Given the centrality of the I Ching to The Man in The High Castle, I thought it’d be interesting to display the cover of this edition of the book, from 1968.
Lawrence Sutin’s extremely thorough and truly well-written biography of Dick – Divine Invasions – A Life of Philip K. Dick, which I’m currently reading – discusses the ancient text in terms of Dick’s daily consultation of the work (for lack of a better word!) during the 1960s, in terms of his daily life in general, and specifically, the creation of his famous alternate history.
Fact (fiction?)…
“He continued to consult the I Ching on a near-daily basis – more frequently if he perceived a crisis at hand, which was fairly often. Miriam Lloyd, with whom Phil commenced an enduring friendship during this period, observes, “Phil was a crisis junkie anyway – he loved a crisis.” The I Ching was a valued touchstone at such times, though Phil no longer consulted it for plot construction. It was during 1965 that Phil write the essay “Schizophrenia & The Book Of Changes,” in which he argues that the oracle can’t predict the future – fortunately, since total knowledge would immobilize us (as a schizophrenic, whose idios kosmos is overwhelmed by the koinos kosmos, is immobilized). But it can reveal the gestalt from which the future will emerge.”
Fiction (The Man in The High Castle) (fact?)…
“In a 1976 interview, Phil accused the I Ching of being a “malicious spirit” largely because it “copped out completely” as to the “unresolved ending chapter of High Castle. “It is a liar. It speaks with forked tongue.” (Notwithstanding the pronouncements, Phil consulted the I Ching regularly up to the time of his death, with peak use in the sixties and early seventies.) What frustrated Phil (as well as numerous critics who otherwise admired the novel unreservedly) was that the revelation of the truth – that the Allies prevailed in World War II – does nothing to dispel the characters’ foreboding. Juliana remains isolated; Abendsen continues to live in fear. The sense of Nazi oppression remains. Truth alone, it seems, is not enough to liberate the soul. In an August 1978 letter, Phil tries to make the High Castle ending cohere:
Juliana tells Hawthorne Abendsen that his book is true and it makes him angry. […] Simply because he knows that if this woman, this stranger, this ordinary person knows, then the Fascist Authorities must know, and his life is in danger. Abendsen feels two opposite ways about his novel; on one level he would like the truth of it to be palpable, but it scares him that he knows the truth and has publicly stated that truth: he is a Geheimnistrager [person entrusted with secret information]: a carrier (knower I mean) of a secret, and it is a secret which frightens him.
…[in 1974] he returned briefly to the idea of writing a sequel to High Castle. Back in 1964 he made a start of it (two chapters, twenty-eight pages total, survive…) but could not face further research on hideous Nazi tactics. Dictated cassette notes of 1974 describe one scene in which Abendsen would be brutally interrogated by Nazis who seek (like Juliana) the truth as to the alternate universe (“Nebenwelt”), which Abendsen cannot provide – he does not know. The secret is forever elusive.”
Here, in this house, you shall meet the first sketch of the real God. It is a man — or a being made by man — who will finally ascend the throne of the universe. And rule forever.
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No, no; we want geldings and oxen. There will never be peace and order and discipline so long as there is sex. When man has thrown it away, then he will become finally governable.
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But the educated public, the people who read the highbrow weeklies, don’t need reconditioning. They’re all right already. They’ll believe anything.
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What’s on a book is interesting (hey, that’s why this blog’s here!) but it’s what’s inside that really counts. Some novels; some stories are so compelling that the message they present – whether explicitly or implicitly – demands acknowledgement; demands recognition; demands contemplation. This is so regardless of a tale’s format, physical quality, or (sometimes being generous!) literary venue. In some pulp fiction, there has been profundity. In a few cheap paperbacks, there has been prescience. And even in some works of mainstream fiction, there can be (on infrequent occasion!) meaning. Such as, in the four examples below: Two pulps; a mainstream novel; a cheap paperback. While they certainly merit notice of their cover art, it’s the commonality – expressed in different degrees of sophistication and style – of their understanding of the intersection between human nature, technology, and civilization, and the endurance of civilization, for which they should be recognized.
So, each post features images of the book or pulp’s cover art, followed by a whole, long, big bunch of excerpts.
… some worthy quotes from That Hideous Strength, the trilogy’s final novel, follow below.
But first…!
here’s George Orwell’s review of the novel from the Manchester Evening News of August 16, 1945, published one day after Emperor Hirohito’s radio broadcast concerning the termination of WW II. A strange and subtle synchronicity, eh? Orwell’s opinion of Lewis’ novel is generally positive, but his criticisms of the magical and supernatural elements in the story are, I think, unwarranted and strangely naive, especially coming from a man of such shining literary skill and moral sensitivity. (I recently finished The Road to Wigan Pier, and, Homage to Catalonia, both of which clearly reveal Orwell’s intellectual honesty, compassion, and political wisdom.) After all, it was Lewis’ specific and deliberate intention – having successively “segued” from Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra – to combine elements of science-fiction, fantasy, and the supernatural as a warning about the dangers of deification of the human intellect, the seductiveness of power – and especially the desire to feel that one is among a society’s elect, and, an entirely mechanistic view of reality.
