Read This!
Here are some things I have recently read and recommend.
- Several years ago, Marilynne Robinson wrote a wonderful novel called
Housekeeping. Her latest book is called The Death of Adam:
Essays on Modern Thought, and it's also quite
wonderful. Robinson describes herself as a "contrarian", someone who
likes neither the commonly accepted answers nor their opposites,
preferring to frame the whole question differently. And the essays
do show an independent mind at work. The major essays here are
"Puritans and Prigs" and two essays on the person she calls "Jean
Cauvin" because there are too many prejudices attached to "John
Calvin", the name by which he is more commonly known. This one is
definitely worth reading and re-reading.
- Have you ever heard of Avram Davidson? During his lifetime, few
people ever did, even if they were regular readers of science fiction
and fantasy. Davidson's case is one of those examples that show how
the "ghettoizing" of SF denies some authors the recognition they
deserve. In Davidson's case, this was complicated by a difficult
personality and a preference for the short story, and the result is
that he never achieved much prominence. The posthumous anthology
The Avram Davidson Treasury collects his best short stories,
with introductions by an impressive array of science fiction and
fantasy writers. There are some truly wonderful stories here, many
of which have very little or no fantastic element. One of the stories
("Or All the Seas With Oysters") is based on a conceit that is so
intriguing that it has turned into urban folklore and is regularly
imitated. But what stands out is the originality of Davidson's voice
and of his way with words.
- Gardner Dozois collection The Good Old Stuff is a celebration
of the old fashioned "space opera" or "space adventure." The stories
are old fashioned, politically incorrect, naive, and fun. Whatever
John Clute
says, the book makes great light reading.
- Jacques Ellul was well known in the 1960s and 1970s for his critique
of the "Technological Society." Writing from a Christian standpoint
that is sometimes more and sometimes less explicit in his books,
Ellul developed a complex understanding of the modern world and a
radical proposal for how Christians must live in this world. I
just read his Money and Power. In this book, he begins by
developing a biblical theology of money and its use, then derives a
number of interesting (and difficult) conclusions. A challenging,
bracing book.
- However confident we may be about the correctness of certain
scientific conclusions (in this case, evolutionary theory), it's
always good to listen to those disagree. Phillip Johnson has mounted
a thoroughgoing attack on modern evolutionary theory, arguing that it
is based not merely on scientific data, but also on prior
metaphysical commitments, and that these prior commitments trump the
data on many occasions. His book Objections Sustained is a
collection of his essays on the subject, and therefore makes a good
introduction to his line of thought. Johnson is no nutcase: he's a
serious person making serious points to which scientists should
listen.
- Some months ago I found myself having to sit around for several
hours at an airport, not feeling too well, tired, anxious to get
home. Umberto Eco's How to Travel with a Salmon saved my
life. This is a book of short essays originally published in a
magazine column called Diario Minimo. They are funny,
intelligent, wonderful. I read almost the whole thing while waiting
for my plane, and the time flew by.
- I. Grattan-Guinness' History of the Mathematical Sciences: The
Rainbow of Mathematics was
published some time ago in England, but the American edition has only
now appeared from Norton. It's a really nice book, with many quirks
and also many virtues. One interesting feature of the book is its
attention to recent mathematics: open it in the middle, and you'll be
reading about eighteenth or nineteenth century mathematics. Another
distinguishing characteristic is the book's attention to the
interaction between mathematics and other pursuits (ranging from
physics to numerology). The most interesting, however, may be a
number of ideas that the author introduces and uses regularly:
"notional applications", the distinction between "thinking" and
"theory-building", "desimplification", "covert mathematics", and a
rather idiosyncratic classification of the root kinds of mathematical
thinking (arithmetic, geometry, topology, trigonometry, statics,
dynamics, probability, part-whole theory---note the absence of
algebra!). The focus is (quite consciously) on European mathematics,
with some attention to early non-European work. All in all, a very
interesting book.
- Veteran visitors to this page know that I'm nuts about Dorothy
L. Sayers (those who don't know about it should see
below). So it's probably not surprising that I've just read
Thrones, Dominations, her famously unfinished Lord Peter
novel which has just been published (completed by Jill Paton
Walsh). It may not be exactly what DLS would have written, but Walsh
has done a great job of imitating the real thing. Probably not for
everyone, but anyone who has read the Lord Peter books should make
sure to read this one too.
- Even better, however, are the two volumes (so far) of The Letters
of Dorothy L. Sayers. I think it was C. S. Lewis who once said
that if Sayers' letters ever were published she would be remembered
far more as a letter writer than as a novelist. That's a bit of
overstatement (and it omits the plays, the essays, and Dante!), but
these are still wonderful volumes. For a Sayers fanatic such as me,
they are a gift; I'm deeply grateful to Barbara Reynolds for putting
these together, and I hope enough people buy them to keep the
project going.
Not read all that recently, but still recommended:
- Every so often, I go back to Dante's Commedia... I first
read it (in prose translation) when I was 11 or so, and every so
often I go back and read it (or parts of it) again, usually in the
Sayers translation, since that gives me a chance to meet two old
friends at one time. Dante is fascinating on many levels. He is one
of the greatest Christian poets, a master of the "affirmative
way". It's interesting to contrast his moral conviction with the
twentieth century tendency to excuse all evil, his belief in
redemption with our determinism. His attention to detail is amazing,
and he even gets some of his science right.
- Gene Wolfe's Nightside the Long Sun, Lake of the Long
Sun, Caldé of the Long Sun, and Exodus from
the Long Sun form a cycle of four books, but they read more
like one long novel split over four volumes. The main character in
these is Silk, who is a kind of priest (a "patera") in a future
society that seems to exist inside a huge spaceship heading for
another star. This is sophisticated, well-written, complex,
wonderful. Each of the books is a good read, but the combined effect
of the four books is simply stunning, a story about moral leadership
in difficult times with strong religious overtones. Like all of
Wolfe's books this one is full of mysteries and puzzles for one to
mull over. It'll repay re-reading many times. For my money, Gene
Wolfe is the most interesting writer in the SF/Fantasy field
today.
- If you haven't yet read Wolfe's earlier work, you should. Orb Books
has recently reprinted a whole bunch of them. Look for The Fifth
Head of Cerberus, Pandora, by Holly Hollander,
Shadow and Claw and Sword and Citadel (the latter
two make up another cycle known as The Book of the New
Sun). Also out are a wonderful short story collection entitled
The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other
Stories, which contains some of Wolfe's best writing, as well
as Castle of Days, Storeys from the Old Hotel,
The Devil in a Forest and Peace. They're all worth
reading. Some (the New Sun) are far-future stuff, so far in the
future that our time is only a distant memory. (There's a neat
scene near the beginning where the narrator tries to make sense of a
photograph of an astronaut planting a U. S. flag on the moon.) Other
of his books (Pandora and Peace) have very little (if
anything) of the fantastic in them. But they're all subtle and
intelligent.
- Finally, I recommend anything written by
Dorothy L. Sayers. From her detective novels to her religious plays
to her translation of Dante, Sayers is worth listening to. I'm
particularly fond of her two essays on women's issues, collected in
Are Women Human? and of her cycle of radio plays on the
life of Jesus, The Man Born to be King. Look also for
Barbara Reynolds' biography of Sayers, which I think is the best one
available.
Last modified: Thu Dec 17 10:04:24 -0500 1998