Looping Wor(l)d

A couple of days ago Mark Charan Newton wrote on Twitter about “Dune”,

Why did no one tell me that DUNE was this good? I blame you all.

The ebook has a good 6,000 pages… Could be a while!

Of all the things about Dune, what strikes me as most impressive is Herbert’s then avant garde ecological thinking. Amazing for the time.

Systems theory, deep ecology, self-regulation; and as the basis for a narrative, too.

And in 1965!

The science is really sound and advanced for its time. More the philosophy of the science, but still ahead of the curve.

so that was enough to spark my interest. I added the series to my wordcount page (it’s 860k overall) and started looking for the usual stuff, like dates, structure (it’s two trilogies, with an open end and the “mother of all cliffhangers” because of the author’s death) and reviews.

It was quite interesting. I actually had a copy of Dune for a very long time, but never read it because I saw the movie and that for me always takes back something from the fresh experience reading a book. I guess now I’ll read Dune at some point if the world doesn’t end (I actually already started, but the italian translation I have is a bit lacking in prose). As typical of me I’m more interested in the sequels to Dune more than Dune itself, and I notice how pretty much every review complains about Herbert indulging too much in dense philosophy, making the books a struggle to read.

If you remove all the specific references they would work perfect as Malazan reviews. And I know that Erikson is a big fan of Dune and that it was a source of inspiration.

I post here a short essay by Herbert, because the link up on the wikipedia is actually dead, but I was able to retrieve it anyway through google cache. And because vaguely related to what I was writing in comments over at Bakker’s blog (continues up and down).

P.S.
All the other sequels and spin-offs that his son and the other writer have published, as far as I’m concerned, do not exist.

When I was young and my world was dominated by indestructible adults, I learned an ancient way of thinking that is as dangerous as a rotten board in a stepladder. It told me that the only valuable things were those that I could hold unchanged: the love of a wise grandfather, the enticing mystery of the trail through our woodlot into the forest, the feeling of lake water on a hot summer day, the colors (ahh, those colors) when I opened my new pencil box on the first day of school…

But the grandfather died, a developer bulldozed the woodlot, loggers clear-cut the forest, the lake is polluted and posted against swimming, smog has deadened my ability to detect subtle odors, and pencil boxes aren’t what they used to be.

Neither am I.

There may be a quiet spot in my mind where nothing moves and the places of my childhood remain unchanged, but everything else moves and changes. There’s dangerous temptation in the nostalgic dream, in the expertise of yesteryear. The nameless animal that is all of us cannot live in places that no longer exist. I want to address myself to the survival of that nameless animal, looking back without regrets at even the best of what was and will never be again. We should salvage what we can, but even salvaging changes things.

The way of this change is called “process” and it requires that we be prepared to encounter a multiform reality. Line up three bowls in front of you. Put ice water in the one on the left, hot water in the one on the right, and lukewarm water in the middle one. Soak your left hand in the ice water and right hand in the hot water for about a minute, then plunge both hands into the bowl of lukewarm water. Your left hand will tell you the water of the middle bowl is warm, your right hand will report cold. A small experiment in relativity.

We live in a universe dominated by relativity and change, but our intellects keep demanding fixed absolutes. We make our most strident demands for absolutes that contain comforting reassurance. We will misread and/or misunderstand almost anything that challenges our favorite illusions.

It has been noted repeatedly that science students (presumably selected for open-mindedness) encounter a basic difficulty when learning to read X-ray plates. Almost universally, they demonstrate an inability to distinguish between what is shown on the plate and what they believe will be shown. They see things that are not there. The reaction can be linked directly to the preset with which they approach the viewing of a plate. When confronted with proof of the extent to which preconceptions influenced their judgment, they tend to react with surprise, anger, and rejection.

We are disposed to perceive things as they appear, filtering the appearance through our preconceptions and fitting it into the past forms (including all the outright mistakes, illusions, and myths of past forms). If we allow only the right hand’s message to get through, then “cold” is the absolute reality to which we cling. When our local reality has attached to it that other message: “This is the way out,” then we’re dealing with a form of “holy truth.” Cold becomes a way of life.

Actually, I bought both. “The Republic of Wine” arrived first.

