Zone One by Colson Whitehead

Source of book: Audiobook from the library

How to even explain this book? It’s a zombie apocalypse novel. And a literary novel written by a serious author. It’s a thoughtful examination of consumer culture. It’s an ode to the trappings of our culture, from strip malls to chain restaurants to bureaucracy. It’s these things and more.

I would never have just picked a zombie book off a shelf. Not that I have anything against zombies. I’m not a big genre fiction reader, even if I do enjoy a murder mystery from time to time. This one caught my eye because the author, Colson Whitehead, recently wrote a re-imagining of the Underground Railroad as a literal train. The book sounded interesting, but, as it was new, it was popular, and thus on a waiting list. So, I checked out his other books, and discovered that this one was available on audiobook. Since I had several out-of-town cases within a two week period, and this book was about the right length for the combined trips, I gave it a shot. 

It was, to say the least, an interesting experience. There is the requisite blood and gore - although not gratuitous. There are the standard boxes checked, although some zombie tropes are changed for the story. There are suspenseful passages, but suspense isn’t really the point. Horror abounds, but the banality of it all is more frightening than the horror itself. The pace is slow, and the constant flashbacks can be disorienting. Although some lines are a bit trite, most of it is written in a decidedly literary style, quite different from the page-turning pace of typical genre fiction.

One of the major changes to standard zombie orthodoxy is the introduction of “stragglers.” These are the one percent of the infected that don’t go in search of edible flesh. Instead, they hang around some touchstone of their previous life, endlessly repeating the same tasks. The copy boy in the law firm. The fortune teller at her desk. The man flying a kite that has long since disintegrated. These stragglers can be found throughout the book doing mundane things without recognition of anything else around them. It is these that make for the moral core of the book.

Since stragglers are not really a threat - they won’t harm anyone - is it ethical to kill them? On the other hand, they aren’t really “there” in any cognitive sense, so isn’t killing them an act of mercy? And can we trust them to stay benign? And, more disturbingly, how exactly are stragglers different from us? Aren’t most of us drones at what we do? Is the meaning we assign to our activities more valid than what the stragglers assign? How do we know?

In this book, the protagonist’s job is to go through part of Manhattan as a “sweeper,” cleaning up the remaining zombies that escaped the soldiers. Most of these are stragglers, easy to put down. But there are other zombies, the more common “skels” (short for skeleton) that have gotten trapped or locked in. These are more dangerous, and require decisive action to kill.

After the zombies are killed, the sweepers put them in body bags, and place them in the street for Disposal, who collects them and eventually incinerates them. One of the best lines in the book comes after the author describes why the sweepers are not permitted to toss the bodies out the window. They tend to splatter. Anyway, Disposal is not amused. “Defenestration unduly aggravated their job.”

This is one of the uncomfortable truths of war, though. At its heart, it involves killing. And killing humans. Real people. And one cannot do that without a protective defense mechanism to shield one from the horror of what one is doing. The protagonist, nicknamed “Mark Spitz,” (we never learn his real name) occupies an interesting psychological space. He tends to see people he knows in the faces of the stragglers, and yet he doesn’t really have difficulty killing. He himself isn’t sure why - or he doesn’t want to know.

One of the most disturbing scenes in the book comes as the author reveals how these defense mechanisms work for other characters. For Gary, the marginalized mechanic, he envisions the undead as the people who have disrespected him, the establishment finally getting theirs, the people who have called him epithets of all kinds, and called the cops on them for noise. For Kaitlyn, the former preppy girl, “this scourge came from a different population...single moms incessantly breeding, flouters of speed laws, and those who had only themselves to blame for their ridiculous credit card debt.” The sort who didn’t attend parent teacher conferences, and ate fast food too often. Both Gary and Kaitlyn are revealed as much by who they denigrate as anything else they do. The people who are subhuman to them. I’d say that Whitehead is being rather unsubtle here, caricaturing the views of the left and right, but at least as far as Kaitlyn goes, I have heard far too many of those things in my own circles. Heck, I’ve said some of them, something I am ashamed of having done. Whitehead’s summary is devastating:

If the beings they destroyed were their own creations, and not the degraded remnants of the people described on the “things’” driver's licenses, so be it. We never see other people anyway, only the monsters we make of them.