Here’s the review…
The Scientist Takes Over
(Reprinted as No. 2720 (first half) in The Complete Works of George Orwell, edited by Peter Davison, Vol. XVII (1998), pp. 250–251)
On the whole, novels are better when there are no miracles in them. Still, it is possible to think of a fairly large number of worth-while books in which ghosts, magic, second-sight, angels, mermaids, and what-not play a part.
Mr. C.S. Lewis’s “That Hideous Strength” can be included in their number – though, curiously enough, it would probably have been a better book if the magical element had been left out. For in essence it is a crime story, and the miraculous happenings, though they grow more frequent towards the end, are not integral to it.
In general outline, and to some extent in atmosphere, it rather resembles G.K. Chesterton’s “The Man Who Was Thursday.”
Mr. Lewis probably owes something to Chesterton as a writer, and certainly shares his horror of modern machine civilisation (the title of the book, by the way, is taken from a poem about the Tower of Babel) and his reliance on the “eternal verities” of the Christian Church, as against scientific materialism or nihilism.
His book describes the struggle of a little group of sane people against a nightmare that nearly conquers the world. A company of mad scientists – or, perhaps, they are not mad, but have merely destroyed in themselves all human feeling, all notion of good and evil – are plotting to conquer Britain, then the whole planet, and then other planets, until they have brought the universe under their control.
All superfluous life is to be wiped out, all natural forces tamed, the common people are to be used as slaves and vivisection subjects by the ruling caste of scientists, who even see their way to conferring immortal life upon themselves. Man, in short, is to storm the heavens and overthrow the gods, or even to become a god himself.
There is nothing outrageously improbable in such a conspiracy. Indeed, at a moment when a single atomic bomb – of a type already pronounced “obsolete” – has just blown probably three hundred thousand people to fragments, it sounds all too topical. Plenty of people in our age do entertain the monstrous dreams of power that Mr. Lewis attributes to his characters, and we are within sight of the time when such dreams will be realisable.
His description of the N.I.C.E. (National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments), with its world-wide ramifications, its private army, its secret torture chambers, and its inner ring of adepts ruled over by a mysterious personage known as The Head, is as exciting as any detective story.
It would be a very hardened reader who would not experience a thrill on learning that The Head is actually – however, that would be giving the game away.
One could recommend this book unreservedly if Mr. Lewis had succeeded in keeping it all on a single level. Unfortunately, the supernatural keeps breaking in, and it does so in rather confusing, undisciplined ways. The scientists are endeavouring, among other things, to get hold of the body of the ancient Celtic magician Merlin, who has been buried – not dead, but in a trance – for the last 1,500 years, in hopes of learning from him the secrets of pre-Christian magic.
They are frustrated by a character who is only doubtfully a human being, having spent part of his time on another planet where he has been gifted with eternal youth. Then there is a woman with second sight, one or two ghosts, and various superhuman visitors from outer space, some of them with rather tiresome names which derive from earlier books of Mr. Lewis’s. The book ends in a way that is so preposterous that it does not even succeed in being horrible in spite of much bloodshed.
Much is made of the fact that the scientists are actually in touch with evil spirits, although this fact is known only to the inmost circle. Mr. Lewis appears to believe in the existence of such spirits, and of benevolent ones as well. He is entitled to his beliefs, but they weaken his story, not only because they offend the average reader’s sense of probability but because in effect they decide the issue in advance. When one is told that God and the Devil are in conflict one always knows which side is going to win. The whole drama of the struggle against evil lies in the fact that one does not have supernatural aid. However, by the standard of the novels appearing nowadays this is a book worth reading.
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This post concludes with a bunch of references to commentary about and discussion of the novel, the most recent of which are N.S. Lyons’ profound “A Prophecy of Evil: Tolkien, Lewis, and Technocratic Nihilism” – also available in podcast form via Audyo – and Rusty Reno’s “That Haunting Nihilism“. (Admittedly, the very title of Lyons’ post inspired the leading word in this post’s title: Technonihilism. One must give credit where credit’s due!)
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But First, Some Thing to Watch
So, to (try!) to begin on a note of levity, what better way than to poke fun at sciencescientism than by Thomas Dolby’s “She Blinded Me With Science” (Official Video – HD Remaster – April 15, 2009), at Thomas Dolby Official?
After all, humor may be the refuge of the powerless, but it is a refuge nonetheless.
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And so, some quotes:
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The most controversial business before the College Meeting was the question of selling Bragdon Wood. The purchaser was the N.I.C.E., the National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments. They wanted a site for the building which would house this remarkable organisation. The N.I.C.E. was the first fruits of that constructive fusion between the state and the laboratory on which so many thoughtful people base their hopes of a better world. (23)
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Jewel had been already an old man in the days before the first war when old men were treated with kindness, and he had never succeeded in getting used to the modern world. (28)
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“And what do you think about it, Studdock?” said Feverstone.
“I think,” said Mark, “that James touched on the most important point when he said that it would have its own legal staff and its own police. I don’t give a fig for Pragmatometers and sanitation de luxe. The real thing is that this time we’re going to get science applied to social problems and backed by the whole force of the state, just as war has been backed by the whole force of the state in the past. One hopes, of course, that it’ll find out more than the old free-lance science did; but what’s certain is that it can do more.” (38)
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“But it is the main question at the moment: which side one’s on – obscurantism or Order. It does really look as if we now had the power to dig ourselves in as a species for a pretty staggering period, to take control of our own destiny. If Science is really given a free hand it can now take over the human race and re-condition it: make man a really efficient animal. If it doesn’t – well, we’re done.” (40-41)
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“It’s the real thing at last. A new type of man; and it’s people like you who’ve got to begin to make him.”