It reads a bit like an alcoholic version of Alice in Wonderland. The sense of humor is hit and miss but the prose is lively and playful enough to make it quite fun to read. These are just a few quotes I enjoyed from a story “embedded” in the book.

“Dear friends, dear students, when I learned that I had been engaged as a visiting professor at the Brewer’s College, this supreme honor was like a warm spring breeze in midwinter sweeping past my loyal, red-blooded heart, my green lungs and intestines, as well as my purple liver, the seat of acquiescence and accommodation. I can stand behind this sacred podium, made of pine and cypress and decorated with colorful plastic flowers, to lecture to you primarily because of its special qualities. You all know that when alcohol enters the body, most of it is broken down in the liver…”

Diamond Jin stood at the podium in the General Education Lecture Hall of Liquorland’s Brewer’s College solemnly discharging his duties. He had chosen a broad and far-reaching topic for this, his first lecture – Liquor and Society. In the tradition of brilliant, high-ranking leaders, who steer clear of specifics when they speak in public – like God looking down from on high, invoking times ancient and modern, calling forth heaven and earth, a sweeping passage through time and space – he proved his worth as visiting professor by not allowing the details of the topic to monopolize his oration. He permitted himself to soar through the sky like a heavenly steed, yet from time to time knew he must come down to earth. The rhetoric flowed from his mouth, changing course at will, yet every sentence was anchored in his topic, directly or indirectly.
Nine hundred Liquorland college students, male and female, heads swelling, hearts and minds ready to take flight, along with their professors, instructors, teaching assistants, and college administrators, sat as one body, a galaxy of celestial small-fry gazing up at a luminous star.

[...]the lights singing, the wine surging through my veins, in the flow of time my thoughts travel upstream[...]

“Dear comrades and dear students, do not have blind faith in talent, for talent is really nothing but hard work. Of course, materialists do not categorically deny that some people are more lavishly endowed than others. But this is not an absolute determinant. I acknowledge that I possess a superior natural ability to break down alcohol, but were it not for arduous practice, attention to technique, and artistry, the splendid ability to drink as much as I want without getting drunk would have been unattainable.”

By the way, Howard Goldblatt, the translator that on the cover is called as “the foremost translator of Chinese literature in the West”, has probably butchered these books:

Goldblatt added that Mo Yan writing style is often unfamiliar with Western readers, and that publishers often demanded that he trim parts of Mo’s novels.

I got a third-class degree and a first-class illusion I was a poet. But nothing could have been less poetic than my pseudo-aristocratic, seeing-through-all boredom with life in general and with making a living in particular. I was too green to know that all cynicism masks a failure to cope – an impotence, in short.

Handsomely equipped to fail, I went out into the world.

It poured with rain the day I left. But I was filled with excitement, a strange exuberant sense of taking wing. I didn’t know where I was going, but I knew what I needed. I needed a new land, a new race, a new language; and, although I couldn’t have put it into words then, I needed a new mystery.

The picture above (taken with the only crappy camera I could find) is of the book I received today, The Magus by John Fowles. I was able to order it for cheap from the used books on Amazon, and I was glad to find out that this copy I was able to get was indeed the one published in 1974.

I could have bought a newer edition but this one got the best cover (not as good as the original hardcover, but better than… this) and, more importantly, every review I read mentioned that the original version was superior to the revised one, and the revised one is the only one that is published these days. The revision was published in 1977, so if I could find a version prior to that date I could be certain it was the one I wanted. For the most part, what is criticized about the revision is that the writer attempted to clarify the mystery of the book, but ended up defusing and lessening that valuable and meaningful air of mystery. It was essentially made more accessible, but also less powerful. Since what interests me is the myth and mystery, I had to get the first, uncompromised version.

Not sure if the book will make my official reading queue and if I’ll continue commenting it, but for now I read the first chapter (and it’s excellent) and compared with the revised version available on Amazon. The differences are minimal, some spelling changes and unneeded grammar fixes. The biggest change I found was “we argued about essence and existence” turned into “we argued about being and nothingness”.

Bakker’s recent analysis of fiction is a meaningful one (pun intended). I’d say this book is certainly trying to “max out meaning”, but contrarily to Bakker, the romantic vision is one that, once relocated and properly understood, still carries value for me (but this becomes again another contradiction, as you might imagine).