Book of Days: asher553

TIN MARSH by Michael Swanwick, 2006; in 'The Very Best of the Best' by Gardner Dozois, 2019. On the hellish surface of the planet Venus, two contract laborers in life-support suits make one another's lives a true hell. Once fond of one another, their prolonged confinement together has driven them into madness of mutual hatred. They are prevented from harming one another only by a set of Asimov-like laws enforced by neural implants. It is like the most dysfunctional marriage ever. When a freak accident disables his implants, allowing him to do as he pleases, she becomes his prey as he chases her, both in their automated life-support suits, across Venus.

The story combines adventure, problem-solving, and psychological drama as MacArthur and Patang's long-pent-up hostility plays out on the alien landscape. We have to wonder if the presence of the behavior-control systems exacerbates the humans' frustration and rage. Many details of the setting - the iron furniture, the exorbitantly priced drinking water (cf. Lamentations 5:4), and the ever-present eye of the bureaucracy - contribute to the atmosphere of total oppressiveness. The story is worth reading to the end for its very satisfying conclusion.

PATRIOTS by James Wesley Rawles. Set in the area of Moscow, Idaho, following an economic collapse, this story follows Todd Gray and his community of fellow survivalists as they adapt to life after "the Crunch", fend off brigands, form an alliance with a neighboring group, and eventually do battle with globalist-backed forces. Rawles is sometimes seen as the godfather of the modern-day prepper movement, and is the author of two nonfiction books on survivalism.

DISSOLUTION by W. Michael Gear. This story follows Sam Delgado and a group of archaeology students at a site near the Tappan Ranch in northwestern Wyoming, as they receive news of a worldwide banking collapse and subsequent foreign military attacks on the East and West Coasts. The students-turned-survivalists bond with one another and with the Tappans, learn how to survive in a changed world, and finally defeat the warlord Edgewater. The author is one half of the O'Neal-Gear writing team, who published 'People of the Wolf' and many other works of fiction. In both setting and date of composition, 'Dissolution' (published in 2021) is much later than POTW, the Gears' debut novel of 30 years earlier, which follows a band of Paleo-Indians as they hunt mammoths in ice age North America. Interestingly, both stories feature a pair of estranged twins (Runs In Light and Raven Hunter in POTW, Brandon and Breeze in Dissolution), and both books stress the theme of a single people that has become tragically divided.

I am not an expert on survivalist matters, so I'll confine my comments to the ordinary reader's perspective. I found both 'Patriots' and 'Dissolution' to be well-written, engaging stories that keep you involved in the plot and the characters. In 'Patriots', the main characters are mostly college-educated professionals and full-time preppers; the cast of 'Dissolution' is a group of students and others mostly thrown together by fate. Both books begin with the premise of an economic collapse.

'Patriots' is more expository in its style, serving both as entertainment and as a prepper's manual, so you're going to encounter long lists of gear and how-to passages that don't necessarily advance the pace of the plot. 'Dissolution' is the work of an accomplished novelist, and I felt the characters were more complicated and ambiguous. Both stories end on a satisfying "good guys win, bad guys lose" note, but I found 'Dissolution' somehow much darker. In 'Dissolution' as in POTW, the explicit descriptions of violence and carnage are infrequent, but they are there and they are very graphic; and the protagonists struggle with internal demons that are not so evident in 'Patriots'.

One thing that weakened 'Dissolution' for me was the constant editorializing by the author (ostensibly expressed through the journal of one of the characters), which is largely a tiresome litany decrying the "division" in American society while taking great pains to avoid favoring one side or the other. So we have speeches directed against "the Republicans, the Democrats, the religious right, the social progressives, Antifa, QAnon" and blah blah blah. It sounds too much like a glib politician who wants to be seen as condemning this generic "extremism" thing without taking a position on anything.

So, both books had their strengths and their weaknesses, but I enjoyed them both and I'm glad I read 'Patriots' and 'Dissolution' - and I'm looking forward to reading the sequels ('Survivors' and 'Fourth Quadrant' respectively).

PEOPLE OF THE WOLF (O'NEAL-GEAR): to Chapter 45. The People (the POV tribe in the story), led by Wolf Dreamer's aggressive twin brother Crow Caller, launch their first retaliatory attacks against the enemy tribe. The younger men get their first taste of violence and cruelty, and find that they like it. The passing of two beloved figures forces both Wolf Dreamer and Dancing Fox to make difficult choices. The shaman Heron, in her final vision, glimpses a warm land to the south - an alien landscape filled with strange creatures. Meanwhile, Ice Fire, the shaman of the enemy tribe, harbors a disturbing secret - and a mystical connection.

