Book Review

Let's Go Play At the Adams'

by Mendal W. Johnson

     When the cats are away the mice will play. When Mr. and Mrs. Adams go on vacation for a week, their two children are left behind with a babysitter. What could possibly go wrong? Those darling little angels would never do something terrible like torture the babysitter, now would they? Forgive me for begging the question and spoiling the entire plot before analyzing the main theme of the book. However, I do have to say that Mendal W. Johnson’s Let’s Go Play At the Adams’ has a bit more meaning than one might expect from a horror novel.

The plot is as thin as it can possibly be. Bobbby and Cindy Adams, 13 and 10 years old respectively, stay at home with their babysitter Barbara in their house in idyllic rural Maryland. Barbara is an attractive college student, a member of the swimming team, and ambitious to become a teacher. The two kids call their friends over to play. John is sixteen, slightly overweight and may or may not make the varsity football team depending on how things go. Dianne is eighteen, awkward, shy, and book smart but naive in the ways of the world. She coddles her young brother Paul who is thirteen and mentally ill. Dianne understands him much better than their parents do. Together they have a club called the Freedom Five that engages in adventure games like playing at war or cowboys and Indians; sometimes the games involve bondage and simulated torture. So when Bobby and Cindy are left under the care of Barbara for a week, the next step is obvious. They tie her to a bed and torture her to death. Then they pin the crime on a creepy Spanish-speaking migrant worker who lurks in the woods near the house. That’s it. That’s the whole story. But the plot isn’t the purpose of the book.

Mendal Johnson writes in the third person omniscient, meaning the novel is written so that the reader has access to the subjectivity of every character. This is significant because the thoughts and perceptions of the characters are key elements in the building of suspense. Barbara, the victim in this game, is given equal weight in relation to the others in terms of character building. As she lies awake all night, bound to a bed and gagged, she tries to understand why this is happening to her. The internal monologue turns into a dialogue when she imagines her college-friend Terry by her side, explaining the situation to her. Terry is, of course, a projection of Barbara’s imagination. It is through Terry that we learn how Barbara is wracked by insecurities and blames herself for the torture. Terry later becomes instrumental in the narrative at the end of the book when the explanation for the torture is revealed. Along the way, Barbara bears a strong resemblance to Joseph K., the main character in Franz Kafka’s The Trial in that she feels she is being punished for something she cannot comprehend and the more she tries to find out why, the more elusive the answers get.

The other characters in the Freedom Five reveal themselves through their perceptions of Barbara. Although they make decisions by voting democratically, Dianne is the brains of the operation, the one who steers them along their course towards the eventual demise of Barbara. For her this is a power trip in which she practices her ability to dominate and control others. For John, the imprisonment of Barbara is an opportunity for him to overcome his insecurity, primarily sexual, in approaching women. Bobby is the one who has the most sympathy for Barbara, but his desires for her are purely based around principles of domination; he fantasizes about her as being a trained domestic animal, one that will always come back to him if he sets her free. He wants Barbara to be like a dog who runs after a stick that has been thrown and then obediently brings it back to their owner. Paul is little more than a mentally disturbed sadist and psychopath, while Cindy is merely the little ten year old girl who tags along with her big brother. Each of them has a specific purpose for doing what they do.

I believe that an important clue to interpreting this book lies in the name “Freedom Five” that the kids choose to give their club. It is exactly the kind of unimaginative and unoriginal title that children would choose for a secret organization given their age-related limited knowledge of the world. It serves as a reminder of how young they are, but more importantly it indicates the author’s intention of examining the nature of freedom. The idea of freedom entails the concept of being free from something and in this case the kids are free from their parents. Not only are the parents excluded from the club, but they are absent from the house while away on vacation. Occupying the space between childhood amd adulthood, the only obstacle to the freedom of choice that adults have is the babysitter Barbara. Therefore, she has to be removed, incapacitated, dominated, and controlled. They also see the world of adults as being an unhappy place. Adults have freedom and with that comes responsibility. Even worse, their lives look dull doing little more than going to work and arguing with each other. The Freedom Five see this as a last chance to experience complete freedom without the accompanying negativity of maturity.

With Barbara tied up and gagged so she can not give them orders, they are free to do whatever they want like staying up all night watching TV or eating all the ice cream, maybe even drinking milkshakes for breakfast. But this freedom isn’t as exciting as they expect it to be. In fact it is downright boring and they do have responsibilities like taking care of themselves and making sure Barabara doesn’t die. Therefore, they have to up the ante by making plans to torture Barbara to death. Most of the narrative tension revolves around the kids suggesting plans and deciding what to do while the reader is suspended in uncertainty, wondering if these things will really happen or if they will be successful or not. Most of the book hovers between light BDSM pulp crime fiction and existential allegory without tipping too far in either direction.

It is at the end and in the epilogue that the meaning of the story is brought out in full. It is surprising to learn that the Freedom Five actually admire Barbara. Her friend Terry is envious of her too as she explains during the final soliloquy. In their minds, Barbara is charming, attractive, intelligent, and talented. Even worse, she embodies all these qualities without making any effort. This is a poignant irony considering the earlier chapter when Barbara thinks about how insecure and awkward she feels. But in the end, perceptions are stronger motivators than reality. Besides, the Freedom Five are children who aren’t psychologically developed enough to understand the complex points of view of others. But in any case, Barbara represents their Ideal Person while they all feel inferior in her presence. So instead of making an effort to build their own characters and achieve a higher state of being, they decide to degrade and destroy their idol. They don’t raise their sense of self-worth by making self-improvements; they do so by tearing down another human being who they perceive to be better than them. All too often, this is the way the world works.