If this political season has proven anything, it is the tremendous power of making monsters of the “other,” the better to support policies that harm or destroy them…

That’s one of several truly depressing themes of this book. Another is that there are no permanent refuges. Every refuge fails. Every barricade fails. Every human tie fails. Mark Spitz feels this instinctively, and he seems to have a preternatural ability to sense when it is time to move on. This is his one survival skill. He describes himself as “B average” at everything. And mediocrity is perfectly suited to a mediocre world, as he puts it. He knows how to focus on what is necessary to get by. To get that B, but never an F or an A. To stay out of trouble and off of the radar of nearly everyone else. And thus, he survives where no one else can.

One of the strengths of this book is its characters, which are interesting and sympathetic. You really do care about them, even the ones destined to be zombie food. Everyone is flawed, and most have redeeming features. At first glance, many of the bit characters seem like “types.” And they are intended to be. But if they stick around for more than a page, the edges soften, and they become human. Kaitlyn should be annoying - and she is at times - but the war has changed her, and her attachment to Gary and Mark, who she would probably never socialize with ordinarily, shows a depth of character one would not expect from her shallow pre-apocalypse lifestyle.

In any suspense or horror book, there are bound to be set pieces. In many books, you can envision the future movie. (One of my beefs with Peter and the Starcatchers, which was mostly enjoyable notwithstanding.) Zone One has several set pieces. But they completely defy expectations. Normally, one would think of an action sequence that would play out with spraying blood and severed limbs. Or a tense scene with ominous music.

These are different. Each set piece ends up as a paean to some facet of culture. The opening scene in the offices of a large law firm has its suspense, but mostly, it is about the culture of the big firm, intent on winning and image and being important. It is no surprise that the zombies are locked in Human Resources. Even the details of the wall art and furnishings come into the story, and in a surprisingly loving manner. Whitehead both satirizes and eulogizes these trappings of our modern life.

Other sets include one in a chain restaurant, one in an expensively restored farmhouse, one on I-95, and one in an upscale toy store. It is easy to recognize each of these and their one-time inhabitants. Likewise, the diet fads, the addiction to cell phones, suburban car culture, and the ever-present corporate sponsorship and consumerism are both mocked and held up as the comforts of modern civilization that will be among the things missed after it crashes down.

For the most part, these are all things that this west coast denizen can recognize, albeit with an east coast twist. There is one, though, that puzzled me. Mark Spitz was raised as a member of the educated middle class on Long Island. For some reason, he seems to take every chance to run down Connecticut. Every depravity. Every annoyance. Every incompetence. Connecticut. So, east coast readers, what is this all about? Why does he hate Connecticut?

Colson Whitehead is an interesting character himself. He is an African American writer, who defies the usual stereotypes. In a 1999 interview with Salon, he noted that he had more freedom than previous generations.

Definitely, decades ago, there was the protest novel, and then there was “tell the untold story, find our unerased history.” Then there’s the militant novel of insurrection from the ’60s. There were two rigid camps in the ’60s: the Black Arts movement, denouncing James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison for being too white, and Ralph Ellison calling the Black Arts writers too militant and narrow, not universal enough. Now I think there are a lot more of us writing and a lot more different areas we’re exploring. It’s not as polemicized. I’m dealing with serious race issues, but I’m not handling them in a way that people expect.

Zone One is definitely that way. It handles plenty of serious issues, including race. However, we don’t know the races of the characters other than our assumptions about them - at least until near the end. Kaitlyn, naturally, is a blonde. Gary and Mark are both African American, but from totally different backgrounds. And it isn’t until the final couple of chapters that we learn this. There are others one can guess at. The Lieutenant (no name is given) kind of sounds like he might be black (at least in the audiobook), but mostly what we know about him is that he was is a military lifer. Other characters can be identified primarily by regional accents or interests. But, then again, not all vegans are white hippies - not even in my own acquaintance. So with the exception of the three main characters, we must rely on our prejudices, not on information the author gives us. 

One final thought that also ends the book. The new government that is trying to rebuild civilization in the wake of the disaster teeters between a pale imitation of our own bureaucracy and the totalitarian instincts that always arise in times of extreme peril. (And perceived peril, as well.) So you have the silly corporate sponsorships, the attempts at treating PASD (post apocalyptic stress disorder) which affects, well, pretty much everyone. And you have the slogans and patriotic songs, and so on. And you have a Forbidden Thought. It isn’t until the last pages of the book that we find out what this is. I assumed it was suicide, but it isn’t quite that. It is the thought that this is the end of the world. That downbeat thought is anathema to the reconstruction effort.

But after things go south (and boy do they ever), Mark Spitz comes to a realization. The world isn’t ending. It has already ended. What is past will never come back like it was, even if the zombies are eventually overcome, and humans rebuild. The big problem is that everyone keeps pretending that things haven’t changed forever. That the world they knew hasn’t ended. Only once they can admit that can the future become clear.

