I have to honestly admit that my main motivation for reading Ilium was the fact that I enjoyed immensely his 5-part story of Hyperion and Endymion. Being familiar with the Ancient Greek legends on the matter (but not with the poems by Keats), I found the previous works just the right amount literary-resurectionism and the right amount of science, fiction and interesting characters. I am sorry to say Ilium is not at the same level of craft, although still a good book in it's own merit (hey it won the Locus award!).
Ilium seems to borrow it's main storyline from Homer's "The Illiad" about the besieged city of Troy (or Ilium, or Pergamon, or many other names), starting near the end of the 9th and the beginning of the 10th (and final) year of the Trojan War. All the Achayan/Argive/"Greek" heroes from the Iliad are there, and all their father's names, their shields and armor and oiled, muscled bodies, etc. etc. The 'main' protagonist of the book, Thomas Hockenberry, is a resurected 20/21 century PhD on the Iliad, and the 'new' Olympic gods use him and other "scholics" (maybe from "scholis" - a comentary on the edge of a book) are obesrving the Trojan War and reporting to the gods, who themselves do not know the outcome (except Zeus).
Another line of narration (out of 3 here, considerably less than the near-dozen in Hyperion), is about two "Morovecs" - basically organic-metal cyborgs who are created by 21st century human to explore the dangerous outer Solar System (mostly Jupiter and Saturn moons) and are give self-consciousness and the ability to self-evolve. Mahnmuth from Europa and Orfu of Io are two very different, but also quite similar cyborgs (why "Morovecs" Dan? Do we need more confusing terms when 'cyborg' pretty much covers everything? I respect Dr. Hans Morovec too, but please lighter on the new terminology).
The third line of narration has to do with some of the last remaining 'humans' on earth, after the post-humans have left it as something overgrown, just like they did with their own bodies. Daemon and Harmon and Ada and the rest of the menagerie (Odysseus!) are finding the ugly truth about their overindulgent civilization, or lack thereof. Here is where Simmons borrows from both Wells' "Time Machine" and Nabokov's "Ada, or Ardor" although the borrowing is only on the surface, not going into the deep symbology of the previous two works, especially Nabokov's. Later in the book, and especially in the sequel "Olympos" - pretty much the entire cast and geography from Shakespeare's "The Tempest" will be re-worked in Sci-Fi.
I am not sure the literary-sci-fi works for me in Ilium/Olympos. It definitely worked in Hyperion, both Chaucer and Keats, but here it feels forced and somewhat fake. Rendering Setebus and Caliban as the main bad guys also feels forced, especially if you know The Tempest. It is enough that I need to remember all the hundreds (thousands?) of names from the Iliad, and who killed/raped/maimed whom and in what order - mixing all the other books in just makes a big mess.
And the technology. Oh, the technology in Sci-Fi. The bane of all non-engineers writers (Simmons was an English instructor). While in Hyperion the technology seems very fleshed-out and fitting (even the backward traveling Time Tombs and the cruciform), here it seems amateurish and fake. The 'fax' nodes are just rehashing of the gates from Hyperion. The 'sauni' flying machine is pretty ridiculous. The 'voynix' and the related Voynich manuscript could use waaaay more development, and no, leaving it 'unsaid' does not add to the mystery (especially for the ones who are very familiar with the Voynich manuscript, it just doesn't fly). The orbital rings could use way more background, and so could the 'firmary' technology, healing tanks, blue/green worms, the "healer of the gods", the Rock-vecs/Morovecs culture, motivation, psychology (why?). Even the BS about Quantum Teleportation, Brane Holes, 'parallel' universes and the very concept that consciousness is just a material phenomenon arising from complexity (nope) - are all just amateurishly thrown together.
And don't start me on the length of these two books (700+ and 900+ pages)! They could have been half their current lengths and just as effective (or more). Still, an enjoyable summer/commute read. I wish there was more Proust in the book, but you can see that Simmons is an expert on Keats, and to some extent on Shakespeare, but the rest of his knowledge of authors is at the level of university literature courses, not decades-long independent study.