KING OF THE VAGABONDS (STEPHENSON): to Saxony, April 1684. Jack encounters an ostrich in Oesterreich, and makes his getaway from the Siege of Vienna with Eliza, whom he has liberated from a harem. Jack reveals the nature of an unfortunate accident that has left him short-changed in the romantic department. He and Eliza roam the Bohemian countryside through the winter of 1683 - '84, subsisting on a limited diet that leaves Eliza weak. Eliza, smuggling the precious ostrich plumes, hatches a plan to buy mining shares. They travel to Leipzig, where they meet a certain scholar, "the Doctor", who is working on certain mathematical discoveries rivaling those of the Englishman Newton. The Doctor is everything Newton is not - urbane, sophisticated, a ladies' man (which Newton definitely is not), and able to enjoy a trashy romance novel with the best of 'em.

Stewart (Calculus, 9th ed.) states that Leibniz "sought to develop a symbolic logic and system of notation that would simplify logical reasoning. In particular, the version of calculus that he published in 1684 established the notation (dy/dx) and the rules for finding derivatives that we use today." The priority dispute between Newton and Leibniz is one of the main themes of Stephenson's Baroque Cycle.

Torah. This week we're reading Ki Tisa (beginning at Exodus 30:11), which begins with the command for the Israelites to contribute half a shekel each for the Sanctuary, and continues with the sin of the golden calf and the breaking of the first set of the Tablets. Back in 2016, I was inspired by this Parasha to take a count of some Jewish schoolchildren in Uganda.

Scripture. In the 929 Project's chapter-by-chapter cycle, we are at II Samuel 18, where King David must deal with the rebellion by his son Absalom. Absalom is finally found - tangled by his luxuriant locks in a terebinth tree - and killed; but now it is Joab who faces a sticky situation. Miriam Gedweiser: 'When informed that Absalom is hanging in a tree, Job asks the messenger, incredulously, “Why didn’t you kill him then and there?” For Joab, it is as if the King’s impossible request to “deal gently” has simply not registered. The text has Joab’s interlocutor explicitly cite the king’s order, however, to highlight the conscious choice Joab is making. ...'

Books. I am finally close to finishing my re-read of the wonderful and deservedly classic fantasy novel 'The Last Unicorn' by Peter S. Beagle. My good friend Michael Weingrad wrote an erudite review of The Last Unicorn (free to read with registration). I'm going to have a few thoughts of my own once I've finished.

HUNGRY IN JERUSALEM
A Whole Loaf – S. Y. Agnon

Like Agnon’s work in general, ‘A Whole Loaf’ draws on traditional Jewish religious sources, but is thoroughly modern in style and theme (particularly in the themes of anxiety and indecisiveness). Also typically for Agnon, the story has a dream-like (or nightmare-like) quality.

The unnamed narrator is in Jerusalem at the end of a hot Sabbath day. His family are abroad (for reasons we never learn) and he has to fend for himself, which he is doing rather poorly. The simple tasks of procuring food and drink seem to elude him, even as the heat of the day is described in almost hyperbolic terms. In fact, the heat is described as emanating from the ceiling, walls, and floor of the narrator’s apartment – oven-like – so that he is literally baking.

Early in the story, the narrator encounters the Moses-like figure of Dr. Yekutiel Ne’eman, who gives him some letters to deliver to the post office, after scolding him for allowing his family to be separated from him. The narrator earnestly promises to do so, and momentarily experiences a feeling of real guilt at Ne’eman’s reproof, but mostly he seems to be motivated by “a desire to make Dr. Ne’eman feel more pleased.” We begin to suspect that this man has shallow relationships with his fellow human beings, and that he is a rather poor judge of character. His feelings of guilt and duty are equally shallow, and evaporate as quickly as they arise.

Agnon, as a devout Zionist, no doubt shared and endorsed Dr. Ne’eman’s rebuke, and it is safe to say that the story is, on one level at least, an allegory of the duty of the Jewish people to forsake the assimilated life of Europe with its decadent temptations and return to the Land of Israel.