This idea really struck me. Fundamentalism of all stripes, after all, is really about going back to an idealized past. As such, it is particularly attractive to those who think they would have had power under past structures. Thus, groups like ISIS seek to return to the imaginary glory days of an Islamic empire. The Rushdoony’s of the world seek to return to their vision of a Patriarchal theocracy. “Make America Great Again” is just the latest in the series. An unwillingness to admit that the world has changed, that the past is gone - and never was like the vision anyway. It’s something I recognize all too well from my own sojourn in the Gothard cult. “We must return to the old ways, to the cultural trappings and unjust power structures of the past.” Whitehead is no optimist. He assumes that prejudice and tribalism will survive the apocalypse. But this book is intended to be bleak. After all, most of mankind has been infected with the zombie virus. Pretty hard to get worse than that, except maybe nuclear annihilation, that fear that was pretty justified in the middle of the 20th Century. But our own age also has its apocalypse. As Frank Kermode put it in The Sense of an Ending, we each face our own apocalypse: our inevitable death. And we face change. And to cope, we idealize a golden past before we came along, a cultural decay within our lifetime, and our only hope lying in recapture of that which cannot be recaptured.

And thus, we find zombie fiction to resonate with us, just as epics like The Lord of the Rings mine the same ideas and emotions.

Whitehead denies us closure. The book ends bleakly, but we never really know what happens. Mark Spitz himself realizes “you have to learn to swim sometime…” and we can assume he will live at least a little longer. But what of the world? The world has ended, but the future awaits. What will it be? What can be made of it?

I would not label this book as “enjoyable” in the traditional sense. It’s slow, disturbing, and nerve wracking. But it grew on me. And I have been unable to stop thinking about it in the days since I finished it. If nothing else, I am eager to read more of Colson Whitehead. He is an exceptional writer, and quite thoughtful.

Note on the audiobook: The book was narrated by Beresford Bennett, who I have never heard of, but apparently is an actor, writer, director, and musician. Whatever the case, he is a fantastic audiobook narrator, handling differences in gender, age, and dialect with ease. He is a perfect fit for this book, although I suspect he would be good at about anything. 

***

A few years back, some friends put together a zombie themed run to raise money for a local veterans charity. My kids probably got their love of zombies from that. We ran, but my wife dressed up as a Donna Reed zombie for it. 

***

Hey, we need some music. Cue Michael Jackson (who was considered the very devil in Fundie culture...until Prince came along…) 

Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophesies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

Source of book: Audiobook from the library

“Kids! Bringing about Armageddon can be dangerous. Do not attempt it in your home.”

One of Neil Gaiman's Illustrations

There are a lot of people who take Eschatology very seriously. I know some of these people. Heck, I’m related to some of these people.

Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman are not of that ilk.

In fact, it is hard to imagine a more irreverent - and hilarious - take on the End Times™ than Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch. Considering that I loathe Eschatology (the subject of a future post?), this book easily qualifies as the best book about the end times I have read. (And I’ve read more than a few.)

So, the legions of Heaven and Hell are gearing up for the big fight, to determine who is the bigger badass, and thus the Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Great Beast that is called Dragon, Prince of This World, Father of Lies, Spawn of Satan and Lord of Darkness is sent into the world as a baby. When the time comes, he, the Antichrist™ will trigger Armageddon™ and the final battle that will establish bragging rights. Never mind that humanity will be the collateral damage…

The problems start, however, the way they often do: simple incompetence. Crowley (formerly Crawly, the demon who got the task of being the serpent in the Garden of Eden), gets delayed in his delivery of the infant, and is unable to supervise the switch with another infant. The nurse is a scatterbrain, and fails to get the right baby to the right parents.

As a result, the Antichrist grows up as Adam Young, a country boy with no knowledge of his powers or destiny. As a result, he fails to become evil, rather retaining an ordinary human capacity for both good and evil as a result of his free will.

Meanwhile, a thoroughly ordinary boy becomes Warlock, the son of an American diplomat (one of many jokes at the expense of us Americans). Lacking the natural powers of the Spawn of Satan, he fails to show the expected development, causing the powers of Evil to eventually realize that a mistake has been made.

Compounding the problem is the simple fact that Crowley would rather not see the world end. He likes his vintage Bentley and his lavish lifestyle. He’d just as soon keep on living in the world as it is. At least as long as he doesn’t have to go back to the hellish 14th Century.