Mendal Johnson could be criticized for making this novel too subtle. On one hand, he shows restraint (haha, no pun intended) when describing the torture to avoid making this into some kind of sick fantasy. On the other hand, he understates the philosophical theme to avoid boring the audience by turning this into a lecture on how terrible it is to hurt people. After getting to the end, I thought the two sides, the form and the meaning, were actually perfectly balanced as soon as he drove the main idea home in Terry’s monologue. I just think that the novel suffers a little bit from too much understatement. He could have turned up the volume on both the torture scenes and the theoretical theme without failing to realize the novel’s intentions provided he emphasizes both aspects in equal measures.

In conclusion, Let’s Go Play At the Adams’ is not so much of a disturbing book as it as a depressing one. The bondage and torture are not so extreme that they make your stomach churn. In fact, the violence barely registers as more than some PG-13 rated horror schlock you would see at a drive-in theater. The commentary on the psychology of power, the nature of freedom, and the sick-mindedness of human society is a little more potent. I do think Mendal W. Johnson is successful in making a statement about human nature. I also think it says something about the time it was written in. Just after the Summer of Love and Woodstock, youth culture and ideologies of freedom were big parts of the zeitgiest. Like Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange, I think Let’s Go Plat At the Adams’ was partially intended to warn us about the dangers of letting young people have more freedom than they need. I have mixed feelings about that idea but I do think it something worthy of consideration.

If you just want to read something for cheap thrills or shock value, you won’t get much out of this book. But if your mind is subtle enough then the next time you wish for someone’s downfall. gloat over someone failure, laugh at someone stupidity, or think insulting thoughts about another person, even if you keep them to yourself, then remember the Freedom Five and ask yourself in honesty if there is something inside you that is just like those terrible kids who tortured Barbara.

 

Book Review

Arabia:

A Journey Through the Labyrinth

by Jonathan Raban

     As Jonathan Raban’s Arabia: A Journey Through the Labyrinth starts off, the author, while living in London, begins noticing immigrants in his neighborhood. Increasingly he sees more and more Arabs, particularly from the Gulf states of the Arabian Peninsula on the streets, opening up stores and restaurants, and moving into homes nearby. Not only are they more visible because of the traditional clothing they wear, but their insularity also sets them apart, speaking Arabic and little English. They also have seemingly endless amounts of cash. The Londoners are not happy about their presence, but are often too reserved to openly express their contempt so the Arabian people go about their business never knowing how derisive the English people are towards them. Jonathan Raban wanted to know more about these people so at the end of the 1970s, he goes on a prolonged sojourn around the outer edges of Arabia to learn whatever he can.

The travelogue does not get off to a strong start. Raban begins on the tiny island nation of Bahrain, a place like the other Gulf states where foreigners outnumber the native inhabitants. He barely has any contact with Bahraini people and spends most of his time socializing with expats, mostly contract workers and businessmen, who are there for the sake of making money, not out of appreciation for the culture. This is the least exciting chapter until he gets to Egypt.

Things pick up when Raban visits Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. He speaks with more of the local Arabic population, but mostly limits the discourses to government officials, bureaucrats, and businessmen. Other people he speaks with are nationals from the poorer Middle Eastern countries and the Indian subcontinent, all who are there because they are ambitions and tired of living in impoverished countries where their professional skills are going to waste. He also meets a group of Qatari artists employed by the Ministry of Fine Arts to help recreate an imaginary traditional past through the medium of fake folk art. One playwright suffers from severe writer’s block because everything he puts down on paper gets rejected by the ministry cesnors, saying his works are potentially offensive to government officials. It is a good example of how authoritarianism kills creativity.

While skirting around the eastern edge of Arabia, the influence of the oil boom and the expanding economy is transforming the region. Skyscrapers are being built and foreigners are flooding these small emerging nations. The lifestyles, the technology, and the banking systems are changing. Saudis are everywhere with their oversize wads of cash and their indulgence in vices that are forbidden in their home country. Anomie and social dislocation are rampant as menial workers, local citizens, and Bedu tribes-people sink deeper into the pits of poverty while money gets funneled by the ton into the hands of the well-connected. Raban captures the atmosphere and scenery of desert kingdoms with rapidly expanding economies effectively. He arrives and writes at the right time to capture a transitional moment in the Middle East when traditions are fading away and hyper-modernity is rushing in.

And then we get a completely different picture of the Arabian Peninsula when he flies to Sana’a, Yemen, then travels on to Egypt and Jordan. The chapter on Yemen was the best in the book, partly because it is the only country I did not visit when traveling in the Gulf states, but also because he gets so up close and personal with the local people in ways he doesn’t in the previous three countries. While the oil industry is fast-tracking the center and eastern countries of Arabia into the modern age, Yemen is mired in poverty. Yemen is, however, experiencing an economic boom of its own since so many Yemenis go to the richer Gulf states as guest workers and send remittences back home to their families, something that is raising the standards of living for the poorest of all the Middle Eastern countries while not being sufficient to take the country to the next level. Sana’a is described as dirty, noisy, disorienting, and often surreal. The kyat-chewing locals are hospitable and rude in equal measures. Raban experiences some of the best times with impoverished but ambitious young men who go out of their way to explain their isolated country to him. Then he comes close to witnessing a public execution with a carnivalesque atmosphere, feeling confused as whole families eat snacks and take photos, cheering and singing as if they are at a circus while political revolutionaries are blown to pieces by machine gun fire in a public market. For interesting travel stories, this is one that can’t be beat, even if Raba does leave the scene befor the real action begins.