“The practical point is that you and I don’t like being pawns, and we do rather like fighting – especially on the winning side.”
“And what is the first practical step?”
“Yes, that’s the real question. As I said, the interplanetary problem must be left on the side for the moment. The second problem is our rivals on this planet. I don’t mean only insects and bacteria. There’s far too much life of every kind about, animal and vegetable. We haven’t really cleared the place yet. First we couldn’t; and then we had aesthetic and humanitarian scruples; and we still haven’t short-circuited the question of the balance of nature. All that is to be gone into. The third problem is Man himself.”
“Go on. This interests me very much.”
“Man has got to take charge of Man. That means, remember, that some men have got to take charge of the rest – which is another reason for cashing in on it as soon as you can. You and I want to be the people who do the taking charge, not the ones who are taken charge of. Quite.”
“What sort of things have you in mind?”
“Quite simple and obvious things, at first – sterilization of the unfit, liquidation of backward races (we don’t want any dead weights), selective breeding. Then real education, including pre-natal education. By real education I mean one that has no ‘take-it-or-leave-it’ nonsense. A real education makes the patient what it wants infallibly: whatever he or his parents try to do about it. Of course, it’ll be mainly psychological at first. But we’ll get on to biochemical conditioning in the end and direct manipulation of the brain…”
“But this is stupendous, Feverstone.”
“It’s the real thing at last. A new type of man; and it’s people like you who’ve got to begin to make him.” (42)
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“Is there, do you think, anything very seriously wrong with me?”
“There is nothing wrong with you,” said Miss Ironwood.
“You mean it will go away?”
“I have no means of telling. I should say probably not.”
Disappointment shadowed Jane’s face. “Then – can’t anything be done about it? They were horrible dreams – horribly vivid, not like dreams at all.”
“I can quite understand that.”
“Is it something that can’t be cured?”
“The reason you cannot be cured is that you are not ill.” (64)
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“But what is this all about?” said Jane “I want to lead an ordinary life. I want to do my own work. It’s unbearable! Why should I be selected for this horrible thing?”
“The answer to that is known only to authorities much higher than myself.” (66)
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“I happen to believe that you can’t study men; you can only get to know them, which is quite a different thing. Because you study them, you want to make the lower orders govern the country and listen to classical music, which is balderdash. You also want to take away from them everything which makes life worth living at not only from them but from everyone except a parcel of prigs and professors.” (71)
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They walked about that village for two hours and saw with their own eyes all the abuses and anachronisms they came to destroy. They saw the recalcitrant and backward labourer and heard his views on the weather. They met the wastefully supported pauper in the person of an old man shuffling across the courtyard of the almshouses to fill a kettle, and the elderly rentier (to make matters worse, she had a fat old dog with her) in earnest conversation with the postman. It made Mark feel as he were on a holiday, for it was only on holidays that he had ever wandered about an English village. For that reason he felt pleasure in it. It did not quite escape him that the face of the backward labourer was rather more interesting than Cosser’s and his voice a great deal more pleasing to the ear. The resemblance between the elderly rentier and Aunt Gilly (When had he last thought of her? Good Lord, that took one back.) did make him understand how it was possible to like that kind of person. All this did not in the least influence his sociological convictions. Even if he had been free from Belbury and wholly unambitious, it could not have done so, for his education had had the curious effect of making things that he read and wrote more real to him than things he saw. Statistics about agricultural labourers were the substance; any real ditcher, ploughman, or farmer’s boy, was the shadow. Though he had never noticed it himself, he had a great reluctance, in his work, ever to use such words as “man” or “woman,” He preferred to write about “vocational groups,” “elements,” “classes” and “populations”: for, in his own way, he believed as firmly as any mystic in the superior reality of the things that are not seen. (87)
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“Why you fool, it’s the educated reader who can be gulled. All our difficulty comes with the others. When did you meet a workman who believes the papers? He takes it for granted that they’re all propaganda and skips the leading articles. He buys his paper for the football results and the little paragraphs about girls falling out of windows and corpses found in May-fair flats. He is our problem. We have to recondition him. But the educated public, the people who read the highbrow weeklies, don’t need reconditioning. They’re all right already. They’ll believe anything.”
“Don’t you understand anything? Isn’t it absolutely essential to keep a fierce Left and a fierce Right, both on their toes and each terrified of the other? That’s how we get things done. Any opposition to the N.I.C.E. is represented as a Left racket in the Right papers and a Right racket in the Left papers. If it’s properly done, you get each side outbidding the other in support of us — to refute the enemy slanders. Of course we’re non-political. The real power always is.”
“I don’t believe you can do that,” said Mark. “Not with the papers that are read by educated people.”
“That shows you’re still in the nursery, lovey,” said Miss Hardcastle. “Haven’t you yet realised that it’s the other way round?”
“How do you mean?”
