of your favorite monsters from season 1 are back, but this time they’re taking up a little office space, and they find they have to share it with some new monsters. Job applications are currently being posted on the new page and the first issue will be posted very soon.

Okay, so last week when I was reviewing Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman I mentioned seeing a bunch of billboards lately claiming that May 21, 2011 is the Second Coming of Christ. I dismissed the whole thing out of hand, mainly because I wanted to talk about the book. So today I thought I’d take a closer look at this May 21 prophecy.

This prediction comes from Harold Camping, a civil engineer who broke away from his church and started Family Radio. Camping believes that the Bible leaves clues as to the exact date of The Second Coming and these clues can be solved with mathematics. Critics of Camping point out that not only does this idea conflict with Matthew 24:36 (“Of that day and hour knows no man”) but also that the last time he used mathematics to predict the end of the world he got the date wrong.

In 1992 Camping self-published a book titled 1994? where he predicts The Second Coming to occur on September 4, 1994. Apparently Camping had a “Get Out of Ridicule Free” card, because after he was proven wrong (in the simplest way possible) he made a new prediction for May 21, 2011. Somehow people believe him this time.

So what exactly does Camping predict? According to the website:

On May 21, 2011 two events will occur. These events could not be more opposite in nature, the one more wonderful than can be imagined; the other more horrific than can be imagined.

A great earthquake will occur the Bible describes it as “such as was not since men were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake, and so great.” This earthquake will be so powerful it will throw open all graves. The remains of the all the believers who have ever lived will be instantly transformed into glorified spiritual bodies to be forever with God.

On the other hand the bodies of all unsaved people will be thrown out upon the ground to be shamed.
The inhabitants who survive this terrible earthquake will exist in a world of horror and chaos beyond description. Each day people will die until October 21, 2011 when God will completely destroy this earth and its surviving inhabitants.

How’d Camping arrive at the year 2011?
Using math and some philosophical assumptions, Camping places The Great Flood in 4990 B.C. Remember the Great Flood? Where God had Noah build a boat 450 feet long to hold two of every animal on the whole earth (and his family, conveniently) while it rained for 40 days and nights and water covered the earth.
Genesis 7:4 says that God gave Noah seven days of warning before he would destroy the earth. The Second Book of Peter 3:8 says that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years. So Camping believes God left a 7,000 year hint as to when he would destroy the planet.

“But wait, Akatzen,” you might say. “I’ve got a calculator here, and 4990+2011=7001. Doesn’t that mean the end of the world should’ve happened last year?” Well, Camping says you need to subtract a year because there’s no such thing as a Year 0.
Whoops. Let’s pretend he’s right, that babies are automatically 1 when they are born and that time is only measured in years and not months, weeks, days, hours, etc. If there’s no Year Zero, he’d need to subtract two years since there’d be no Year Zero A.D. and B.C. Which means it still should have happened last year.

Another “proof” Camping offers is a bit more abstract. According to how he interprets scripture, the number five equals “atonement”, the number ten equals “completeness”, and the number seventeen equals “heaven”. Camping believes Jesus died on the cross on April 1, 33 A.D. (Many Biblical scholars agree that Jesus is likely to have been crucified around this time) April 1, 33 A.D. to April 1, 2011 C.E. is 1,978 years or 722,449 days (according to the Gregorian solar year). April 1, 33 A.D. to May 21, 2011 C.E. is 722,500 (again, according to the Gregorian solar year).
Well, check this out! If you multiply 5 by 10 by 17 you get.…850. Hmmm.
Oh, but wait! If you square 850 you get 722,500. See that? Infallible proof that math can get you to whatever number you need it to be.

Another “proof” that Camping offers is that Gay Pride is a sign of the end times. The issue Camping deals with is not whether homosexuality is a sin (I believe it isn’t) or whether it is condemned in the Bible (I also believe it isn’t) but that God actually had a plan for Gay Pride to be a sign to believers that the end is near. This “proof” is just plain crazy.
Well, all the “proofs” require you to walk a bit down Irrational Lane, I suppose. And that’s why I so casually dismissed the issue in the previous post. Hope you all had fun!

Until next time,
Still paddlin the old knew…
_-Akatzen-_

Howdy, folks! It’s a good Friday for The Book Report.

Guess what! A new Mythoi is out and you should totally read it. There’s a new artist for this one, and it sure is pretty.

So maybe you’ve been seeing these billboards around lately. Apparently there’s some folk who believe The Great Big Fade To Black is coming this year. There’s some interesting bits of prediction there, aside from broad misinterpretations of the Bible and some poor math. Unfortunately, the Christian apocalypse ends on such a downer. There’s better apocalypses (apocalii?) out there and better ones for you.