Raban’s visit to Egypt is a real letdown. He treats the city of Cairo as if it is little more than a big red light district full of clueless, airheaded western tourists. Spending almost no time with ordinary Egyptians, he prefers to frequent casinos, go-go bars, and brothels which are almost exclusively packed with men from Saudi Arabia. From what he sees, Raban concludes that Saudis aren’t much fun, even when they are spending all their money on poker, prostitutes, and liquor. It is an interesting insight, but considering how much Egypt has to offer for travelers, this passage falls far short of expectations. If I were Egyptian, I would not be happy with this representation of the country.

Jordan is a different matter as Raban is surprised to see how comfortably the people live despite their miniscule GDP. He hooks up with members at all socio-economic levels of society, encounters its semi-thriving but kitschy art scene, and is shocked when he visits a Palestinian refugee camp to see how comfortably the people are living there.

Jonathan Raban never visits Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, or any other Arabic country in the Middle East, nor does he visit South Yemen which is dominated by a communist government at the time of writing.

While there are a lot of interesting passages in this book, and some great descriptions as well, alongside some often sarcastic and snarky humor, there are some parts of the book that just don’t work. He sometimes lapses into confused abstractions that make him sound like a drunk muttering to himself in a bar. The chapter on Bahrain was nearly pointless in terms of what Raban set out to accomplish. I will admit though that his impression of Manama was no different than my own in the dozen or so times I visited that country. I even visited the same British social club he writes about. It is still there on the outskirts of Manama to this day. The chapter on Egypt is embarrassing. It is hard to believe he thought it was fit to be included. The other chapters were well-done though and really capture a moment in history that is now past. I really do wish he had visited Saudi Arabia and Oman.

Arabia is an interesting, if erratic and uneven, portrait of the social atmosphere of the Gulf states while the oil boom is beginning to transform the whole region and the whole world along with it. Raban wrote this at the beginning of the Lebanese civil war, before Iraq invaded Iran and Kuwait, before the Burj al-Arab and the Burj Khalifa were built in Dubai, before 9/11, before the Arab Spring, and before glitzy high-end shopping malls began competing with the mosques as centers of Arabian culture. It portrays a world that is no longer with us, but is not too distant as to be incomprehensible. As for the conversations Jonathan Raban had with the people he met, I can tell you after having lived in Saudi Arabia myself that if he were to revisit his journey at this current time, he would find that nothing much has changed in terms of what people would say to him. My biggest complaint about this book is that Jonathan Raban provides a superficial understanding of the Arabian Peninsula; if he had spent more time there, getting to know people on a more intimate level, his perceptions would be different, in some ways more positive and in other ways not so much.  

 

Book Review

The Levant Trilogy

by Olivia Manning

     It’s the return of Guy and Harriet Pringle. Olivia Manning’s The Levant Trilogy picks up where her brilliant The Balkan Trilogy leaves off. The Pringles, a married young couple, arrive in Egypt after escaping from Nazi-occupied Greece in the middle of World War II. One obvious thing from the start is that they haven’t changed and their relationship continues to drift aimlessly like it has all along.

After their arrival in Cairo, Guy gets his dream job, working for the colonial British Legation as the director of an English department. Harriet also goes to work at the American embassy. They get put up in an apartment building supplied by the British embassy with rooms for U.K. expatriates. Harriet’s social life revolves around the residents there while Guy continues on living a separate existence with his group of friends who are considered to be bums by most people’s estimates. The two groups get connected through an unlikely coupling of Harriet’s erratic friend Angela and Guy’s alcoholic friend Castlebar.

Also a subplot gets introduced with Simon, a young English military officer who has just arrived in Egypt. Rommel’s forces are progressing across North Africa towards the Suez Canal and the Allies fight them off. Simon is ambitious, vowing to revenge the death of his brother until he gets injured and forced to spend time under medical care in Cairo. That is where he develops a friendship with Guy Pringle. Psychologically, Simon goes through a process of confronting the ephemeral nature of life during wartime and the often unpredictable loss of the people around him.

While The Levant Trilogy is not specifically about gender roles, there is an obvious and overriding preoccupation with the gulf between men and women throughout the narrative. With the exceptions of Simon and the kindly bachelor Dobson, the colonial bureaucrat working at the British embassy, the men in this book are portrayed as being selfish and self-absorbed. Guy’s group of heavy drinking friends are crude and irresponsible. Harriet’s friend Edwina also chases after men who use her and then abandon her. Even the Egyptian natives treat women as if women are not intelligent enough to understand the intellectual world of men.