“Why you fool, it’s the educated reader who can be gulled. All our difficulty comes with the others. When did you meet a workman who believes the papers? He takes it for granted that they’re all propaganda and skips the leading articles. He buys his paper for the football results and the little paragraphs about girls falling out of windows and corpses found in May-fair flats. He is our problem. We have to recondition him. But the educated public, the people who read the highbrow weeklies, don’t need reconditioning. They’re all right already. They’ll believe anything.”
“As one of the class you mention,” said Mark with a smile, “I just don’t believe it.”
“Good Lord!” said the Fairy, “where are your eyes? Look at what the weeklies have got away with! Look at the Weekly Question. There’s a paper for you. When Basic English came in simply as the invention of a free-thinking Cambridge don, nothing was too good for it; as soon as it was taken up by a Tory Prime Minister it became a menace to the purity of our language. And wasn’t the Monarchy an expensive absurdity for ten years? And then, when the Duke of Windsor abdicated, didn’t the Question go all monarchist and legitimist for about a fortnight? Did they drop a single reader? Don’t you see that the educated reader can’t stop reading the high-brow weeklies whatever they do? He can’t. He’s been conditioned.” (99-100)
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Stone had the look which Mark had often seen before in unpopular boys or new boys at school, in “outsiders” at Bracton — the look which was for Mark the symbol of all his worst fears, for to be one who must wear that look was, in his scale of values, the greatest evil. His instinct was not to speak to this man Stone. He knew by experience how dangerous it is to be friends with a sinking man or even to be seen with him: you cannot keep him afloat and he may pull you under. But his own craving for companionship was now acute, so that against his better judgment he smiled a sickly — smile and said “Hullo!” (109)
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The least satisfactory member of the circle in Mark’s eyes was Straik. Straik made no effort to adapt himself to the ribald and realistic tone in which his colleagues spoke. He never drank nor smoked. He would sit silent, nursing a threadbare knee with a lean hand and turning his large unhappy eyes from one speaker to another, without attempting to combat them or to join in the joke when they laughed. Then — perhaps once in the whole evening — something said would start him off: usually something about the opposition of reactionaries in the outer world and the measures which the N.I.C.E. would take to deal with it. At such moments he would burst into loud and prolonged speech, threatening, denouncing, prophesying. The strange thing was that the others neither interrupted him nor laughed. There was some deeper unity between this uncouth man and them which apparently held in check the obvious lack of sympathy, but what it was Mark did not discover. Sometimes Straik addressed him in particular, talking, to Mark’s great discomfort and bewilderment, about resurrection. “Neither a historical fact nor a fable, young man,” he said, “but a prophecy. All the miracles — shadows of things to come. Get rid of false spirituality. It is all going to happen, here in this world, in the only world there is. What did the Master tell us? Heal the sick, cast out devils, raise the dead. We shall. The Son of Man — that is, Man himself, full grown — has power to judge the world — to distribute life without end, and punishment without end. You shall see. Here and now.” It was all very unpleasant. (128)
“It was not his fault,” she said at last. “I suppose our marriage was just a mistake.”
The Director said nothing.
“What would you — what would the people you are talking of — say about a case like that?”
“I will tell you if you really want to know,” said the Director.
“Please,” said Jane reluctantly.
“They would say,” he answered, “that you do not fail in obedience through lack of love, but have lost love because you never attempted obedience.”
Something in Jane that would normally have reacted to such a remark with anger or laughter was banished to a remote distance (where she could still, but only just, hear its voice) by the fact that the word Obedience — but certainly not obedience to Mark — came over her, in that room and in that presence, like a strange oriental perfume, perilous, seductive, and ambiguous…
“Stop it!” said the Director, sharply.
Jane stared at him, open mouthed. There were a few moments of silence during which the exotic fragrance faded away.
“You were saying, my dear?” resumed the Director.
“I thought love meant equality,” she said, “and free companionship.”
“Ah, equality!” said the Director. “We must talk of that some other time. Yes, we must all be guarded by equal rights from one another’s greed, because we are fallen. Just as we must all wear clothes for the same reason. But the naked body should be there underneath the clothes, ripening for the day when we shall need them no longer. Equality is not the deepest thing, you know.”
“I always thought that was just what it was. I thought it was in their souls that people were equal.”
“You were mistaken,” said he gravely. “That is the last place where they are equal. Equality before the law, equality of incomes — that is very well. Equality guards life; it doesn’t make it. It is medicine, not food. You might as well try to warm yourself with a blue-book.”
“But surely in marriage… ?”
“Worse and worse,” said the Director. “Courtship knows nothing of it; nor does fruition. What has free companionship to do with that? Those who are enjoying something, or suffering something together, are companions. Those who enjoy or suffer one another, are not. Do you not know how bashful friendship is? Friends — comrades — do not look at each other. Friendship would be ashamed…”
“I thought,” said Jane and stopped.
“I see,” said the Director. “It is not your fault. They never warned you. No one has ever told you that obedience — humility — is an erotic necessity. You are putting equality just where it ought not to be. As to your coming here, that may admit of some doubt. For the present, I must send you back. You can come out and see us. In the meantime, talk to your husband and I will talk to my authorities.” (147-148)
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No, no; we want geldings and oxen. There will never be peace and order and discipline so long as there is sex. When man has thrown it away, then he will become finally governable.
“At present, I allow, we must have forests, for the atmosphere. Presently we find a chemical substitute. And then, why any natural trees? I foresee nothing but the art tree all over the earth. In fact, we clean the planet.”