My favorite is the zany and hilarious account of the end of the world documented in Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, written in 1990. The book combines a Douglass Adam’s kind of hilarity with a Christopher Moore’s Lamb (or Kevin Smith’s Dogma) kind of reverence in mockery in a tale about the coming of the antichrist.

The story revolves around several intertwined story-lines, though the main one involves Aziraphale and Crowley, an angel and a demon who have somehow turned out to be friends, and their search for the antichrist. Unfortunately, the child who everyone thinks is the antichrist is perfectly normal due to an unfortunate (or fortunate, depending on how you look at it) mix-up at birth.
One of the things I love about the book is Crowley’s outlook on evil. He figures he doesn’t have to do much, since people are so much more creative with negative energy than demons give them credit for. He doesn’t have to plant evil thoughts in people, he just has to create a traffic jam and people come up with plenty of evil thoughts on their own.

The book is plenty of good fun, and if the crazies turn out to be correct with the May 21st deadline, it might be good to have read some source material.

Until next time,
Still paddlin’ the old knew…
_-Akatzen-_

Ahoy, mates! Welcome back to The Book Reparrrrt!

If you haven’t already done so, before you do anything else go check out Issue #0 of Semantink Publishing’s newest property Sim-I. Once you are done there, head over to the Semantink Store to catch up on Mythoi and pre-order a copy of Season 1 of The Undergrounds. These are all activities I am sure you will not regret.

On May 20, 2011 movie-goers can expect to be entertained by the next chapter in The Pirates of the Caribbean, called On Stranger Tides. The movie brings back Johnny Depp to reprise his role as Cap’n Jack Sparrow and Geoffrey Rush as Hector Barbossa, and it also introduces Ian McShane as Blackbeard and Penélope Cruz as Blackbeard’s daughter Angelica.
When the film hits theaters, you can watch it in Disney 3d, IMAX 3d, and regular (and IMAX) 2d.

What you might not be aware of is this story is based on a 1987 book titled On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers. “Based on” might be a somewhat loose term, however. Both film and story may contain Blackbeard and a search for the Fountain of Youth, but don’t be too surprised if that’s where the similarities end. In addition to providing the material for the latest Pirates of the Caribbean movie, On Stranger Tides also provided inspiration for the popular Monkey Island video games.

Power’s novel was nominated for the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel and the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel. He tells a great story, though I’m not the biggest fan of his writing. Still, if you can get past one sentence paragraphs that span the length of the entire page you’re in for a real treat of a story. I know I’m certainly looking forward to the movie more now than I did before reading the book.

Until next time,
Still paddlin’ the old knew…
_-Akatzen-_

Greetings, folks. Welcome back to The Book Report!

Before you do anything else, go check out Issue #0 of Sim-I. It’s free and fantastic!

Last week I brought you a look at Thomas Pynchon and the conspiracy he weaves in The Crying of Lot 49. This week I thought I’d tease your brain a bit by talking about one of my favorite conspiracies. No, it’s not about who really killed JFK or what’s really at Area 51 or if aliens actually built the pyramids or if the moon landing was staged. If you want to know more about all that, I’m sure Dr. Cellus would love to elucidate.

One of my favorite little conspiracies involve the band TOOL and a possible secret song order on their fourth album Lateralus.

Readers of The Da Vince Code and mathematicians are probably reasonably familiar with the Fibonacci sequence, and this Sequence is one of the main contributors to the conspiracy.

The Fibonacci sequence was introduced to the west by Leonardo Fibonacci of Pisa around the 12th Century, though he picked it up from Indian mathematicians while studying their Hindu-Arabic numerals. How it works is within the sequence, any number is the sum of its two preceding numbers. So, starting from 0, you’d have: 0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13… To graph the Fibonacci sequence, consider each number to be the length of one side of a square, like so:

If you were to connect the opposite corners of each square with an arc, you would end up with a spiral, like so:

This spiral can be found all over nature, such as in snail shells. The Fibonacci Sequence can be found in the branching of trees and in the arrangement of a pine cone. In fact, the Fibonacci Sequence is often associated with another mathematical, artistic, and architectural term: The Golden Ratio, represented by the Greek symbol phi (φ).
German psychologist Adolf Zeising found the Golden Ratio in the arrangement of branches along the stems of plants and of veins in leaves, in the skeletons of animals and the branchings of their veins and nerves, in the proportions of chemical compounds, and in the geometry of crystals. Neurobiologists found it in the clock cycle of brain waves. The lines of a pentagram adhere to the Ratio. Leonardo da Vinci, Salvador Dali, and Dubussey (among others) utilized the Ratio in their art. Zeising proposed that the Golden Ratio may be a universal law.

“A universal law in which is contained the ground-principle of all formative striving for beauty and completeness in the realms of both nature and art, and which permeates, as a paramount spiritual ideal, all structures, forms and proportions, whether cosmic or individual, organic or inorganic, acoustic or optical; which finds its fullest realization, however, in the human form.” 1854

“A paramount spiritual ideal…whether cosmic or individual” is an idea that TOOL listeners will find familiar. But that doesn’t mean there is an alternative track order on an album, does it? Well, there are clues that suggest it might be the case.