Crowley has a counterpart too, the angel Aziraphale (the one with the flaming sword at the East Gate of Eden), who shares a desire to avoid the end of the world. He has, after all, a used book store which is a cover for what he is really doing - which is collecting rare books. He would prefer to listen to classical music and enjoy the connoisseur's life.

The two of them, naturally, become friends. And why not? In their own way, they are both working toward the same celestial goal, the “ineffable plan,” as the term in the book is. If God has already laid out the whole of history, then neither is blameworthy in carrying it out, right?

But what about their desire to stop the Apocalypse? Is that even possible? Humans have free will, and thus can choose how to act. (Presumably the authors are not Calvinists…) Angels and demons, on the other hand, have in theory no free will. Demons are compelled by nature to be evil - that is, rebel. But can one rebel against rebellion? Hmm. Good question, and one that Crowley and Aziraphale try to answer.

So much for the supernatural side of things. On the human side, there is Anathema Device, a youngish woman directly descended from Agnes Nutter, a witch of the 17th Century, who was burned at the stake (because that’s what they did back then…), but not before leaving behind a book of cryptic and specific (that is, “nice” in its original meaning) prophesies. They were not, unlike Nostradamus’, popular. However, unlike his and everyone else’s, hers happen to be true. The problem is that they mostly were about her descendents, and were nearly impossible to interpret, except in retrospect. She ends up accidentally (literally) meeting up with Newton Pulsifer, a descendent of the witch hunter who burned Agnes at the stake. Newton is also the world’s most inept electronics buff, a fact which becomes important as the story unfolds. And then there is Adam and his gang of friends: Brian, Wensleydale, and “Pepper,” a girl who resembles a couple of my own for spunk.

I won’t spoil the plot, which unfolds in an increasingly bizarre yet startlingly apropos way. Pratchett in particular (I haven’t read any other Gaiman) has a fascination with free will, the effect of choices, and the nature of good and evil. Along the way, the authors poke good-natured fun at a variety of worthy targets.

Trendy diet foods, which have no discernable nutrition or calories, and if eaten long enough will lead to death by starvation. While making the sellers rich.

Cantankerous old busybodies:

R. P. Tyler was not, however, satisfied simply with being vouchsafed the difference between right and wrong. He felt it his bounden duty to tell the world.

Televangelists. Including one who wrote the following inspired bit of schlock music:

Jesus won't cut you off before you're through

With him you won't never get a crossed line,

And when your bill comes it'll all be properly itemised

He's the telephone repairman on the switchboard of my life.

The phone line to the saviour's always free of interference

He's in at any hour, day or night

And when you call J-E-S-U-S you always call toll-free

He's the telephone repairman on the switchboard of my life.

End-Times fascination in general. This one is far overdue and ripe for some satire. The whole “Left Behind” series is a monument to the gullibility, commercialism, and poor taste of a huge portion of American Christianity. Perhaps because they are Brits, Pratchett and Gaiman zero in on the most ludicrous features of the “rapture” enthusiasts in a thoroughly entertaining manner. (Again, I want to blog on this in the future.)

Computer user agreements:

Crowley had been extremely impressed with the warranties offered by the computer industry, and had in fact sent a bundle Below to the department that drew up the Immortal Soul agreements, with a yellow memo form attached just saying: "Learn, guys."

Media inanity:

"Surely you have considered terrorist activity?"

There was another pause. Then the spokesman said, in the quiet tones of someone who has had enough and who is going to quit after this and raise chickens somewhere, "Yes, I suppose we must. All we need to do is find some terrorists who are capable of taking an entire nuclear reactor out of its can while it's running and without anyone noticing. It weighs about a thousand tons and is forty feet high. So they'll be quite strong terrorists. Perhaps you'd like to ring them up, sir, and ask them questions in that supercilious, accusatory way of yours."

And there is more. Gaiman and Pratchett are nothing, if not witty in the extreme. My wife and I ended up snickering and giving each other meaningful glances throughout. There were two minor issues that I had with the book. The first is due to the very nature of co-writing. While the plot holds together pretty well, there are some bits that don’t flow together, and it becomes obvious that different authors with slightly different visions wrote the corresponding sections. As I said, a very minor quibble, because even with this, the book is well written and well plotted. The second applies to the audiobook only. Narrator Martin Jarvis does a great job, but the mastering on the recording shows a bit greater dynamic spread than I would have preferred. It would have been fine listening to it in a quiet room, but in a car at highway speeds, the difference between loud and soft portions was a bit too much. Either we had difficulty hearing the soft voices, or we got blasted out by a couple of the louder characters. Again, a minor thing. I would have preferred just a little more compression from the audio engineer.