(In the commentary of the translation I’m using, A Book that Was Lost, Alan Mintz and Anne Golomb Hoffman, eds., there’s some exposition of Agnon’s symbolism in the story, and it’s well worth reading. I myself am not a scholar, so I will confine myself to remarking on the plain sense of the story.)

The man resolves to take the letters to the post office, as he has promised Dr. Ne’eman, but he’s also hungry and thirsty and dying for a decent meal; so he’s torn between going to the post office first or going to a hotel to grab a bite to eat, and spends most of the story dithering between these two courses of action.

“It is easy to understand the state of a man who has two courses in front of him,” he comments reasonably enough. But here and in a number of other places, he sounds insecure and seems to solicit the reader’s (or listener’s) agreement and sympathy for his situation. You can almost picture the guy with a pleading look on his face saying “You do understand, don’t you?”

In the second half of the story we meet Mr. Gressler, whom the narrator seems eager to please, even though Gressler is the one who struck the match that burned down the narrator’s home and books. (The narrator lived upstairs from the apostate textile merchant – whose wares were “like paper” – so this consequence was in no way unforeseeable.) Our narrator lets on to some mixed feelings toward Gressler following the fire, but in general seems to want to maintain cordial relations with him. I think he puts Gressler and Ne’eman on exactly the same level in his own estimation.

(As a biographical note, the house fire was not an abstract idea for Agnon, who lost his home and library to a fire in 1924.)

The one person the narrator feels unambivalent about is Mr. Hophni, the inventor of an improved mousetrap. (At first I thought the mousetrap detail might be the translator’s idiomatic rendering of some other phrase, since we have the expression in English, “build a better mousetrap”. But no, the story is talking about a literal rodent-catching device.) He finds Hophni insufferable. In particular, he finds Hophni’s bragging about his success objectionable. (Perhaps another measure of the narrator’s own insecurity.)

So when the narrator is offered a lift in Gressler’s carriage (a rarity in that place and time, we’re told), he happily accepts, but his happiness is short-lived when he sees Hophni coming aboard as a fellow passenger. Our narrator, now not only irritable from hunger and thirst but further provoked by the presence of Hophni, finally loses it and grabs the reins, causing the horses to panic and overturning the carriage. (His subsequent fear of being hit by a motorcar must be exaggerated, because if carriages were a rarity, how much more so motorcars.)

Psychologically, this is perfect: all through the story, the guy is incapable of making up his own mind and choosing a course of action, burdened by his doubts and anxieties. And when his frustration reaches the boiling point and he finally takes decisive action, it’s a disaster. I think we’ve all been there.

Two paragraphs near the end of the story – set off by repeated phrases before and after – appear to form a nightmare (or nightmare-within-a-nightmare) sequence.

The narrator, having stayed in the restaurant past closing time without ever getting his food (even the “whole loaf” of the title), finds himself locked inside. (The lock sounds “like the sound of a nail being hammered into the flesh” – a curious comparison, particularly in a Jewish story.) He is then paid a visit by a mouse, which he seems powerless to frighten away, as if physically immobilized. He expresses anxiety that the mouse might soon begin to gnaw on his body; from the anatomical progression envisioned in this scenario, we might suspect that there’s an element of sexual anxiety there as well. The mouse is then joined by a cat, whom the narrator expects to save him from the mouse. (We’re not told whether he is re-thinking his opinion of Hophni.) But the cat and the mouse take no notice of each other, instead gnawing on the bones of the left-over food, and the light in the room fades, leaving only the green glow of the cat’s eyes. Eventually the narrator wakens to see the cleaning staff and last night’s waiter. (“I took hold of my bones,” he says, in a final, disquieting echo of the previous night.)

The title of the story calls to mind the baking of bread, an image reinforced by the narrator’s oven-like apartment in the opening scene. In this reading, the man himself is the “loaf”. (The analogy of bread to man is not unreasonable, as both are traditionally spoken of as being brought from the earth by G-d.) But the locked room at the ending of the story – which was published in 1951 – hints at a more recent, and more ominous, use of ovens.

The story itself appears cyclical, with the closing passage almost identical to the beginning. At the end of the story, the Sabbath has ended, but the post office is still closed and the letter remains undelivered. The narrator is still alone. He’s still hungry, thirsty, and very very hot. And there’s no sign that his physical and spiritual torment is likely to end any time soon. I think the simplest explanation is that he’s in hell.