Guy is at the center of all this. While Harriet makes every effort she can to spend time with him, he routinely ignores her, treats her like she is less important than his job and his peers, and even refuses to take day trips to the pyramids and other sites which he thinks of as tacky and of trivial importance. Later in the book, when Guy mistakenly thinks Harriet has died, Edwina tries to win his heart and asks him out to dinner. She dresses up in her most elegant clothes and Guy insists on going to a grubby, low class restaurant because he knows his friends will be there. Without even realizing that Edwina is putting the moves on him, he abandons her, leaving her to take a taxi home alone while Guy goes off to drink. The problem isn’t that Guy is cruel or heartless; he just doesn’t acknowledge that women are anything other than ornaments or pets. Guy’s vision is flawed, literally and symbolically. He wears glasses because of near-sightedness, but he is also myopic in his outlook on life. He often can not see the obvious or what is right in front of his face. The bigger picture always seems to elude his recognition. Even his optimism is naive and unnerving to the point where Harrier sometimes worries about his safety.

Guy isn’t entirely bad either. He goes out of his way to help anybody in need. His dedication to helping the downtrodden is admirable to a fault since he is unable to see that the people he helps are merely using him, usually to get meals or, more importantly, alcohol. But Guy shows what he is capable of in his friendship with Simon, offering him unconditional emotional support during his recovery from his injury. Despite all of Guy’s maddening shortcomings, it is hard not to admire his good nature and good intentions. This is the kind of nuanced characterization that makes Olivia Mannin’g work so powerful.

On other the other hand, everything wrong with Guy’s relationship to Harriet is signified by the brooch that Angela gives to Harriet as a gift. The diamond-studded heart design looks gaudy to Guy who takes it away from Harriet, telling her he wants to give to Edwina as a gift. When Harriet tells him she wants to keep it because it means something special to her, he tells her she doesn’t really want it anyways because it is so tacky. He has no consideration for her feelings or for his own conduct. This eventually leads to Harriet leaving him. Edwina later gives the brooch back to Guy, he puts it away and forgets about it and when he finds it again later, he can’t even remember where it came from. The brooch’s cycle of possession among the four people shows how oblivious he is to the presence and subjectivity of the women he associates with. To him, they are insubstantial, meaningless, and easy to forget.

Harriet gives up on Guy and leaves for destinations farther east. She heads off for Syria, meets up with Angela and Castlebar in Lebanon, and the three of them head off to Jerusalem. Guy mistakenly thinks Harriet has died and when she finds this out we learn that the separation causes the two of them to realize how much they love each other. Harriest also learns how to be more independent. The ending is more Victorian than Modern, leaving something to be desired and not entirely credible. It does provide closure to the whole saga though.

Like The Balkan Trilogy, the strongest point here is in the character building and the way the people interact. Almost through the use of dialogue along, each member of the story takes on a unique life of their own that stays consistent throughout the whole book. You can feel like you personally know each of them and it is easy to identify with Harriet, seeing the world through her eyes no matter what your gender may be. It is a portrait of a flawed humanity that gently reminds us that we need to accept people as they are and find a way to be comfortable with that. Harriet can not fix Guy’s ignorance, but she can find a way to deal with it and make the best of their imperfect relationship. Olivia Manning’s writing also makes it clear what it feels like to live in a male dominated world where women are seen but not heard and, most of the time, hardly even seen. And her writing never degenerates into bitterness or misanthropy. There is a certain kind of resignation to the characters’ imperfections, a certain kind of patience that reminds us of the need to tolerate people’s imperfections rather than wasting our lives trying to change people who don’t want to be changed.

Compared to The Balkan Trilogy, this was a little bit of a let down. In the previous novels, the encroaching Nazi menace that followed Guy and Harriet as they bumbled through life barely holding their marriage together made the whole narrative that much more unsettling. But here, while they reside in Cairo, the Nazis and the Allies fight off in the distance of the desert. While some passages depict Simon in combat, the story of Guy and Harriet continues on in its day to day routines while the war is little more than rumors and some distant noise in the background. There isn’t much dramatic tension between the two strands of the story line and that makes for some less exciting reading. Also, by replacing the subplot of the parasitical and unforgettable Yakimov with the subplot of Simon’s struggles, a lot of the tension in this second cycle of novelettes is lost as well.

The Levant Trilogy may be slightly less engaging than The Balkan Trilogy, but if you’ve read that one first, then The Levant Trilogy does a sufficient job of tying up the loose threads of Guy and Harriet’s marriage. If anything, if you are a male reader it will open your eyes to the way some women might see their marriages in a way that no other novel can. And if you are a woman, you might be able to relate. Of course, there are a lot of other themes in the book, but you just have to read it to experience it all. It is an easy book to read and understand; like Kurt Vonnegut said, “Writing something that is easy to read is the most difficult thing a writer can do.” Olivia Manning has mastered the art of writing something that is easy to follow without sacrificing depth, complexity, or insight. This is an excellent achievement.

 

Book Review

VALIS

by Philip K. Dick

     Philip K. Dick is not an author who can be taken lightly. Most readers seem to have a similar reaction to him when they start getting into his novels. A common reaction is to think the stories are easy to follow, but the deeper meanings of them are baffling, opaque, and difficult to grasp. After reading several of his novels, you might begin to notice patterns and recurring themes. Ultimately, though, there still might be some kind of message that is slightly beyond your reach. If you’ve gotten to this point with his works, then it probably is time to read VALIS.

The first thing to come to terms with in this book is the narrative framework. Horselover Fats is the central character although he is actually a literary persona of Philip K. Dick. The writing is in the third person omniscient with a twist; the narrative voice is that of Phil who is also a persona of Philip K. Dick, the author. At times, he breaks out of the third person framing and addresses the reader directly as the narrator and then at other times he writes himself into the story, side by side with Horselover Fats as the two have conversations together. The two characters are the same person but separate.