Just a few more quotes, because I can’t resist:

It wasn't a dark and stormy night. It should have been, but there's the weather for you. For every mad scientist who's had a convenient thunderstorm just on the night his Great Work is complete and lying on the slab, there have been dozens who've sat around aimlessly under the peaceful stars while Igor clocks up the overtime.

A conversation between Death, a recurring character in Pratchett’s Discworld:

"You're Hells Angels, then? What chapter are you from?"

“REVELATIONS, CHAPTER SIX.”

War (a female war correspondent) on the depressingly mundane job of setting off nuclear war:

"This isn't how I imagined it, chaps," said War. "I haven't been waiting for thousands of years just to fiddle around with bits of wire. It's not what you'd call dramatic. Albrecht Dürer didn't waste his time doing woodcuts of the Four Button-Pressers of the Apocalypse, I do know that."

And, on that note:

Albrecht Dürer, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

Craig Fraser, The Horsemen of the Tiki Apocalypse

Other Pratchett reviews on this blog:

The Wee Free Men

The Carpet People 

Dodger

Mort(e) by Robert Repino

Source of book: Borrowed from the library.

Every once in a while, I read a book on a complete whim, in a fit of either caprice or madness, perhaps. This is one of those books.

I believe I ran across this one in an online review from one of the magazines I read from time to time. The premise sounded both out there and intriguing, so I gave it a shot. 

This book is classified as science fiction, which I guess fits, but it also defies any true classification. I might call it a dark fantasy, or a modern parable, or something of the sort. So, it becomes “science fiction” for marketing purposes. Like all truly great fantasy, the point isn’t escapism, but escape from the complications of our personal associations. When a narrative is removed from things we know to things we can only imagine, we can free ourselves from the entanglements of familiarity. Thus, an idea need not come with the current political baggage, but can be seen in a new light.

The premise is thus: a colony of ants, led by a nearly immortal queen, has vowed revenge against humanity for the destruction of antkind in the distant past. For millennia, she has plotted her revenge. The ants mount a war against humans, using super-evolved ant warriors (“Alphas”) the size of humans, but with superhuman strength. The secondary part of her plot is to convert pets and other animals into humanoids, so they can replace the exterminated humans. If this succeeds, the animals can become the citizens of the new utopia on the surface, while the ants rule the subterranean realms - while controlling the surface dwelling animals, of course.

Into this futuristic war of extermination is thrust Mort(e), a neutered house cat. Okay, so he was “Sebastian” in his previous role - his “slave name.” He gets to pick his new name after he has proven himself in the war against humanity. He chooses Mort(e) after reading Le Morte D’Arthur while holed up in the library during the war. The name is significant. He represents death (Morte) because he has killed, and will kill again. But he is also “Mort,” the everyday guy if the peace ever comes.

The first part of the book tells of the war and of the history of the characters. Eventually, however, the war becomes a nervous occupation. Mort(e) retires, and attempts to start a normal life. However, he is haunted by the memory of a dog he was friends with before the war. Sheba. Is she alive or dead? The driving force in his life becomes that of finding out. Because, after all that has happened, his love for her is still the most powerful force in his life.

In order to find her, he must get to the heart of “EMSAH,” a supposed germ engineered by the surviving humans.

Mort(e) draws extensively from the language and themes of Animal Farm, George Orwell’s allegory of Communism - and one of the most influential books I have read. The similarities are many. The animals rise against the human oppressors, and yet they do not become truly free, but rather the pawns of a greater power. In Animal Farm, the pigs become the new humans - the oppressors. In Mort(e), the ants call the shots.

I am still not sure exactly what allegorical point the author intended to make in this book. Perhaps I am overthinking it a bit, though, because the story is compelling even without the layer of allegory.

Some things I liked: Mort(e) is a great character. The loner cat is (as the original review I read pointed out) very much like the loner detective in a hard boiled tale. He never, ever does what anyone expects him to, and makes his own way in the world and the plot as he wishes, and somehow comes out on top.

I also liked the tension between the two great forces. On the one hand is the power of the ants. They are the perfect robotic force. To use other science fiction analogies, the ants are the Borg, the droid army, the storm troopers. They are absolutely under the control of the queen, and they lack personality and autonomy.

On the other side are the humans. The survivors have adopted a peculiar form of religion, which inspires them to self sacrifice against hopeless odds.

In this book, religion has a peculiar role. On the one hand, the portrayal isn’t flattering. From the prehistoric origin of the war to the present, the old men have sacrificed the weak and the young to the gods in an attempt to gain favor and preserve their own lives. This is certainly the worst of religion: the superstitious sacrifice of others. (See the burning of witches, child sacrifice,  and other embarrassing moments in history.) On the other hand, religion is the only hope the humans have to survive and overcome the ants. It is only through suicidal self-sacrifice that they can aspire to win a hopeless war.