Wednesday, August 3, 2016
"What I talk about when I talk about running" by Haruki Murakami
This is one of the few Murakami books that I have in hardcover, print, not electronic or audio book. It is a short book (less than 200 pages), but I waited a long time to have enough spare time to read it in one or two go's. Finally the time came. I finished it in two days. It consists of 5-6 chapters, each written over a 15 year span, at one place or another on the globe. The book title is borrowed from a short story writer Murakami translated, but that's the least interesting part.
It is much more interesting how Murakami decided to become a writer when he was 32 and already had a successful Jazz bar in Tokyo. With no writing experience, or even time to write, he finished his first book (on baseball) in the little breaks he had around the 24/7 obligations of running a restaurant/bar. He was even more surprised when his first book won a prestigious 'New Writers' award.
At about the same time he started writing - he also started running. Gave up smoking after a little while, then started putting his body in shape, eventually running more than 25 full marathons and even one ultra-marathon (65 miles) where he had a spiritual experience (and almost got permanently injured). For him writing and running go together, and are based on similar principles, discipline and methodology. Many writers around the world (both living and dead) would disagree with him and fall more into the 'classical' write stereotype of heavy drinking, intoxication, vagrancy, loose women and other sins. But it worked for Murakami.
Besides running and writing, the book is also Murakami's meditation on aging and mortality. The book covers his life from his late twenties to late fifties and he's more than noticed the changes in his body, his stamina, his constitution and predominantly in his psyche that come with age. He is not afraid of aging, or raging against it, but finds more of a challenge to continue doing what he was doing, the way he was doing it, as years progress. The book has that subtle, warm coziness that all his novels have, making the reader feel that it is all OK, whatever it is - it's OK.
It is much more interesting how Murakami decided to become a writer when he was 32 and already had a successful Jazz bar in Tokyo. With no writing experience, or even time to write, he finished his first book (on baseball) in the little breaks he had around the 24/7 obligations of running a restaurant/bar. He was even more surprised when his first book won a prestigious 'New Writers' award.
At about the same time he started writing - he also started running. Gave up smoking after a little while, then started putting his body in shape, eventually running more than 25 full marathons and even one ultra-marathon (65 miles) where he had a spiritual experience (and almost got permanently injured). For him writing and running go together, and are based on similar principles, discipline and methodology. Many writers around the world (both living and dead) would disagree with him and fall more into the 'classical' write stereotype of heavy drinking, intoxication, vagrancy, loose women and other sins. But it worked for Murakami.
Besides running and writing, the book is also Murakami's meditation on aging and mortality. The book covers his life from his late twenties to late fifties and he's more than noticed the changes in his body, his stamina, his constitution and predominantly in his psyche that come with age. He is not afraid of aging, or raging against it, but finds more of a challenge to continue doing what he was doing, the way he was doing it, as years progress. The book has that subtle, warm coziness that all his novels have, making the reader feel that it is all OK, whatever it is - it's OK.
Thursday, July 28, 2016
"Tropic of Cancer" by Henry Miller
This book must have been revolutionary when it came out in the 1930s. The language, the style, the unabashed uncaring for literary norms, must have been like a fresh air of rebellion to the stifled people of the 1930s who just few decades ago were under the moral oppression of the Victorian Age.
The book begins with an ode to Tanya's cunt. And it continues in the same manner. The word cunt is probably the most used word in the entire book. Today it would be called just vulgar, but at the time it was unthinkable, revolutionary and brave. Miller describes multiple women he's had sex with while living in Paris, mostly on the money of other people, or as a vagrant and a homeless person on the streets.
Most of the women he sleeps with are prostitutes (and he goes at length discussing the different types of prostitutes), but there is also the Jewish adulteress, the Russian princess with gonorrhea, the strange french woman to whom he gives 100 francs and then takes them out of her purse after having sex with her in her house above the room of her sick mother.
Chapters of lucid description of characters (mostly Miller's friends whose money he uses, at whose houses he sleeps and whose women he has sex with) and some semblance of story lines are alternated with chapters of stream-of-consciousness monologues with prophetic statements and deep insights into life and living that usually come only after a very heavy intoxication with various substances.