Horselover Fats is an aging hippie who has admittedly fried his brain with drugs and suffers from mental illness. When he has a mystical experience seeing a color that doesn’t actually exist and having a vision of an army of Roman soldiers and an iron prison, he comes to the conclusion that time is not real and everything throughout history and into the present and future are happening at the same time. We just don’t perceive it that way. His mystical experience also gives him the power to see that his son has a health problem threatening his life. When taken to the doctor, this is confirmed and surgery is performed so that he can live. Then Horselover Fats attempts to save a woman from committing suicide and also tries to help a woman recover from cancer, a disease he believes to be a self-inflicted illness. He fails in both cases. This leads him to an existential crisis because he can’t understand why his religious powers helped him save his son’s life but not the lives of the two women. He winds up in a psychiatric hospital. He begins studying religious and mystical traditions and starts writing an exegesis, a book explaining his theological views.

The exegesis covers a lot of territory, exploring and combining aspects of Taoism, Hinduism, Socratic and pre-Socratic philosophy, hermetic traditions, and esoteric Christianity. He especially gets deeply into Gnosticism, the religious order that was seen as a competitor by early Christians who proceeded to destroy their writings and persecute them out of existence. The Gnostics and Horselover Fats hold the belief that the world is animated by a consciousness that is referred to as God. However, this god is a blind idiot god that is irrational, chaotic, and insane. That is why the world is insane. But there is also another god who is rational, good, and orderly, and he sometimes manifests as religious leaders like Buddha and Jesus Christ, bringing knowledge and sensibility to a world that is out of control. This god he refers to as “Zebra”.

This exegesis takes up a large portion of the novel. This is a weakness in the story. There are times when the plot just disappears into a long-winded fog of mystical thinking, making it look like VALIS is just an excuse to shove unorthodox religion down the readers’ throats. Even worse, none of this exegesis is original, or at least, if you have been previously acquainted with the aforementioned theologies and philosophies, there isn’t anything exciting or new to read about here.

However, if you don’t get bored and give up, the story eventually takes some unpredictable and interesting turns. Horselover Fats and the narrator Phil are taken to a movie called Valis by their skeptical friend Kevin. The movie confirms a lot of what Horselover Fats has written and even presents them with some coincidences that are loaded with meaning. They contact the film’s producer, Eric Lampton, a character loosely based on David Bowie, who invites them to Sonoma to meet his two year old daughter who can talk and claims to be the messiah they are looking for, an incarnation of the rational Gnostic god named Sophia. Sadly, Lampton and his followers turn out to be a bunch of crazies and Sophia is nothing but a hoax. But what about all those coincidences in the movie?

What makes VALIS an intersting story is not just its content, but also the layering of the narrative structure. Horselove Fats and Phil represent two different sides of the author. Horselover Fats is the wild and emotional mystic searching for a messiah and the solution to a mystery that may not even have a solution. Phil, the narrator, is the voice of reason who pokes holes in Horselover Fats’ theories, believes him to be insane, and even accuses him of solipsism, projecting his subjectivity onto the world and proclaiming it to be the truth. Notice how the former person is characterized by insanity and the latter is characterized by rationality. Now take into consideration that Philip K. Dick is the author, the god in the narrative machinery of the novel, the one who arranges the events of the plot and then writes himself into the novel as the man who is writing the novel. At this point, something about Philip K. Dick and all his writings becomes clear. He was a deeply religious man and he was also deeply skeptical of his own religious beliefs and experiences. He was both things simultaneously and with equal intensity. This may account for the recurring themes throughout his works: the illusion of time and space, our inability to firmly grasp objective nature, and our inability to base systems of moral certainty on such an unstable system of epistemology.

Then there is another great thing about the way this novel is written. Horselover Fats at times works himself into a frenzy of intense mental activity, then narrative events or the commentaries of Phil or other characters deflate it all, bringing the writing back down to earth and anchoring the story line in a more sober reality. The technical term for this narrative device is “ironic deflation” and Philip K. Dick does it effectively here.

Whatever flaws this novel may have, and there are many including an over-dependence on dialogue to move the story along and some plot holes here and there, are easily overshadowed by its merits. Such merits are a well-developed theory that interlocks with the narrative events, the contrast between illusion and reality, the inherent sense of exasperation expressed when Horselover Fats’ theories don’t adequately match up with his experiences, and the way it leaves the question of certainty and ultimate truth an open ended question that is impossible to answer.

In the end, VALIS is the book that puts all of Philip K. Dick’s other novels into clear light. It is the skeleton key that unlocks the mysteries of all his other books without actually solving the philosophical problems he presents. That probably is the point of it all. The answers will always be beyond our reach. For this reason, VALIS should not be the first Philip K. Dick novel anybody reads. It should be the one they read after being thoroughly confused by his major works. That uncertainty in his writing should be encountered and experienced on a deep level before reading this. And then once VALIS has been read, it is a good idea to go back and re-read everything that has already been read. May that cycle last forever, taking on deeper meaning with every revolution of that wheel.

Final question lingering after finishing this book: If God is a systematic network of information, as Horselover Fats claims he is, would Philip K. Dick entertain the thought that the internet is a physical manifestation of God? If it is, are we in serious trouble?