The first clue is that the title track of Laturalus has an alternate spelling: Lateralis. So, to find the alternate order, you need to examine the track with the alternate spelling of the album title. (This was claimed to be a production error, but like any good conspiracy people will try to cover their tracks.) The Fibonacci sequence is featured specifically on this track. Crazy enough, but then, the time signature for the song is a 9:8:7 time signature, which is a measure of nine beats, followed by a measure of eight, and then a measure of seven, and then repeats. It can throw off a casual listener if they’re not careful. Where the Fibonacci sequence comes into play is in the syllabic layout of the verse.
“Black/ then/ white are/ all I see/ in my infancy/ red and yellow then came to be/ reaching out to me, let’s me see/ As below so above and beyond, I imagine…“
After reaching 13 syllables on a line, Maynard reverses the order, and goes back down to 3 syllables. Notice how as he works his way up, the lines go like this syllabically: 1,1,2,3,5,8,8,13. Those two lines of 8 separate the 13 line, which I believe is another clue we’ll get to in a moment.

One of the main refrains of the song is “overthinking and overanalyzing separates the body from the mind”, which is perhaps the clue which confirms we’re on the right track (or it’s a hint to tell us not to look so deeply, at any rate the difference between body and mind is one thematic statement of the album).
At the end of the song, Maynard sings, “And following our will and wind, we may just go where no one’s been/ We’ll ride the spiral to the end and may just go where no one’s been/ Spiral out, keep going/ spiral out, keep going…”

Spiral out, eh? Well, they stop Fibonacci’s Sequence at 13 before either resetting (in the case of the drums) or reversing (in the case of the lyrics), and there are 13 tracks on the album. So maybe that’s a clue as to where we should spiral out from.
The beginning of a spiral is its center, and the middle of the album is Parabol and Parabola, two songs which obviously are meant to be played one after the other.
So if we line up the tracks 1 through 13 on a sheet of paper, and start spiraling outwards we get a track order of 6,7,5,8,4,9,3,10,2,11,1,12 and finishing with track 13. Almost works, but not quite.

Look at the song. Danny Carey, the drummer, always connects 13 to 1, so maybe the tracks should also. And Maynard hits 13 and then starts going backwards. If we look at our new order, Lateralis is now the middle of the album, where Parabol would be if this were the normal track order.
So if we take what Danny and Maynard are doing with the Fibonacci sequence as clues, we can assume track 13 connects to track 1, and starts spiraling back inwards. Remember how Maynard isolated the 13 syllable line by having two lines of 8? Maybe we’re on the right track.

So let’s start a second spiral from 13 and go inwards using the numbers we would have left if we stopped the outward spiral at track nine.
The new track order then, would be 6,7,5,8,4,9,13,1,12,2,11,3,10. Does it work? Check out what Maynard sings in Track 1: The Grudge: “Saturn ascends, choose one or ten…” The movement of Saturn across the sky coincides inversely with the sun. If Saturn ascends, the sun is setting.
If we choose the original track order, we start with track 1. If we choose the alternate order, we end with track 10.
And if we look at the songs thematically, with Lateralis being the middle of the album, it accomplishes what is mentioned in the song: it “separates the body from the mind”. There is a journey now that we can follow through the music; the first spiral representing the body, the second representing the mind.

Tracks 6 and 7: Parabol/Parabola
These songs are about experiencing life by recognizing “this as a holy gift and celebrate our chance to be alive and breathing.“
Track 5: Schism
Maynard continually says, “I know the pieces fit” but a lack of communication has made them fall apart. And finally, he says, “Cold silence has the tendency to atrophy any sense of compassion.“
Track 8: Ticks and Leeches
“My blood is bruised and borrowed, you thieving bastards. You have turned my blood cold and bitter, beat my compassion black and blue.” Notice how the idea of compassion is now connected between the two songs in the new track order. At the end, he says, “I hope you choke.“
Track 4: Mantra
There aren’t any words, and in the original track order, just sounds like a strange vocal drone. In the new order, it comes across almost like a stylized gasping for air, which is eerie after Maynard’s wish, “I hope you choke.” Another interesting thing about this song is that the song plays the same if you play it backwards. Perhaps it’s another clue that there are two ways to listen to the album, and both are correct…

Track 9: Lateralis
“I embrace my desire to feel the rhythm, to feel connected enough to step aside and weep like a widow; to feel inspired to fathom the power, to witness the beauty, to bathe in the fountain, to swing on the spiral of our divinity and still be a human.” Here’s the middle, the thread both tying together and separating body and mind.