The book finishes in a middle of an action, just like it starts. Nothing really happens throughout and there's no sustained plot or even any novel-length characters (except the author-narrator) but it does give an entertaining and fascinating view into the life of the American emigres in Paris between the two wars in a much different way than Hemingway.
The book begins with an ode to Tanya's cunt. And it continues in the same manner. The word cunt is probably the most used word in the entire book. Today it would be called just vulgar, but at the time it was unthinkable, revolutionary and brave. Miller describes multiple women he's had sex with while living in Paris, mostly on the money of other people, or as a vagrant and a homeless person on the streets.
Most of the women he sleeps with are prostitutes (and he goes at length discussing the different types of prostitutes), but there is also the Jewish adulteress, the Russian princess with gonorrhea, the strange french woman to whom he gives 100 francs and then takes them out of her purse after having sex with her in her house above the room of her sick mother.
Chapters of lucid description of characters (mostly Miller's friends whose money he uses, at whose houses he sleeps and whose women he has sex with) and some semblance of story lines are alternated with chapters of stream-of-consciousness monologues with prophetic statements and deep insights into life and living that usually come only after a very heavy intoxication with various substances.
The book finishes in a middle of an action, just like it starts. Nothing really happens throughout and there's no sustained plot or even any novel-length characters (except the author-narrator) but it does give an entertaining and fascinating view into the life of the American emigres in Paris between the two wars in a much different way than Hemingway.
Thursday, July 7, 2016
"Mount Analogue" by Rene Daumal
It ends in mid-sentence in the fifth chapter. Rene Daumal died days later of tubercolosis. He was in his 36th year of his life. Peradams. Only Father Sogol (Logos, took me a while to figure it out without anyone pointing it out to me) found one and very low, below the mountain where no Peradams are usually found, but he had an epiphany about himself.
The book has an extensive intro section where the future planned chapters by Daumal are explained and it is a real shame that they were not written. Or maybe the book is more effective this way? After all Gurdjieff's "Life is real only when I AM" also stops in a middle of a sentence, and some who have seen the original manuscripts say that the published version is a much smaller selection from what was available.
"Mount Analogue" is a very readable and well written book, to be expected from a writer of Daumal's caliber, and although Gurdjieff's name is never explicitly mentioned - it is based on the ideas and understanding of Gurdjieff's system (not to be called "The Fourth Way", but simply the "Gurdjieff System") and contains the personal thoughts and development of a person working on themselves according to the system.
The explanation on how Mount Analogue would have been physically hidden from anyone for so long is definitely done by the latest science available at that period (1930s), but with today's satellites and space observation does not hold well at all, although it was probably ingenious for the time. Also getting there, getting in and discovering no new technology (based on electricity) works on the mountain is also very interesting, especially connected to Gurdjieff's notion that electricity was discovered before and is not an inexhaustible resource.
Of course, Father Sogol is no one but Alexandre de (von) Saltzmann, one of the foremost Gurdjieff's students, of whom not as much is known, compared to the other students like Alexandre's wife Jeanne, and the de (von) Hartmann's. He must have been a formidable personality to have left such an impression on Daumal.
This book is a gem, even in its unfinished form, or maybe because of it.
The book has an extensive intro section where the future planned chapters by Daumal are explained and it is a real shame that they were not written. Or maybe the book is more effective this way? After all Gurdjieff's "Life is real only when I AM" also stops in a middle of a sentence, and some who have seen the original manuscripts say that the published version is a much smaller selection from what was available.
"Mount Analogue" is a very readable and well written book, to be expected from a writer of Daumal's caliber, and although Gurdjieff's name is never explicitly mentioned - it is based on the ideas and understanding of Gurdjieff's system (not to be called "The Fourth Way", but simply the "Gurdjieff System") and contains the personal thoughts and development of a person working on themselves according to the system.
The explanation on how Mount Analogue would have been physically hidden from anyone for so long is definitely done by the latest science available at that period (1930s), but with today's satellites and space observation does not hold well at all, although it was probably ingenious for the time. Also getting there, getting in and discovering no new technology (based on electricity) works on the mountain is also very interesting, especially connected to Gurdjieff's notion that electricity was discovered before and is not an inexhaustible resource.