“Do you mean,” put in a man called Gould, “that we are to have no vegetation at all?”
“Exactly. You shave your face: even, in the English fashion, you shave him every day. One day we shave the planet.”
“I wonder what the birds will make of it?”
“I would not have any birds either. On the art tree I would have the art birds all singing when you press a switch inside the house. When you are tired of the singing you switch them off. Consider again the improvement. No feathers dropped about, no nests, no eggs, no dirt.”
“It sounds,” said Mark, “like abolishing pretty well all organic life.”
“And why not? It is simple hygiene. Listen, my friends. If you pick up some rotten thing and find this organic life crawling over it, do you not say, ‘Oh, the horrid thing. It is alive,’ and then drop it?”
“Go on,” said Winter.
“And you, especially you English, are you not hostile to any organic life except your own on your own body? Rather than permit it you have invented the daily bath.”
“That’s true.”
“And what do you call dirty dirt? Is it not precisely the organic? Minerals are clean dirt. But the real filth is what comes from organisms — sweat, spittles, excretions. Is not your whole idea of purity one huge example? The impure and the organic are interchangeable conceptions.”
“What are you driving at, Professor?” said Gould. “After all we are organisms ourselves.”
“I grant it. That is the point. In us organic life has produced Mind. It has done its work. After that we want no more of it. We do not want the world any longer furred over with organic life, like what you call the blue mould — all sprouting and budding and breeding and decaying. We must get rid of it. By little and little, of course. Slowly we learn how. Learn to make our brains live with less and less body: learn to build our bodies directly with chemicals, no longer have to stuff them full of dead brutes and weeds. Learn how to reproduce ourselves without copulation.”
“I don’t think that would be much fun,” said Winter.
“My friend, you have already separated the Fun, as you call it, from fertility. The Fun itself begins to pass away. Bah! I know that is not what you think. But look at your English women. Six out of ten are frigid, are they not? You see? Nature herself begins to throw away the anachronism. When she has thrown it away, then real civilisation becomes possible. You would understand if you were peasants. Who would try to work with stallions and bulls? No, no; we want geldings and oxen. There will never be peace and order and discipline so long as there is sex. When man has thrown it away, then he will become finally governable.” (172-173)
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“The world I look forward to is the world of perfect purity. The clean mind and the clean minerals. What are the things that most offend the dignity of man? Birth and breeding and death. How if we are about to discover that man can live without any of the three?” (174) Filostrato
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Nature is the ladder we have climbed up by, now we kick her away.
“For the moment, I speak only to inspire you. I speak that you may know what can be done: what shall be done here. This Institute — Dio mio, it is for something better than housing and vaccinations and faster trains and curing the people of cancer. It is for the conquest of death: or for the conquest of organic life, if you prefer. They are the same thing. It is to bring out of that cocoon of organic life which sheltered the babyhood of mind the New Man, the man who will not die, the artificial man, free from Nature. Nature is the ladder we have climbed up by, now we kick her away.” (177)
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Here, in this house, you shall meet the first sketch of the real God. It is a man — or a being made by man — who will finally ascend the throne of the universe. And rule forever.
“You are frightened?” said Filostrato. “You will get over that. We are offering to make you one of us. Ahi — if you were outside, if you were mere canaglia you would have reason to be frightened. It is the beginning of all power. He lives forever. The giant time is conquered. And the giant space — he was already conquered too. One of our company has already travelled in space. True; he was betrayed and murdered and his manuscripts are imperfect: we have not yet been able to reconstruct his space ship. But that will come.”
“It is the beginning of Man Immortal and Man Ubiquitous,” said Straik. “Man on the throne of the universe. It is what all the prophecies really meant.”
“At first, of course,” said Filostrato, “the power will be confined to a number — a small number — of individual men. Those who are selected for eternal life.”
“And you mean,” said Mark, “it will then be extended to all men?”
“No,” said Filostrato. “I mean it will then be reduced to one man. You are not a fool, are you, my young friend? All that talk about the power of Man over Nature — Man in the abstract — is only for the canaglia. You know as well as I do that Man’s power over Nature means the power of some men over other men with Nature as the instrument. There is no such thing as Man — it is a word. There are only men. No! It is not Man who will be omnipotent, it is some one man, some immortal man. Alcasan, our Head, is the first sketch of it. The completed product may be someone else. It may be you. It may be me.”
“A king cometh,” said Straik, “who shall rule the universe with righteousness and the heavens with judgment. You thought all that was mythology, no doubt. You thought because fables had clustered about the phrase, ‘Son of Man,’ that Man would never really have a son who will wield all power. But he will.”
“I don’t understand, I don’t understand,” said Mark.
“But it is very easy,” said Filostrato. “We have found how to make a dead man live. He was a wise man even in his natural life. He lives now forever; he gets wiser. Later, we make them live better — for at present, one must concede, this second life is probably not very agreeable to him who has it. You see? Later we make it pleasant for some — perhaps not so pleasant for others. For we can make the dead live whether they wish it or not. He who shall be finally king of the universe can give this life to whom he pleases. They cannot refuse the little present.”
“And so,” said Straik, “the lessons you learned at your mother’s knee return. God will have power to give eternal reward and eternal punishment.”