Track 13: Faaip De Oiad
The title of the song means “Voice of God” in Enochian, which is supposedly the language of angels.
This song is just creepy, all weird sound effects and buzzing covering a recording of a phone call on the Art Bell radio show (The phone call later proved to be a hoax). What this song does do, though, is signal a shift from a journey with another to a journey with the self.
Track 1: The Grudge
It’s a call to let go of the grudges that have built from the journey with another. “Let the waters kiss and transmutate these leaden grudges into gold. Let go.“
Track 12: Triad
Again, a track without words, but it has a tribal rhythm and a driving sound which creates images of struggle.
Track 2: The Patient
“If there were no rewards to reap, no loving embrace to see me through this tedious path I’ve chosen here, I certainly would have walked away by now. And I still may. I’m gonna wait it out.” The struggle from the previous song starts to wear down the speaker.
Track 11: Reflections
“As full and bright as I am, this light is not my own…And as I pull my head out I am without one doubt, don’t want to be down here feeding my narcissism. I must crucify the ego before it’s far too late. I pray the light lifts me out before I pine away.” The speaker recognizes the light within him, and seeks to separate that light from what he recognizes as his body.
Track 3: Eon Blue Apocalypse
Another track without words, but if the title suggests an apocalypse, the world ends not with a bang, but a whimper.
Track 10: Disposition
The alternate order ends with the conclusion that there always needs to be that journey with another to pull your self through. There are only three lines in the song. “Mention this to me. Mention something, anything. Mention this to me and watch the weather change.”

In this new track order the songs flow musically better in this order, too, in my opinion. The fade-out of Lateralis blends more naturally into the static fade-in of Faaip de Oiad and the end of Faaip de Oiad is echoed in The Grudge.
It’s easy to see why anyone might say I’m looking waaaaaay too deep into things; on the other hand I’m not so sure TOOL would be pissed off I’ve listened to their music so much that I find deeper personal meaning for me in it, even if it’s unintended.

Until next time,
Still paddlin’ the old knew…
_-Akatzen-_

Howdy, folks. Welcome back to The Book Report.

Got a good one for you this week. In 1966, Thomas Pynchon wrote The Crying of Lot 49, which TIME magazine included in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005. It’s a dense read, even though it has barely more than 150 pages. A “Lot” is an item in an auction that can be bid on, and the “crying” of a lot is the process the auctioneer takes to take bids.

The story begins with the heroine, Oedipa Maas, being named executor in the will of an ex-lover named Pierce Inverarity. Right off, you can see Pynchon playing with names and punning off them to play with themes. For instance, “arity” is a noun meaning the number of arguments a function can take; in logic it determines the number of inferences deducted from a fact. Inverarity is a Scottish name meaning “creek of arity”. “Inver” could also be a pun on infer. So Pierce Inverarity could be a pun meaning the piercing of the number of inferences deducted from a fact.
So what, you may ask, would be the significance of a name like Pierce Inverarity?

Oedipa’s execution of the will mingles in strange ways with the possible existence of an underground postal service. Pynchon mingles fact with fiction, and readers interested in deepening their understanding of the novel find that Pynchon packs quite a large number of facts into his short book.

The underground postal service in question is called W.A.S.T.E., an acronym for We Await Silent Tristero’s Empire. Thurn und Taxis is a royal German family that in the 16th Century held what appeared to be a monopoly on the postal system in Europe. The Trystero organization was a (fictional?) rival postal service that was forced underground after losing to the monopoly of a government run postal system. In the novel, W.A.S.T.E.‘s symbol was a crude drawing of the Thurn und Taxis postal horn with a mute in the end.

In The Crying of Lot 49 Pynchon plays with the idea that maybe people need conspiracies to fill the vacuum left by uncertainy. As Voltaire said, “If God didn’t exist man would have created him.” As such, the book is not about revealing the conspiracy. It’s about unfolding it slowly in front of us, teasing us with the idea, much as Oedipa is teased and tortured with the idea and wondering if she’ll ever know the truth.

The novel has left its mark on our culture in interesting, if not subtle, ways. For instance, Radiohead’s merchandise store is titled w.a.s.t.e. The muted post horn continues to show up in various places. In Santa Barbara in 2007, vandals tagged the University of California campus and other places in the area with the symbol.
It’s a fun, intriguing read. Go out and take a look; you might start to find the muted post horn in random places as well. Try not to let it bother you…

Until next time,
Still paddin’ the old knew…
_-Akatzen-_

Die bono, bonorum! Welcome back to The Book Report.

In 1989, acclaimed thriller writer Ken Follett deviated completely from his established genre to write The Pillars of the Earth, an epic piece of historical fiction set during the time in England known as The Anarchy, or The Nineteen-Year Winter. The Anarchy was a period of unsettled government and civil war following the death of King Henry I of England in 1135. Follett’s novel actually begins 15 years before The Anarchy with the sinking of The White Ship.