After all, the ants are suicidal because the workers and warriors are expendable. They have no individuality, but are wired by chemical signals to obey the queen without question. For humans, who have free will, to match this, they must have some belief to unite them. For the author, this is the belief in the afterlife. After all, who in their right mind would throw away their only shot at this life for a greater good?

Caught in the middle are the animals, who are essentially lab rats for the queen ant. Will they adopt the religion of the humans and thus prove failures in her eyes? Will they docilely obey her without question? Is there a third way?

This is where the allegory is unclear, but perhaps even better for all that. The heart of free will is a paradox. To be able to choose love requires the option to choose hate, or it isn’t a choice at all. Ultimately, Mort(e) is driven by his personal love, even if it brings him no real hope of a future. Are these the only choices then? Blind religion that leads to hate, love without a transcendent hope, and logical but cruel obedience to a higher yet tyrannical cause? There is no perfect result available in the universe the author has created. And yet, he cannot foreclose all hope. In spite of the illogic of religion (as portrayed), the inexorability of mechanical fate from the ants, and the hopeless solipsism of personal love, it is possible for good to prevail in this mess. And ultimately, religion evolves to become a force for reconciliation, the individual quest for love and belonging are bent toward the good of all, and free will triumphs over totalitarianism.

This book is not for everyone. It is dark, violent, and cynical at times .It portrays the worst of humanity all too well, as well as the worst of ideological genocide. In some ways, it is much like Animal Farm, except more hopeful, if that makes sense. It is, in any case, a compelling page-turner, with a fully developed and believable universe.

The Sense of an Ending by Frank Kermode

Source of book: I own this.

It is only February, and I already have a strong candidate for “most difficult book I have read this year.” This book is a series of six lectures given by the author, a former professor of English literature at Cambridge, and it thus contains an entire language and area of study that is largely unfamiliar to me: literary theory. With neither the time nor the resources to make a thorough study, I had to get along as well as I could, and I am sure that I missed a good bit of his theories. However, what I did get was fascinating as an idea, and as an explanation for both the apocalyptic in literature and the strong tendency in that direction within society.

The very first line introduces this intent:

It is not expected of critics as it is of poets that they should help us to make sense of our lives; they are bound only to attempt the lesser feat of making sense of the ways we try to make sense of our lives.

Kermode’s goal is to show how the idea of the apocalypse functions both within society and within literature to help us make sense of our lives and our mortality. 

 The Revelation of St John: 4. The Four Riders of the Apocalypse by Albrecht Durer (1497)

The basic premise is that we are profoundly uncomfortable with the place of our short lifespans in the whole of history. There is that which existed before us, and the prospect of things continuing after we have died. A beginning and an end. And we are in the middle, living sequentially in time as we experience it. In order to make sense of this, we need to find a way of relating the beginning, middle, and end, in a coherent manner.

The author draws heavily on Christian ideas of the apocalypse, as these have had the most influence on Western thought over the last 2000 or so years. In particular, the apocalyptic ideas of the Middle Ages still influence us today - if anything, they continue to repeat themselves.

As Kermode analyzes it, the essential elements are a former age of glory, perhaps even perfection. A golden age. (One might consider this in any number of ways. Before the Fall, perhaps, or ancient Israel. Any time in the past could do, depending on one’s preferences. Some I know date this to the 1950s, or the 1800s, or even the Middle Ages.)

After that golden age came the present age. The “middle.” This is a time of “decadence,” when what was good has decayed, and is in need of a renovation. The ushering in of a new age.

However, the new age doesn’t happen without pains. Kermode refers to these as the “terrors.” All the bad, awful, painful, horrible stuff that has to occur in order that the decadent current culture and world is purged of what ails it, and the new age of glory is able to shine forth.

Any of us who were raised in the “pre-tribulation” view of the end times - or perhaps any version of dispensationalism - will recognize these elements. 

Along with this comes a sense that the end is very near. This actually isn’t a surprise, in Kermode’s view. Since, in a very real and personal sense, we all face our own apocalypse in our own inevitable death, the “end” is near - for us.

It is this very real sense of the personal which leads to some interesting - and predictable - results.

One that I particularly found fascinating was that specific predictions of the date of the end of the world have been made constantly throughout the last 2000 years. I tend to associate bad predictions with, say, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, or the late Harold Camping. But they were neither the first, nor the most prolific, nor the last.