“God?” said Mark. “How does He come into it? I don’t believe in God.”
“But, my friend,” said Filostrato, “does it follow that because there was no God in the past that there will be no God also in the future?”
“Don’t you see,” said Straik, “that we are offering you the unspeakable glory of being present at the creation of God Almighty? Here, in this house, you shall meet the first sketch of the real God. It is a man — or a being made by man — who will finally ascend the throne of the universe. And rule forever.” (178-179)
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One of Ransom’s greatest difficulties in disputing with MacPhee (who consistently professed to disbelieve the very existence of the eldils) was that MacPhee made the common, but curious assumption that — if there are creatures wiser and stronger than man they must be forthwith omniscient and omnipotent. In vain did Ransom endeavour to explain the truth. Doubtless, the great beings who now so often came to him had power sufficient to sweep Belbury from the face of England and England from the face of the globe; perhaps, to blot the globe itself out of existence. But no power of that kind would be used. Nor had they any direct vision into the minds of men. It was in a different place, and approaching their knowledge from the other side, that they had discovered the state of Merlin: not from inspection of the thing that slept under Bragdon Wood, but from observing a certain unique configuration in that place where those things remain that are taken off thine’s mainroad, behind the invisible hedges, into the unimaginable fields. Not all the times that are outside the present are therefore past or future.
It was this that kept the Director wakeful, with knitted brow, in the small cold hours of that morning when the others had left him. There was no doubt in his mind now that the enemy had bought Bragdon to find Merlin: and if they found him they would re-awake him. The old Druid would inevitably cast his lot with the new planners — what could prevent his doing so? A junction would be effected between two kinds of power which between them would determine the fate of our planet. Doubtless that had been the will of the dark eldils for centuries. The physical sciences, good and innocent in themselves, had already, even in Ransom’s own time, begun to be warped, had been subtly manoeuvred in a certain direction. Despair of objective truth had been increasingly insinuated into the scientists; indifference to it, and a concentration upon mere power, had been the result. Babble about the élan vital and flirtations with panpsychism were bidding fair to restore the Anima Mundi of the magicians. Dreams of the far future destiny of man were dragging up from its shallow and unquiet grave the old dream of Man as God. The very experiences of the dissecting room and the pathological laboratory were breeding a conviction that the stilling of all deepset repugnances was the first essential for progress. And now, all this had reached the stage at which its dark contrivers thought they could safely begin to bend it back so that it would meet that other and earlier kind of power. Indeed they were choosing the first moment at which this could have been done. You could not have done it with Nineteenth-Century scientists. Their firm objective materialism would have excluded it from their minds; and even if they could have been made to believe, their inherited morality would have kept them from touching dirt. MacPhee was a survivor from that tradition. It was different now. Perhaps few or none of the people at Belbury knew what was happening; but once it happened, they would be like straw in fire. What should they find incredible, since they believed no longer in a rational universe? What should they regard as too obscene, since they held that all morality was a mere subjective by-product of the physical and economic situations of men?
______________________________
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Dating back to February of 2019, I’ve now updated this post – displaying the cover of Fawcett / Gold Medal’s 1962 edition of Richard Matheson’s The Shrinking Man – to include a variety of videos about the book’s 1957 film adaptation. The book’s first edition – also published as a Fawcett / Gold Medal paperback, rather than hardcover – appeared in 1956.
On a personal note, I first viewed this film at about the age of eight (seriously) in the late 1960s. In accurate retrospect, I remember having been – in the parlance of 2023 – completely “blown away” on an emotional level (though I could hardly articulate as much at the time!) by two aspects of Richard Matheson’s screenplay.
First, the transformation of the commonplace and mundane to the horrific, in terms of Scott Carey’s confrontation with a house cat and spider, let alone his simple, solitary, desperate struggle for survival. Second, I found the movie’s conclusion to be profoundly affecting and deeply moving. It was not the happy ending that I anticipated and hoped for early in the film – Scott’s restoration to normal size; reuniting with his wife; the resumption of and return to the life that he knew before – but its quietly upbeat ambiguity, which has deeply religious undertones (the word “God” is actually spoken, let alone in a positive sense!), lifted the film in its entirety (not just its final moments) into the realm of the sublime. Ray Anthony’s refreshingly-un-theramin-like (for the 1950s) opening trumpet solo lends the film an almost noir-like dimension.
What we really have in Jack Arnold’s, Albert Zugsmith’s, and Richard Matheson’s production is a fully “A Movie” – well, at least aspects or parts of an A Movie – hidden within an ostensibly “B Film”.
Thankfully, there have been neither sequel nor remake. And in this I include – ahem – Joel Schumacher’s The Incredible Shrinking Woman.
See more below…!
____________________
Unsurprisingly, the 1957 film adaptation does have marked differences from its original literary version, one passage of which is very disturbing, and probably would have been far “beyond the pale” for audiences of the 1950s.
Via Larry Arpin, here’s Jack Arnold’s discussion of the movie’s creation…
…while History of Horror discusses the film in the context of other productions by Jack Arnold. Cleverly, this video opens with Ray Anthony’s trumpet solo:
The full film can be viewed at the link below, from Archive.org:
The film’s conclusion – which, paralleling the novel, carries with it an unusually profound theological and philosophical message – commences at 1:05:35.