The White Ship was the 12th Century equivalent of The Titanic, with worse repercussions. It was a new ship boasting new technology, and in the reckless pursuit of speed struck a submerged rock off the coast of Barfleur. All but one person drowned, including King Henry’s only legitimate son and heir William Adelin.

“The vessel was the latest thing in marine transport, fitted with all the devices known to the shipbuilder of the time…The notoriety of this wreck is due to the very large number of distinguished persons on board; besides the king’s son and heir, there were two royal bastards, several earls and barons, and most of the royal household…its historical significance is that it left Henry without an obvious heir…its ultimate result was the disputed succession…” –A.L. Poole, From Domesday Book to Magna Carta, 1087–1216 Oxford Clarenden Press, 1966.

After William Adelin’s death, King Henry named his daughter Matilda as his heir. The decision was not a popular one and contested by several other barons. One such baron was King Henry’s nephew, Stephen of Blois. Stephen was a nephew of King Henry and grandson of William the Conqueror. When Hing Henry died in 1135, Stephen usurped the throne with the support of his brother Henry, who was bishop of Winchester. With the support of the church behind him, King Stephen was able to ease into his reign relatively peacefully.
In 1139, however, he lost much of the support from the church when he arrested and seized the castles of the bishops of Salsbury, Lincoln, and Ely. The same year, Matilda stormed England with her forces in an attempt to wrest the crown back. The battles of succession bloodied England with civil war until 1153, when Matilda’s son Henry signed a treaty assuring his right of succession upon King Stephen’s death, which happened the following year.
History does not remember Stephen of Blois fondly. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, annals containing the history of the Anglo-Saxons, had this to say:

“In the days of this King there was nothing but strife, evil, and robbery, for quickly the great men who were traitors rose against him. When the traitors saw that Stephen was a good-humoured, kindly, and easy-going man who inflicted no punishment, then they committed all manner of horrible crimes … And so it lasted for nineteen years while Stephen was King, till the land was all undone and darkened with such deeds, and men said openly that Christ and his angels slept”.

It was in this period of Anarchy that Ken Follett begins his story about the building of a cathedral in the fictional town of Kingsbridge. Follett paints a wide array of complex characters in his book, and their actions of love and lust, ambition and greed, bravery and courage, and betrayal and treachery affect each stone of the cathedral as it rises, so much that the cathedral becomes almost its own character in the book. The story extends past The Anarchy and into the reign of King Henry II; the story’s resolution comes through the murder and martyrdom of Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, in 1170.

Thomas Becket was originally a close friend and father-figure to Henry. When Henry became King, he used his relation with Becket to consolidate the influence of the Church in England and expand the influence of the Crown. Henry pushed too hard, however, and Becket finally turned against Henry, believing his actions would cause war between the Church and England.
Becket continued to cause trouble for King Henry, and finally on his sickbed he roared out his frustration. His exact words are in doubt, but one version is that he said, “Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest!” Four knights, Reginald FitzUrse, Hugh de Morville, William de Tracy, and Richard le Breton, interpreted this as a royal command and assassinated Becket in his church. Edward Grim, who was wounded during the attack, offered his account of the deed.

…The wicked knight leapt suddenly upon him, cutting off the top of the crown which the unction of sacred chrism had dedicated to God. Next he received a second blow on the head, but still he stood firm and immovable. At the third blow he fell on his knees and elbows, offering himself a living sacrifice, and saying in a low voice, ‘For the name of Jesus and the protection of the Church, I am ready to embrace death.’ But the third knight inflicted a terrible wound as he lay prostrate. By this stroke, the crown of his head was separated from the head in such a way that the blood white with the brain, and the brain no less red from the blood, dyed the floor of the cathedral. The same clerk who had entered with the knights placed his foot on the neck of the holy priest and precious martyr, and, horrible to relate, scattered the brains and blood about the pavements, crying to the others, ‘Let us away, knights; this fellow will arise no more.” Vita S. Thomae, Cantuariensis Archepiscopi et Martyris

Pope Alexander III canonized Becket as a Saint very soon after his death, and the populace, angered by his martyrdom, threw their support behind the Church, effectively establishing its authority in England. Follett mirrors this with the completion of the Kingsbridge cathedral in his book, and so the novel ends.

---

Follett wrote a sequel of sorts to The Pillars of the Earth in 2007 called World Without End. It featured the descendants of characters in the earlier novel and is not dependent upon readers having read one before the other.
In 2010, Starz produced an 8-part miniseries of The Pillars of the Earth. It starred Ian McShane, Rufus Sewell, Donald Sutherland, and Hayley Atwell, and was nominated for three Golden Globes (best miniseries, best actor for McShane, and best actress for Atwell).

Until next time,
Still paddlin’ the old knew…
_-Akatzen-_

Hey there, party people! Welcome back to The Book Report.