Of course, Father Sogol is no one but Alexandre de (von) Saltzmann, one of the foremost Gurdjieff's students, of whom not as much is known, compared to the other students like Alexandre's wife Jeanne, and the de (von) Hartmann's. He must have been a formidable personality to have left such an impression on Daumal.
This book is a gem, even in its unfinished form, or maybe because of it.
Tuesday, May 31, 2016
"The Ocean of Theosophy" by William Quan Judge
The Ocean of Theosophy, published in 1893, is a collection of articles Judge wrote for new and interested Theosophists at the height of the interest in anything Indian-Spirituality-like. Blavatsky founded the Theosophical society, allegedly based on her own medium abilities and spiritual mastership. Her first book was Isis Unveiled, which purports to reveal the secrets of the Egyptian mysteries and mysticism. However, soon after, the ephemeral tastes of the society changed, and now people were fascinated with everything and anything coming out of India - Egypt being forgotten after the Napoleonic age.
Quick to take advantage, Blavatsky wrote yet another long, rambling, confused and utterly useless book called "The Secret Doctrine" purportedly exposing the secrets of the Hindu mysticism. The vast majority of experts on the subject since have rejected the contents as pure fiction, based on a little bit of reading. What Blavatsky had going for her was that at that time the overall public knew next to nothing about Hinduism/Yoga/Vedanta etc.
Judge was one of the co-founders of the Theosophical Society, together with Olcott and Blavatsky. he died in his 40s, but not before leaving a large volume of Theosophical literature. His explanations in this book draw from The Secret Doctrine, and are somewhat in line with Vedanta and Yoga scriptures, but with plenty of personal ramblings, attacks against nay-Sayers, exalting the "Secret Masters" whom Blavatsky made up and in general espousing of a worldview where humans are unworthy playthings of much larger powers.
Judge peppers his sleep-inducing pages with attacks on Darwin, evolution and other, then-new, but today proven beyond doubt, scientific theories which makes him sound like a whiny apologist for superstition and lack of scientific training. Overall, read this book only if you really have a good reason. Otherwise, today we're not limited to the Theosophical muddled interpretation of Vedanta and we can get the same or better knowledge of the concepts from directly translated source works and many modern experts in the field.
Quick to take advantage, Blavatsky wrote yet another long, rambling, confused and utterly useless book called "The Secret Doctrine" purportedly exposing the secrets of the Hindu mysticism. The vast majority of experts on the subject since have rejected the contents as pure fiction, based on a little bit of reading. What Blavatsky had going for her was that at that time the overall public knew next to nothing about Hinduism/Yoga/Vedanta etc.
Judge was one of the co-founders of the Theosophical Society, together with Olcott and Blavatsky. he died in his 40s, but not before leaving a large volume of Theosophical literature. His explanations in this book draw from The Secret Doctrine, and are somewhat in line with Vedanta and Yoga scriptures, but with plenty of personal ramblings, attacks against nay-Sayers, exalting the "Secret Masters" whom Blavatsky made up and in general espousing of a worldview where humans are unworthy playthings of much larger powers.
Judge peppers his sleep-inducing pages with attacks on Darwin, evolution and other, then-new, but today proven beyond doubt, scientific theories which makes him sound like a whiny apologist for superstition and lack of scientific training. Overall, read this book only if you really have a good reason. Otherwise, today we're not limited to the Theosophical muddled interpretation of Vedanta and we can get the same or better knowledge of the concepts from directly translated source works and many modern experts in the field.
Thursday, August 20, 2015
"Eight Meetings in Paris" by G.I. Gurdjieff
This is the second volume of the records of meetings in Paris, this time typeset and laid out clearly. The format is pretty much the same as the previous typed booklet, students asking questions and Mr. G. and sometimes Mme de Saltzman, answering them. The one line that flows uninterrupted through the booklet (only 39 pages) is that the students are lazy, do not work, are going to die like dogs, are not becoming of human beings and similar warm and fuzzy stuff Gurdjieff has been known to utter for most of his life.
