My alma mater teaches several English courses for non-English students every year including Fantasy and Science Fiction. They both end up being wildly popular but I never was able to fit it into my timetable. On my personal list of first-world-tragedies, I also didn't get to take the Mysteries class where you cover Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie. In other words, getting a degree in geophysics and applied math is very, very bad for being able to take fun AWESOME English classes.
A Canticle for Leibowitz is on the Science Fiction curriculum, and then I ran into it in my new favourite bookstore BMV Books for $6 and I liked the synopsis, so I bought it. I admit it was harder for me to follow - I feel like this is a pretty deep book and I can only scratch the surface. The book is divided into 3 novellas: the first takes place several centuries after nuclear war, where the world is essentially in a Dark Age. The second takes place almost a millenium later, where the world is waking up to science once more, reflecting the early days of the Enlightenment. The third novella takes place several centuries after that, where mankind has again managed to explore space and set up space colonies. The whole essence of the book is described best in a quote:
"Listen, are we helpless? Are we doomed to do it again and again and again? Have we no choice but to play the Phoenix in an unending sequence of rise and fall? Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Carthage, Rome, the Empires of Charlemagne and the Turk. Ground to dust and plowed with salt. Spain, France, Britain, America--burned into the oblivion of centuries. And again and again and again."
It's something worth thinking about, even in a time where nuclear war and nuclear fallout is largely off the table. When the book was written in the Cold War, it's warnings would have been even more significant, even more strident than they are today. However, that's not to say it's outdated - as long as there is war, the question of whether we're doomed to repeat ourselves continues.
I really only had 2 issues with the book as a whole. First, I did not wholly appreciate its portrayal of non-belief - that isn't to say that the books portrayal of non-belief is bad considering the main characters of all three novellas are monks. In any case, we do need to credit the Church during the Dark Ages for preserving knowledge and literacy. While many things were lost during this time, the Church continued to educate people in reading and writing and preserved many documents from the Greek and Roman times. My second issue dealt with the treatment of euthanasia. I admit that I'm something of a supporter of euthanasia, as long as there are very strict constraints on it. I don't think a total ban on it is warranted - legally speaking (in Canada), suicide is not a crime. The effect of a ban on euthanasia only prevents people who are ill or disabled to the point where they cannot commit suicide from committing suicide the way that an able-bodied person could. It criminalizes an act that would be legal if a person was able-bodied, but is not if you are disabled to the point where you cannot commit suicide alone. Furthermore, I think (like Albus Dumbledore) that there are many things worse than death, and I would almost certainly want the ability to die with dignity if I were ever diagnosed with something like Gehrig's disease. The book's blanket stance against euthanasia and suicide, while easily explainable through the context of the characters' belief, definitely rubbed me the wrong way.
Overall, I found this book a tough read. It's enjoyable and people who can read Hebrew and Latin will certainly enjoy it more than others. The structure gives ready-made places to stop. However, I found that once I stopped, it was a little harder to pick it up again. It's a good read and worth reading, but it's not a light read.
No comments:
Post a Comment