Tomorrow is St. Patrick’s Day, and I hope you’ll find some way to celebrate the hell out of it. Just don’t drink and drive. If you really want to be a rebel wear the color blue instead of green, since that was the color original associated with St. Patrick. And if you’re lucky enough to live in or visit Cork County, make sure to go to the world’s shortest St. Patrick’s Day parade in Dripsey: the hundred yards separating the village’s two pubs.

Also, be sure to check out Semantink’s web-comic The Undergrounds. The trade paperback of Season 1 is available for pre-sale at a discounted price. It features every episode plus a plethora of extras (that’s right, a plethora). It’s about your classic movie (and literature) monsters working in a coffee shop, written by Marcel Losada, Michael Drace Fountain, James Ninness, Joe Pezzula, and Derek Johnson (each author writes a different character) and drawn by the insanely talented Daniel Touchet.

“People of the world, relax!“
That’s the theme parroted (at times, quite literally) through Tom Robbins’ novel Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates (Bantam Books, 2000). The title comes from Arthur Rimbaud’s 1873 poem A Season in Hell.

Que les villes s’allument dans le soir. Ma journée est faite ; je quitte l’Europe. L’air marin brûlera mes poumons ; les climats perdus me tanneront. Nager, broyer l’herbe, chasser, fumer surtout ; boire des liqueurs fortes comme du métal bouillant, — comme faisaient ces chers ancêtres autour des feux.
Je reviendrai, avec des membres de fer, la peau sombre, l’œil furieux : sur mon masque, on me jugera d’une race forte. J’aurai de l’or : je serai oisif et brutal. Les femmes soignent ces féroces infirmes retour des pays chauds.

Let cities light their lamps in the evening. My daytime is done; I am leaving Europe. The air of the sea will burn my lungs; lost climates will turn my skin to leather. To swim, to pulverize grass, to hunt, above all to smoke; to drink strong drinks, as strong as molten ore, — as did those dear ancestors around their fires.
I will come back with limbs of iron, with dark skin, and angry eyes: in this mask, they will think I belong to a strong race. I will have gold: I will be brutal and indolent. Women love these fierce invalids from hot cimates. (from Mauvais Sang, or Bad Blood)

The story follows CIA agent (and Broadway show-tunes lover) Switters through the Amazon and across the deserts of The Middle East as he tries to understand and unravel a shamanistic curse and the secret third prophecy of Our Lady of Fátima. Like his other novels, Fierce Invalids… is a hilarious romp through some Serious Ideas.
Robbins is a master at thoroughly researching a subject and then letting his imagination run wild over the parts the subject leaves unexplained.

I know a few weeks ago I wrote a bit about his book Skinny Legs and All, but Fierce Invalids… tickled me too much, and hilariously criticized to many great topics, to not mention on The Book Report. One particular section dealt with how the three major monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) had their religious texts consistently mistranslated by their holy leaders when they wished to achieve political ends. After my look at religious philosophy over the past three weeks, I found such criticisms especially poignant.
Anyway, go give Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates a read, pick up a pre-order of The Undergrounds trade, and enjoy a *delicious, frosty beer tomorrow.

Until next time,
Still paddlin’ the old knew…
_-Akatzen-_

*Delicious generally means it does not have Coors, Budweiser, or Miller in the title.

Greetings! And welcome back to The Book Report.

The past two weeks I’ve been looking at some interesting religious philosophy that a) I feel is worth examining no matter your religious affiliation (or lack thereof), and b) presents challenging ideas and concepts— particularly for religious conservatives. It’s been a fun ride so far, and I’m excited to bring the examinations to a close with a look at Søren Kierkegaard.

Søren Aabye Kierkegaard was born on May 5th 1813 in Copenhagen. He was the youngest of seven children, born in a family headed by a deeply religious, and deeply disturbed, man. Michael Kierkegaard was a devout Lutheran who valued order and discipline so much that he punished not only himself but his family for his sins. He believed that he was cursed for his sins and that his children would die before he did, and he was almost correct. By the time he died, only Søren and his elder brother Peter were still alive.

When Søren attended university, he became plagued with the idea that his life lacked purpose. He felt he was merely a spectator of life and envied the focus of “great men.” In one of his journal entries he writes, “What I really need to do is to get clear about ‘what am I to do, not what I must know”. In 1841 he wrote his first book Everything Must Be Doubted, starting a life of writing concerned more about doing than knowing.
The problem with knowing, Kierkegaard felt, was that truth was entirely subjective. “Science and scholarship want to teach that becoming objective is the way.” But objectivity does not motivate humans or provide meaning to life, those come from passion and desire and moral and religious commitment — all which lie within the subjective view of each person. As such, Kierkegaard rejected the use of organized systems such as religion to provide Truth because they did not recognize the personal belief or power of the individual. “Put me in a system and you negate me,” he writes. “I am not a mathematical symbol— I AM.”