 

Book Review

Dark Star Safari:

Overland from Cairo to Cape Town

by Paul Theroux

     Two decades ago, the novelist and travel writer Paul Theroux took an overland trip through Africa, starting in Cairo, Egypt and ending in Cape Town, South Africa. This certainly isn’t the safest or the most comfortable means of experiencing the supposed “dark continent”, but it makes for some interesting experiences and insights. Keeping in mind that Theroux’s observations are just one point of view among many, his resulting book Dark Star provides a unique look at a region of the world that holds a permanent place off the beaten path.

While Dark Star is an easy book to read, breaking it down into its individual elements is a good way to approach its merits and examine its flaws. The first element of importance is Theroux’s sense of place. Wherever he goes, the author describes what he sees and the vibe he gets from his surroundings. Starting on the tourist trail in Egypt, he heads south through Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Zambia, and South Africa. You quickly get a sense of what he appreciates and what he doesn’t. He doesn’t like sites that are swarmed with tourists, nor does he like cities with their concentrations of crime and poverty. He also doesn’t like the “death traps” as he calls public transportation which are usually over-croded minivans driven at dangerous speeds on poorly maintained roads, pockmarked with hippopotamus-sized potholes. If you’ve ever traveled in a Third World country, you will know exaclt what he is talking about.

The places that Theroux does like are usually rural, especially farm lands or jungle villages. These are the places where he sees Africans at their best, meaning Africans being Africans in the absence of corrupt and filthy cities built up on the foundations of European colonialism. Some of the book’s best passages involve descriptions of the pyramids in Sudan which are rarely seen by tourists, a boat trip across Lake Victoria, another boat trip from Malawi across the Zambezi over the border into Zimbabwe, and the pristine countrysides of Zimbabwe and South Africa. All places, whether Theroux likes them or not, are described with language that is clear, simple, and direct, making it easy to visualize what he sees.

Another element that is done to near perfection is writings about the people. Theroux talks with tour guides, people on the streets and in the villages, farmers, nuns, educators, government officials, Indian businessmen, prostitutes, authors, intellectuals, and ordinary people. Just like with the places he goes, he describes these people vividly with precision so that you feel like you quickly get to know them. But not everyone is to his liking. He gets into small argument with a fanatical Rastafarian in Ethiopia, a little ornery with physically fit young men who refuse to work, government officials who demand bribes to do their jobs, and he really gives a hard time to a young American missionary woman about the psychological damage that her evangelical ministry is doing to the local people. There is also plenty of anger directed at clueless tourists as well as NGO and charity workers who he sees as being the Westerners who do the most damage to Africa.

The third element of importance is the author, Paul Theroux himself, and his thoughts and commentaries on everything he sees. Before getting into this subject, it should be mentioned that Theroux had a purpose to his journey. In the 1960s he worked as a Peace Corps volunteer, teaching in Malawi. After getting involved with a Leftist political group, he got fired then accepted a teaching position at a college in Uganda. He wanted to return and see what results, if any, his contributions to Africa grew into. What he found was a major disappointment. The charming campuses and villages where he had lived were in ruins and instead of a thriving civilization, he saw emaciated beggars, starving children, an ignorant populace, and chronically corrupt politicians. Shops that were formerly owned by Indian immigrants were abandoned and burnt to the ground, the result of a campaign of ethnic cleansing. African people wanted to buy from shops owned by Africans, but Africans never took control over the businesses after the Indians were killed or chased away. They resorted to begging, theft, petty crime, prostitution, and laziness instead of making an effort to build better villages for themselves. Due to the hopelessness of African society, the most educated citizens fled to America or Europe instead of staying in their home countries where they were most needed.

Throughout his travels in Tanzania, Uganda, and Malawi, Theroux gets increasingly bitter and cynical. He wanted to see Africans thriving and they weren’t. He directs all his wrath towards the Western charities and NGOs who he says are making the local people dependent on aid rather than learning how to run their societies for themselves. Even worse, these organizations work by bribing corrupt politicians to allow them to do work there, keeping greedy and psychotic leaders in positions of power they don’t deserve. Theroux points out that rural people who have given up on the hopeless market economy and returned to subsistence farming are the happiest and healthiest Africans he encounters. Heecomes close to advocating for a type of post-capitalist agrarian anarchism.

Some readers have criticized Theroux for his pessimistic views on contemporary Africa, but he does cite studies that support what he says. He also encounters a lot of Africans in several different countries that agree with him. To make sense of his negativity, you also have to remember that traveling overland through Africa is not exactly stress free. Anybody who has been on an extended backpacking trip anywhere in the world will tell you that traveler’s fatigue is a real thing. Theroux took a longer than average trip through one of the most underdeveloped regions in the world, got shot at by Somali bandits, stuck in the middle of nowhere when his transportation broke down, and got sick with food poisoning, magnifying his traveler’s fatigue to a outsize extent. These circumstances would make you grouchy too. But even in the darkest times, Theroux never loses his appreciation for Africa, the wildlife, the landscapes, and the people who are trying to make the best of their situations. Besides, by the time he crosses the river from Malawi into Zimbabwe, his mood really lightens up.