For a bit of fun, read through the (undoubtedly partial) listing of predictions on Wikipedia.

There are some fun names on the list. Did you know that Martin Luther was sure that the world would expire before 1600? Or that even Christopher Columbus got in the game? Or how about Cotton Mather, best known for his role in the Salem Witch Trials, less known as an early proponent of vaccinations. He made no less than three predictions. And look, there is John Wesley. And Isaac Newton (who apparently liked big, round numbers, and thus chose 2000 as the year of the end.) 

There are also a bunch of completely unsurprising names. Jim Jones. Warren Jeffs (of polygamist fame). Pat Robertson. Nostradamus. (Assuming that anyone knows how to interpret his predictions.) Oh, and Charles Manson, who has the distinction of basing his predictions, not on counting numbers in the Bible, but by a creative interpretation of a Beatles album.

In any event, Kermode does a good job of analyzing the history of false predictions, and the need to make sense of the failures. At this point, he introduces the idea of “clerkly skepticism,” by those who doubt the ability to predict the end accurately. (If I find myself in any role in this drama, it has to be this one. I was born with a fairly active skeptic gene.)

Another key idea in this book is that of “fictions.” On the one hand, this book is about literature, and the way that fictions work within fiction. The more specific use of this word, however, is one familiar to lawyers. The law uses fictions all the time as a means of making reality and the law function together. A ready example of this, from my own area of practice, is the “fiction” of who passed first in a simultaneous death. (Imagine the married couple who die together in an airplane crash. Who died first? It might matter, say, if it was a second marriage, and they each had children from priors. Should one side get everything?) So we use a legal “fiction” to explain who died first in a way that does justice.

Or another example. Corporate “personhood” has become controversial as of late regarding the question of what “individual” rights should apply to corporations. However, the original question of “personhood” came up in a more mundane issue. Obviously, a corporation isn’t a “person” as most people understand it. That’s why it is a “fiction.” However, if one never treated a corporation as a person, insane results would be the order of the day. Let’s say you eat a tainted McNugget and get sick. Who do you sue? If a corporation lacks “personhood” for purposes of being a defendant, they you would have to track down each and every shareholder in McDonalds. Imagine the cost of that. So we use the “fiction” to reach a just and logical result. (That it isn’t always just or logical isn’t the point. The law will always have flaws for us to correct. That doesn’t prove that fictions are a bad idea.)

So in this sense, Kermode views the apocalyptic as a “fiction.” It is something that we use to make our experience and our fears line up with a logical system. The sense of an ending helps us process and make sense of our own place in time and our own beginnings and endings. It is a useful fiction for us, as it helps us “make sense of our lives.”

The problem, as the author views it, comes when we allow this “fiction” to become more than a fiction, by a myth. (In the literary view, a “myth” is something that is believed to possibly be true, rather than something entirely fictitious, like the Greek myths.)

Now, mind you, Kermode doesn’t see a belief in a literal apocalypse to be a negative. One can certainly believe in an eventual end of the world - and even a detailed version of that end - without becoming unable to separate the fiction from reality. I do certainly believe in the end of the world as a future historical event - although I have grave doubts as to my ability to comprehend or formulate any specific view of how that end will be. (Clerkly skepticism coming out.) And yes, I “understand” the various views within Christianity, and a number outside it as well. And the scientific consensus on the life cycle of stars, and so forth. I think at best, each theory has flaws and sees a tiny fraction of the whole.

[Or, as one of my favorite former pastors put it, he was a “Pan-tribulationalist/millenialist.” Since God was in charge, he believed it would all pan out in the end.]

The views aren’t the issue. The issue arises when one goes beyond the theoretical and tries to make the “fiction” come true.

Obvious examples would be Jim Jones and Marshall Applewhite (of Comet Hale-Bopp fame). The belief in the imminent apocalypse led to mass suicide.

Kermode also notes this tendency in fascism.

What is, in this sense, wrong and dangerous is the belief, gratefully learnt by fascism from the innocent pragmatists, that fictions are to be justified or verified by their practical effects. Thus, the world is changed to conform with a fiction, as by the murder of Jews. The effect is to insult reality, and to regress to myth.

Thus much for the most pernicious of the effects of failing to see the fiction as a fiction. But there are lesser effects which one can see readily apparent.

I was startled to read the best explanation I have yet heard of something that I have noted. Because the “end” is really about our own end, our particular “crisis” is always the most important of all time. We are always standing at the crossroads of history, facing decisions more important than anyone ever, in all of history, ever faced.