Subjective Truth and the power of the Individual would be themes Kierkegaard would write about continually. In the interests of brevity, The Book Report’s focus will narrow to two books: Either/Or and Fear and Trembling.

Either/Or
Kierkegaard wrote many of his books under pseudonyms, as a way of creating a dialogue. Either/Or was published in two volumes in 1943, with each volume being a point of view in a debate between the two volumes. So for the book, he actually wrote under three psuedonyms: the author of Volume 1, the author of Volume 2, and the editor Victor Eremita. The debate in the book is between the aesthetic life and the ethical one.

Every human being, no matter how slightly gifted he is, however subordinate his position in life may be, has a natural need to formulate a life-view, a conception of the meaning of life and of its purpose…and the popular expression heard in all ages and from various stages is this: One must enjoy life. There are, of course, many variations of this, depending on differences in the conceptions of enjoyment, but all are agreed that we are to enjoy life. But the person who says that he wants to enjoy life always posits a condition that either lies outside the individual or is within the individual in such a way that it is not there by virtue of the individual himself.

The aesthetic life is the external life, and focused on immediacy. His life is dictated by fate and goes where the winds of change blow him. On the positive side, he is moved by passion and desire and a sense of artistic wonderment. Commitment and repetition, however, bore the aesthetic, and in extreme cases move the aesthetic towards despair and depression. The life of an aesthetic may sound irresponsible, but at the same time he has found the meaning and purpose of life: to enjoy it.

The ethical life is one focused on the internal. An esthetic can appreciate the same passion and desire that so moves the aesthetic, but at the same time his life is defined by critical reflection. Where the aesthetic allows external forces to help shape his character and values, the esthetic uses his Self: the power of the Individual. Another way of looking at it is the difference between an active control of your life (and the responsibilities and consequences that go with it) and a passive control in the aesthetic life (which absolves responsibility). I like how this debate ties in with Nietzsche’s creed of production over faithful acceptance.

Kierkegaard wrote a complement piece to Either/Or under his own name titled Two Upbuilding Discourses, 1843. The way I look at it is he uses the psuedonymous Either/Or to present the idea and then presents his Discourses to show how he thinks the idea should be applied.
Picture the idea as a planet. The aesthetic life would be the atmosphere. The esthetic life is the crust. The esthetic can appreciate the aesthetic but not the other way around. In his Two Upbuilding Discourses, Kierkegaard adds the core of the planet: religious belief. It is a move from Outer to Inner and then on to Eternal.

“Do not interrupt the flight of your soul; do not distress what is best in you; do not enfeeble your spirit with half wishes and half thoughts. Ask yourself and keep on asking until you find the answer, for one may have known something many times, acknowledged it; one may have willed something many times, attempted it—and yet, only the deep inner motion, only the heart’s indescribable emotion, only that will convince you that what you have acknowledged belongs to you, that no power can take it from you—for only the truth that builds up is truth for you.”

He says that the eternal power in a human being is faith. He offers as an example a sailor out in storm-tossed waves. The sailor does not look at the ever-changing waves, he looks at the forever-constant and faithful stars. The forever-constancy conquers the uncertainty of the future. Kierkegaard takes a closer look at faith in his book Fear and Trembling.

Fear and Trembling
Fear and Trembling was also written under a pseudonym, this time called Johannes de silentio (John the silent). The book is an examination of the story of Abraham’s charge by God to sacrifice Isaac in Genesis 22:1–12. The Problemata the book attempts to work out is this: “The ethical expression of what Abraham did is that he meant to murder Isaac, the religious expression is that he meant to sacrifice Isaac”. How can a murderer be revered as a “knight of faith”?

Kierkegaard believed that religious belief required a paradox. Scientific objectivity lies in the understanding of all that can be proved to exist. There is no way to prove the existence of God, so the paradox lies in believing he exists anyway— what Kierkegaard called “the leap of faith”. Because of the paradox, religious belief is based on the Individual, ie. no one believes for the same reason. Everyone has their own leap of faith, and the more knowledge one accrues in science, and psychology, and human understanding the greater the leap that is required. Essentially, what Kierkegaard means is that faith requires doubt.
Take the Creation vs. Evolution issue. Many Christians reject the scientific proofs which support the theory of Evolution because it “conflicts with their faith”. But Kierkegaard would not call that faith. He would call it a reliance on an external system composed of similar believers (ie. a church). Faith would be accepting the objective scientific proofs and believing anyway. But it can only be done individually.

When God ordered Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, Abraham could either do it or refuse. There is no paradox in that. Kierkegaard recognizes the ethical anxiety Abraham must have faced in choosing to sacrifice Isaac; only he would know that God commanded it, the rest of the world would call it murder. But there is no paradox in that either. The faith of Abraham lies in his belief in the promise God made to him that he would be the father of many nations (Genesis 17). His obedience to God was in rejecting the ethical, his faith lay in the paradox that his son would be restored after dying, something seemingly impossible and full of doubt.