Dark Star is an engaging travelogue that should be read both critically and with an open mind. All the while, remember that this is Paul Theroux’s singular point of view. That doesn’t make it wrong; that just means that there are other points of view to take into account that may go against what he says even if they don’t necessarily invalidate his opinions. He saw what he saw and he expresses it well. This is raw and honest travel writing and if you haven’t been tough enough to make the same kind of journey, you’re not in a good place to be judgmental of the conclusions he draws. 

 

Book Review

Counter-Clock World

by Philip K. Dick

     Life is uncertain. Our perceptions of reality are shaky, incomplete, distorted, and inaccurate. If we use our perceptions of truth as a basis for making decisions and plans of action, how can we possibly know if we are doing the right thing or not? We can’t so we just do what we think is right and hope it works out for the best. This is the central, unstated theme of Philip K. Dick’s Counter-Clock World.

Sebastian Hermes is at the center of it all. He lives in a future time when dead people reawaken and rise from their graves and after being reborn they get younger with the passage of time, eventually becoming children then infants and returning to the womb. Sebastian runs a business, assisting people as they return to life then selling them to whoever will be their caretaker for the immediate future. One night while working in a graveyard, he realizes that the leader of a religious cult called the Uditi, named the Anarch Peak, is about to come back to life. Sebastian realizes this is an opportunity to make a huge amount of money, so he helps to resurrect the Anarch Peak, but not everything works out as smoothly as he plans.

The antagonist of the story is the Library which is run by a secretive group called the Erads. Their mission is the control of information and they operate by erasing and destroying all works of literature that they decide are harmful for society. They realize that the Anarch Peak is about to return, so they hatch a plot to kidnap and assassinate him before he can spread his religious message further than it already has. They know his return will be even more important this time because during death he would have had direct contact with God. The Erads send a charming and beautiful woman named Ann Fisher to seduce Sebastian Hermes while an attempt on the Anarch Peak’s life is made since he is being held in the care of Sebastian’s office building. Ann Fisher’s plans get spoiled because two secret agents from Rome tip Sebastian off to her plot. These Romans are most likely unstated representatives of the Catholic church who have a vested interest in getting a hold of the Anarch Peak.

At this point in the book, it becomes obvious that this is an action/thriller story with science-fiction trappings and theological undertones. Since the world moves in reverse, people disgorge food rather than eating it and they blow smoke into cigarette butts which elongate until they can be put into a pack. The climax of sex happens when the male’s sperm separates from the egg and returns to the man. There are other science-fiction details like flying cars, robot people, and exotic high-tech weaponry. None of this feeds directly into the main point. The author wanted to write a story about resurrection and made time flow in reverse, then added these details in to make it feel more complete and maybe a little more trippy like some mind-blowing window decorations. This was written in the late 1960s after all. These details, aside from the dead returning to life, are more or less just gimmicks. But at least they are unique and interesting gimmicks. The theological conversations and meditations on the nature of time and mortality are not terribly original either and seem to be tacked onto the story to give it a more mystical atmosphere.

As the story progresses, the actual theme of the book becomes a little less obscure. That theme, being the uncertainty of our perceptions and the inability to understand the consequences of our actions, can be seen in how the action unfolds. While there are a lot of sub-themes throughout, one thing becomes clear: Sebastian is faced with a series of choices in which the uncertainty of the outcomes make it difficult to judge what the right plan of action should be. This can be seen in his attempts to negotiate with the Romans and the Uditi who both want him to turn the Anarch Peak over to them. This culminates in Sebastian’s attempt to rescue the Anarch Peak and his wife Lotta from the fortress-like Library which is held by the Erads. It seems that whatever he does in this situation, it will be the wrong thing from both a personal and a moral point of view.

To confuse matters more, Sebastian Hermes begins having dreams and vision in which the Anarch Peak visits him as a spirit and gives him information and instructions. Sebastian has no way of knowing if these are real or hallucinatory, but the Anarch Peak gives him one significant piece of information. He tells Sebastian that he is the most important man in the world. At this point, you can not tell if Sebastian is losing his mind or not. It appears that world events of religious and historical importance are happening all around him and maybe he is some sort of Christ-like figure that has been chosen as a messenger for God. But maybe this is all a delusional compensation for the way he keeps digging himself deeper and deeper into trouble by making decisions that are morally and pragmatically of a dubious nature. He may be somebody with a divine purpose or he may be a complete loser having delusions of grandeur to save his fragile mind from sinking into self-destruction.

What is truly great about this book is the way you see this whole mess from Sebastian Hermes’ point of view. His confusion becomes your confusion and the fact that, despite all his screw ups, he remains a sympathetic character to the end because he is motivated entirely by pure intentions and honesty. What are the ethics of this? Do insanity and honesty cancel each other out? If Sebastian isn’t insane, do his failures cancel out his purity of intent? The story leaves you hanging without any clear answers.

As enjoyable as this book can be, it isn’t one of Philip K. Dick’s major works. The biggest flaw of the book is the inconsistencies of the time-in-reverse premise. While food is disgorged and cigarettes are un-smoked, bullets don’t fly out of people’s bodies and back into guns. The flying cars move forward. People don’t run or walk in reverse. Even worse, when people get shot or blown uo they don’t return to life the way people in their graves do. And how could the plot even move forwards in a world where everything goes backwards? Why can’t the characters even predict what is going to happen next? If you think about this too much you will ruin the experience of the story. It is just better to accept these flaws without dwelling on them too deeply. You actually have to do that if you expect to take anything away from the story.