AS ON ANY other morning, his lids fell back, his eyes opened. For a moment he stared up blankly, his mind still thick with sleep. Then he remembered and his heart seemed to stop.
With a startled grunt, he jolted up to a sitting position and looked around incredulously, his mind alive with one word:
Where?
He looked up at the sky, but there was no sky – only a ragged blueness, as if the sky had been torn and stretched squeezed and poked full of giant holes, through which light speared.
His wide, unblinking gaze moved slowly, wonderingly. He seemed to be in a vast, endless cavern. Not far over to his right the cavern ended and there was light. He stood up hastily and found himself naked. Where was the sponge?
He looked up again at the jagged blue dome. It stretched away for hundreds of yards. It was a bit of the sponge he’d worn.
He sat down heavily, looking over himself. He was the same. He touched himself. Yes, the same. But how much had he shrunk during the night?
He remembered lying on the bed of leaves the night before, and he glanced down. He was sitting on a vast plain of speckled brown and yellow. There were great paths angling out from a gigantic avenue. They went as far as he could see.
He was sitting on the leaves.
He shook his head in confusion.
How could he be less than nothing?
The idea came. Last night he’d looked up at the universe without. Then there must be a universe within, too. Maybe universes.
He stood again. Why had he never thought of it; of the microscopic and the submicroscopic worlds? That they existed he had always known. Yet never had he made the obvious connection. He’d always thought in terms of man’s own world and man’s own limited dimensions. He had presumed upon nature. For the inch was man’s concept, not nature’s. To a man, zero inches means nothing. Zero meant nothing.
But to nature there was no zero. Existence went on in endless cycles. It seemed so simple now. He would never disappear, because there was no point of non-existence in the universe.
It frightened him at first. The idea of going on endlessly through one level of dimension after another was alien.
Then he thought: If nature existed on endless levels, so also might intelligence.
He might not have to be alone.
Suddenly he began running toward the light.
And, when he’d reached it, he stood in speechless awe looking at the new world with its vivid splashes of vegetation, its scintillant hills, its towering trees, its sky of shifting hues, as though the sunlight were being filtered through moving layers of pastel glass.
It was a wonderland.
There was much to be done and more to be thought about. His brain was teeming with questions and ideas and – yes – hope again. There was food to be found, water, clothing, shelter. And, most important, life. Who knew? It might be, it just might be there.
Here’s the cover of Avon Books’ 1958 edition of the third and final novel of the Space Trilogy, That Hideous Strength, published under the awkward title The Tortured Planet. (Ugh.) I don’t know the reason for the title change, though it may relate to this Avon edition being – as stated on the cover – C.S. Lewis’ abridged version of the original work.
This edition’s cover art, which looks like two factory-reject Christmas tree ornaments floating confusedly in space, is by Richard Powers, and is the “weakest” of the cover illustrations of Avon’s three 1950s-era volumes of Lewis’ trilogy. This is more than ironic, given the typically exceptional quality – in terms of complexity, symbolism, and originality – of Powers’ oeuvre.
You can view the cover art of Macmillan’s 1965 edition of That Hideous Strengthhere.
A (the?) central plot element of the novel concerns an organization dubbed NICE., the National Institute for Coordinated Experimentation. As stated by Foster, Lewis describes NICE as “the first fruits of that constructive fusion between the state and the laboratory on which so many thoughtful people base their hopes of a better world.” Though thankfully there’s no congruent analogue of N.I.C.E. in our world, perhaps the Institute can be taken to represent the long-reigning academic / corporate / media “complex”, which has wielded, and continues to wield, vastly more power than than the stereotyped (albeit a somewhat hackneyed stereotype) “military industrial complex”.
Just sayin’.
Oh, here’s a quote by, “…the Head of the Institutional Police, a woman named Miss Hardcastle … nicknamed the Fairy, who explains to sociologist Mark Studdock [a professor “on the make” at Bracton College], the ease with which the news media can manipulate the public. (Specifically alluding to that portion of the public that is “educated”, credentialed, and perhaps meritocratic?)
Whether in the world of the Space Trilogy or our world, her point is valid.
Thus:
“Why you fool, it’s the educated reader who can be gulled.
All our difficulty comes with the others.
When did you meet a workman who believes the papers?
He takes it for granted that they’re all propaganda and skips the leading articles.
He buys his paper for the football results and the little paragraphs
about girls falling out of windows and corpses found in Mayfair flats.
He is our problem.
We have to recondition him.
But the educated public,
the people who read the highbrow weeklies,
don’t need reconditioning.
They’re all right already.
They’ll believe anything.”
________________________________________
Since completing this post, I’ve made innumerable attempts to learn more about the NICE’s current incarnation, but information about the organization – at least, beyond what C.S. Lewis presents in his novel – is remarkably elusive. (Understandable: Much has changed since 1946, not least the fact that the NICE is no longer headquartered in England.) Despite extensive searches using DuckDuckGo, and, that o t h e r search engine (y’know, the one headquartered in Mountain View, California, at which the arc of human history is tacitly understood to “progress” (Babel-like?) ever forward; always upward; ever higher…), I’ve been unable to identify either the Institute’s home page, or, links to the organization through any other website, whether governmental or private; whether in the Americas, Western or Eastern Europe, Africa, or Asia.