It seems to be a condition attaching to the exercise of thinking about the future that one should assume one’s own time to stand in an extraordinary relationship to it. The time is not free, it is the slave of a mythical end. We think of our own crisis as pre-eminent, more worrying, more interesting than other crises.

Yes! This is everywhere! “The most important election ever!” “This is the most crucial time in history!” It’s perfect for frightening people into buying stuff, donating money, or accepting ludicrous and harmful ideas. Forget sex, what really sells is fear.

And really, it does feel better to believe that our short lives have significance in the grand sweep of history. If we just do things right, we usher in the new age of glory! We are the most important people in all of history! It adds that feeling of meaning, and allows us to relate the beginning, middle, and end.

But this is all a distraction from the real core issue.

The ending isn’t necessarily imminent. But it is absolutely immanent. It is in all of us. Our own ending. Our own significance. How will we relate our own beginning, middle and end?

(Kermode does get bonus points from me for using an “imminent/immanent” comparison.)

This is what I understood as the central idea behind the lectures, and thus this book.

There is more too. Kermode does discuss the ideas in the context of literature. He assumes the reader has read the books in question, which put me at a bit of a disadvantage when he discussed 20th Century literature. That is a definite gap in my reading, although I am slowly remedying it.

Sartre gets a good bit of time. I am not a fan of Sartre. At all. But I did find one issue interesting. Sartre was a determinist, largely believing that free will is an illusion. (One of many reasons I dislike him.) So the question is, if one cannot truly “choose,” how does one make choices?

As Sartre put it, “all ways are barred and nevertheless we must act. So we try to change the world; that is, to live as if the relations between things and their potentialities were governed not by deterministic processes but by magic.”

Again, I disagree with Sartre on that basic level, but he makes an interesting point about fictions. We utilize them, not because they are true, but because they allow us to relate to and act upon truth. This is the power behind fiction, fictions, and perhaps all the arts. A novel has power not because it relates true events, but because its fiction relates us to the truths of life.

I do want to touch briefly on how one might see the apocalyptic in literature. There are some abundantly obvious examples. The Lord of the Rings is perhaps the clearest work to view as an apocalypse. Kermode’s elements are all there and plain to see. If one looks, many works are like this. But even in a broader sense, a book must have a beginning, a middle, and an end. And these must relate to each other, or the book risks being unable to say anything at all. Whether you buy into Kermode’s theory as applied to literature as a whole - or society as a whole - it is an interesting exercise to look at the stories we tell, obviously fictional or not, as related to the basic concept of reconciling the beginning and end, and making sense of our place in time.

Kermode draws examples from works as diverse as those of Homer, Shakespeare, Dickens, and Phillip Larkin. There are pithy and apropos quotes scattered throughout. But the one poet that fascinates Kermode more than any other is Wallace Stevens. I admit that I too enjoy Stevens’ poetry a great deal. (One of my favorite nerdy non-fiction books is The Nothing that Is, which title is drawn from a Stevens poem.)

So, I can’t help but quote one of the passages that Kermode uses. This is from “An Ordinary Evening in New Haven.”

The poem is the cry of its occasion,

Part of the res itself and not about it.

The poet speaks the poem as it is,

Not as it was: part of the reverberation

Of a windy night as it is, when the marble statues

Are like newspapers blown by the wind. He speaks

By sight and insight as they are. There is no

Tomorrow for him. The wind will have passed by,

The statues will have gone back to be things about.

The mobile and immobile flickering

In the area between is and was are leaves,

Leaves burnished in autumnal burnished trees

And leaves in whirlings in the gutters, whirlings

Around and away, resembiling the presence of thought

Resembling the presences of thoughts, as if,

In the end, in the whole psychology, the self,

the town, the weather, in a casual litter,

Together, said words of the world are the life of the world.

...

If it should be true that reality exists

In the mind: the tin plate, the loaf of bread on it,

The long-bladed knife, the little to drink and her

Misericordia, it follows that

Real and unreal are two in one: New Haven

Before and after one arrives or, say,

Bergamo on a postcard, Rome after dark,

Sweden described, Salzburg with shaded eyes

Or Paris in conversation at a café.

This endlessly elaborating poem

Displays the theory of poetry,

As the life of poetry. A more severe,

More harassing master would extemporize

Subtler, more urgent proof that the theory

Of poetry is the theory of life,

As it is, in the intricate evasions of as,

In things seen and unseen, created from nothingness,

The heavens, the hells, the worlds, the longed-for lands.

“4 Tiki of the Apocalypse”, by my friend Craig Fraser

Because I love this painting.