The idea that we can never know what is real with any certainty and therefore can never know what to do with any certainty is the same theme that animates Philip K. Dick’s earlier novel The Man In the High Castle. He just transplants that idea into a totally different setting and plot line. Counter-Clock World is also a lot more entertaining. The way you can feel Sebastian’s confusion while he maintains a calm and certain exterior is a strong point and the story moves along nicely too, even if the main theme is obscured under all the details. This isn’t one of Philip K. Dick’s most popular novels, but it possibly is his more underrated. 

 

Book Review

Eurock:

European Rock & the Second Culture

edited by Archie Patterson

     By 1970, psychedelic music had begun to fade in popularity in America and the U.K. At the same time, there was a small scene of musicians in Germany that began experimenting with rock styles that started where psychedelia and acid rock left off. The British press condescendingly labeled this scene “krautrock”. The influence of bands like Tangerine Dream, Can, Amon Duul II, Kraftwerk, Neu, Faust, and others spread throughout continental Europe and soon bands like Magma and Heldon formed in France. Krautrock would later merge with progressive or prog rock, space rock, cosmic music, fusion, and a whole bunch of other genres. Little of this music was known in America, but one man named Archie Patterson fell deeply in love with it and so formed a fanzine named Eurock to promote it in the underground American music market. His attempt at bringing this wide-ranging music to the narrow minds of American people largely failed and yet his journal lasted until 2002. In Eurock: European Rock and the Second Culture, Patterson provides us with articles from the thirty year lifespan of his underground music journalism. It is a treasure trove of archival information for people who either love this kind of rock or for people who are familiar with it but want to explore it on a wider and deeper level.

The initial articles are not easy to read. Patterson and others attempt to put into words what they hear on some of the pioneering krautrock records. The descriptiveness is neither clear nor accurate. If you read one of these essays and then listen to the music being described it is difficult to find any connection between the two. It is possible to write prose or poetry that sounds musical, just try James Joyce or Jack Kerouac as examples, but using words to described music is entirely impossible. Frank Zappa famously said about rock journalists, “You can’t write about music for the same reason you can’t dance about architecture.” Had Patterson and crew continued on in this vein, I would have given up on this book half way through or maybe even sooner.

The writers at Eurock saw the light though. They ditched their futile attempts at achieving the impossible and took the fanzine in another direction. From then on, their articles consisted of band biographies, scene reports, interviews, and essays on music theory. The scope also expands to a more global perspective. From Germany and France, they begin covering bands from all across Europe and eventually touching on musical projects out of Japan and Latin America. Many of these bands are included in the Nurse With Wound List; if you don’t know what that is, look it up. While the intended purpose of Eurock is to bring international underground music to the attention of American listeners, some American and British bands do get attention when they are radical or experimental enough. Brief articles on bands like Chrome, the Legendary Pink Dots, Lemon Kittens, and Nocturnal Emissions are included although the harsher sounds of post punk and industrial music are only mentioned briefly. Some interesting reoccurring themes are the ongoing struggles of the legally persecuted Plastic People Of the Universe in communist Czechoslovakia, the Rock in Opposition movement and festivals, the Leftist /utopian political visions of the musicians, the way in which the introduction of cassette tapes made it possible for non-commercial musicians to record and distribute their works, and ways in which changing technology affected the production of underground music particularly in relation to synthesizer and moog oriented electronic music.

This anthology also gives a broad overview of the trajectory of this kind of music. By the 1980s, krautrock and prog rock had reached their peak and these journalists struggle to find new bands and scenes to report on. There are a lot more interviews with old guard musicians like Klaus Schulze and Richard Pinhas. Some of them go quite in depth and retrospectively reveal a lot about the history of their careers. On the downside, more and more articles are included about new age musicians which tend to be just as bland and vapid as the music that these artists made. In the chapters from the mid-1980s and 1990s, you begin to see that Patterson’s vision of futuristic and creative rock music has become less and less relevant in the horrid Reagan/Thatcher era. However, in terms of interviews and writing, the passages from 2000 to 2002 are some of the most well-written ones in the whole book.

Not all of the bands covered in Eurock are good. Some have definitely not stood the test of time. The articles also vary in quality, ranging from creative and mind-expanding to vague, confusing, and sometimes shallow. But this big long book stays interesting most of the time. Some of the best writing comes from interviews with musicians I have never heard of who inspired me to go out and look up their music. The best articles have also done a lot to enhance my understanding of the underground music scene in Europe and the importance of non-commercial music in a world dominated by excessive media coercion and corporate control over art and entertainment. Some of us are just hungry for alternative visions of the world when the society of consumerism and mass-conformity have us surrounded on all sides. These experimental musicians are like islands of sanity in a world gone to hell, where most people insist on marching in lockstep with all the others on the road to brain death. These musicians are saying, “Look, there are other possibilities, other modes of existence that may be more meaningful and exciting so try it out and see what it’s like.”

As a document and archive, Eurock is an outstanding book that provides a detailed overview of a musical scene that is destined for obscurity. It is niche literature for one of the most specific niches you can imagine. Not all of the writing is great, but most of it is good enough and when the writing is strong it really shines. The honesty and dedication of Archie Patterson’s lifelong project ring true loud and clear. If Patterson and the bands represented in this volume never get inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, at least we have Eurock to remind us what cross-current and counter-cultural possibilities lie outside the mainstream