Be it as it may, there are plenty of good instructions in this booklet, given, of course, that one does not try the actual practical exercises on one's own. The importance of incorporating the work in the daily life, professional and personal, without anyone (else) noticing is emphasized many times. Also a question has been asked several time - whether one can still be ambitious, career-driven, running after money and promotions (free interpretation by the reviewer) and still do the work, not in fantasy, but in reality.
Gurdjieff gave a peculiar answer that all of that is ok, that one can even "kill a man" in the work, as long as it is a task that one has set for oneself to achieve as a part of the work, a part of an exercise. This could be interpreted as advice that any worldly pursuit is OK as long as there is no lust for the result as a thing in itself, but only as a means to learning more about oneself and achieving additional self-consciousness.
There was a harsh criticism of the question of one student (asking something about the energy contained in the air), who came in only once in 3 months and Gurdjieff claimed that his questions insult the other students because he is not doing any actual work but only imagining. Gurdjieff said "you cannot do this among other things" basically saying that the work should come first, before any other obligations or endeavors of any kind, personal or business, and everything is to be seen through the prism of the work.
Be it as it may, there are plenty of good instructions in this booklet, given, of course, that one does not try the actual practical exercises on one's own. The importance of incorporating the work in the daily life, professional and personal, without anyone (else) noticing is emphasized many times. Also a question has been asked several time - whether one can still be ambitious, career-driven, running after money and promotions (free interpretation by the reviewer) and still do the work, not in fantasy, but in reality.
Gurdjieff gave a peculiar answer that all of that is ok, that one can even "kill a man" in the work, as long as it is a task that one has set for oneself to achieve as a part of the work, a part of an exercise. This could be interpreted as advice that any worldly pursuit is OK as long as there is no lust for the result as a thing in itself, but only as a means to learning more about oneself and achieving additional self-consciousness.
There was a harsh criticism of the question of one student (asking something about the energy contained in the air), who came in only once in 3 months and Gurdjieff claimed that his questions insult the other students because he is not doing any actual work but only imagining. Gurdjieff said "you cannot do this among other things" basically saying that the work should come first, before any other obligations or endeavors of any kind, personal or business, and everything is to be seen through the prism of the work.
Thursday, August 6, 2015
"Meetings in Paris" Vol I - G.I. Gurdjieff
This is the first volume of the records of Paris meetings - the one that is 68 pages, half-faded typewriter facsimile, not the typeset, 39 page volume called "Eight Meetings in Paris" which I call Vol II. It is pretty hard to read as the ribbon on the typewriter was not of a high quality and pretty old, however, it is all legible with some effort.
The book is a typescript of the actual meetings between Gurdjieff and his students and the words flow well and the ideas are mundane and everyday, something anyone working on themselves are bound to encounter. There are several exercises described, but it is not advisable doing exercises from teh Gurdjieff system from books. A living link in the tradition is needed.
One interesting point that is repeated many times throughout the booklet is that one's parents should be one's God in the beginning. Gurdjieff says that God will then take the place of the parents when they are gone, as we all will wither and pass away at one point. Gurdjieff even makes a point that it completely doesn't matter what kind the parents are, good, bad, abuse, disinterested, etc. This concept harkens back to the beginning of human civilization and only in the last couple of centuries it has been destroyed, almost out of recognition today.
The book is a typescript of the actual meetings between Gurdjieff and his students and the words flow well and the ideas are mundane and everyday, something anyone working on themselves are bound to encounter. There are several exercises described, but it is not advisable doing exercises from teh Gurdjieff system from books. A living link in the tradition is needed.
One interesting point that is repeated many times throughout the booklet is that one's parents should be one's God in the beginning. Gurdjieff says that God will then take the place of the parents when they are gone, as we all will wither and pass away at one point. Gurdjieff even makes a point that it completely doesn't matter what kind the parents are, good, bad, abuse, disinterested, etc. This concept harkens back to the beginning of human civilization and only in the last couple of centuries it has been destroyed, almost out of recognition today.
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