Faith is the highest passion in a person. There perhaps are many in every generation who do not come to faith, but no one goes further…But life has tasks enough also for the person who does not come to faith, and if he loves these honestly, his life will not be wasted, even if it is never comparable to the lives of those who perceived and grasped the highest. But the person who has come to faith (whether he is extraordinarily gifted or plain and simple does not matter) does not come to a standstill. Fear and Trembling p. 122–123

I think that’s enough out of me for now. Hopefully I’ve managed to intrigue and entertain just the slightest bit; I know the past few weeks have included some weighty matters. Never fear, however, if it’s been less than thrilling for you. I promise many more Book Reports concerning less intellectually demanding material.

Until next time,
Still paddlin’ the old knew…
_-Akatzen-_

Heya, folks! Welcome back to The Book Report!

I hope you enjoyed last week’s Book Report; I know it was a bit of a different flavor than you may be used to. I wanted to use this week’s Report to take a look at a few other bits of religious philosophy (hence the title of the post, get it?) and if you get so inspired perhaps start dialoguing a bit in the comments section. I’d be curious to read what other people think of all this.

For starters, I’d like to take a brief look at Friedrich Nietzsche. Some of you may be confused. “What? Nietzsche? The man who claimed God is dead; he is a religious philosopher?” Strangely enough, I feel it is precisely because he claims God is dead that he deserves a mention.

For starters, it is important to remember that Nietzsche began his search for Truth deeply wedded to religion. His father was a Lutheran pastor, and studies of young Friedrich’s life show he had every intention of entering seminary and following his father’s steps. But then something happened. When he was eighteen and attending Schulpforta (a kind of boarding school where young men were groomed for university), he wrote an essay entitled Fate and History. The essay was an unbelievably daring attempt to imagine what life might be like if God, the holy spirit, immortality, or divine inspiration had been the result of men “led astray by a vision.” Without religion, what kind of reality exists? Nietzsche’s answer was to be found in nature (the natural sciences and a universe bound by natural laws) and in history (a sequence of coincidences and causalities). What the idea of God did, then, was provide nature with meaning and history with goals. But in the imaginary world without God, meaning and goals were either irrelevant or they existed in spite of religious phantasmagoria. Nietzsche refused to believe the past and the future held no purpose, but that meant in a world with God meaning and goals were either determined by God or up to men to derive them. Nietzsche chose production over faithful acceptance, his first tentative steps towards the idea of a Will to Power which defined so much of his career.

In 1864, Nietzsche went to the University of Bonn to study theology and philology, but abandoned theological studies soon after. And then reading Arthur Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation awakened in him an interest in philosophy. His famous phrase “God is dead” did not appear until 1882 in The Gay Science and again in 1883 in Thus Spake Zarathrustra. In Section 125 of The Gay Science, titled The Madman, he writes,

“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”

What I find important about this statement is that Nietzsche claims we killed God, and not by accident but by willful murder.
Some of his other writings (such as Beyond Good and Evil written in 1886) deal with the idea of Absolute Truths, such as the absolute value of Good and the absolute value of Evil, and how those Truths become obscured by smaller truths, such as the relative value of good and the relative value of evil. One criticism he has of the Church is that it presents itself as an Absolute Truth (the one True Religion), when in reality the Church is merely a small truth obscuring (or killing) the Absolute Truth of God. And then the Church (really at this point deserving a lowercase ‘c’, doesn’t it) offers its small truths of good and evil to the people, who hold them up as Absolutes and obscure the actual absolute value of Good and Evil. By choosing truth over Truth, we deny the need to know about any Absolute value and effectively kill it.
Hence we kill God in favor of god, and all the imperfections that come with an obscured version of Truth.

Nietzsche’s final act was to prophecy the arrival of the Übermensch (“Overman”) or superman. Someday, he reasoned, we will use our Will to Power in service of Life to strip away the truths and finally achieve an understanding of Truth. The other-worldly promises of heaven by Christianity, he says, are an attempt to flee the unhappiness of the world rather than take the braver and more honest approach to try to fix it. Concern for the next life is foolish when there is so much to be done now.

I find these ideas fit in nicely with Tolstoy’s concern for The Sermon on the Mount over the Nicene Creed and the idea that the kingdom of God really is within you.

Let’s stop here for the moment. If you’re truly interested in all that I’m blathering about, I just gave you a mouthful to digest (especially since philosophers are still trying to digest it almost 150 years later). There’s plenty to think about here without moving onto my next subject: Søren Kierkegaard.
I hope you are enjoying reading this as much as I am in writing it.

Until next time,
Still paddlin’ the old knew…
_-Akatzen-_