Likewise, though the Institute assuredly has a presence on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat, these too remain elusive.
Well, not entirely true: I did come across one possible link. But, I’m not going to click on it. (Y’never know what might happen…!)
(Okay, just kidding! I thought it would be fun to indulge in brief speculation about parallel universes and alternate histories….)
But, I did find the image below: It’s conceptual art of a promotional / propaganda poster for the NICE, fittingly done in 1940s “atomic” style: The kind of image you’d see – 1984-like – in abundance, weather-marked with tattered corners yet always freshly replaced – upon the walls of any urban center.
The poster is one of many works created by J.P. Cokes as conceptual illustrations for That Hideous Strength, and can be viewed at Behance. J.P. Cokes has also created a great series of stylistically similar illustrations for Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination, which – like That Hideous Strength; like so many other works of science fiction and fantasy (A.E. van Vogt, anyone?) – merits transfer from the printed page to animation, or, the “live” screen.
This is one of my earlier posts. It displays Fred Marcellino’s cover art for Summit Books’ 1988 edition of Primo Levi’s The Drowned and The Saved, and includes -paralleling Summit Books’ edition of Primo Levi’s The Monkey’s Wrench – a portrait of author Levi, probably (it looks like…) at his home, in Turin, Italy. Given that Mr. Levi was wearing the same suit and tie in two different portraits, the images were probably taken within a single session by photographer Jerry Bauer.
The post now includes John Gross’ review of The Drowned and The Saved, which appeared in The New York Times – the main paper, not the Book Review – in January of 1988, and includes a less formal portrait of Primo Levi by a photographer from La Stampa, Cesare Bosio.
Though the nature of Marcellino’s cover art isn’t immediately apparent – red bricks and a blue sky? – “stepping back”, it soon becomes clear that he has depicted a chimney, a terrible, and terribly appropriate, symbol of Levi’s subject matter. In this respect, reviewer Gross has admirably presented the central aspects, or more appropriately questions, of the book, which focus on the challenge (or near-impossibility) of communicating that-which-cannot-be-communicated; the fallibility of memory – whether that memory be personal or historical; and particularly, the “gray zone” in which prisoners of the German concentration camp system found themselves enmeshed.
Since then, at an uncertain hour,
That agony returns,
And till my ghastly tale is told
This heart within me burns.
(Photograph of Primo Levi by Jerry Bauer)
Books of The Times
By John Gross
THE DROWNED AND THE SAVED. By Primo Levi. Translated from the Italian by Raymond Rosenthal. 203 pages. Summit Books. $17.95.
The New York Times January 5, 1988
Photograph by Cesare Bosio (La Stampa)
IF you are a writer, and you have come back from hell, you really only have one subject. It may be important for you to write about other subjects, too, in order to show that hell doesn’t have the last word; and yet in the end there is no shedding your burden. In some of his later books Primo Levi moved away from the agonies of the Holocaust, but it was to the Holocaust that he finally returned.
“The Drowned and the Saved,” which Mr. Levi completed shortly before his death last April, is a series of meditations on some of the more perplexing aspects of “the Lager phenomenon” – the world of the extermination camps. Like all Mr. Levi’s books, it is distinguished by courage, lucidity and intelligence, by a steadfast honesty and a refusal to take refuge in the consolations of rhetoric.
The guards and the prisoners in the camps had at least one thing in common. Both groups knew that by the standards of the outside world, what they were taking part in was incredible. Even if someone lived to tell the tale, who was going to believe him?
An agreeable thought for the tormentors, and a source of despair for their victims. Most survivors, Mr. Levi tells us, can recall a recurrent dream that afflicted them during their nights of imprisonment: “They had returned home and with passion and relief were describing their past sufferings, addressing themselves to a loved one, and were not believed, indeed were not even listened to.”
In the event, the Nazis failed – not for want of trying – to destroy all the evidence and wipe out all the witnesses. Yet as a relatively “privileged” prisoner, spared the worst on account of his usefulness as a scientist, Mr. Levi felt strongly that the full horrors would never be known, since almost all firsthand descriptions of the camps are the work of “those who, like myself, never fathomed them to the bottom.” By contrast, very few “ordinary” prisoners survived, and very few of those who did, paralyzed as they were “by suffering and incomprehension,” were able to offer more than fragmentary testimony.
None of this made it less important, in Mr. Levi’s eyes, to bear witness as best he could. There were the tricks that memory plays that had to be guarded against, for one thing – and the tricks we play on memory. These can be seen at their most glaring in the case of the Nazi killer who “doesn’t remember” what he did: “The rememberer,” as Mr. Levi says, “has decided not to remember and has succeeded.” But among victims, too, though for very different reasons, the past is readily refashioned; indeed, Mr. Levi’s observations in Auschwitz had shown him that “for purposes of defense, reality can be distorted not only in memory but in the very act of taking place.”
Between them, defective memories and defective understanding have given rise to the stereotypes that Mr. Levi was anxious to clear away. The one that he deals with at greatest length, and that raises the most sensitive issues, is the notion that relationships in the camps could be reduced to a simple contrast between oppressors and oppressed, that every prisoner was a victim and nothing but a victim.
Anyone who supposes this has a very inadequate idea of how monstrous the whole system was. For it was an essential aim of the Nazis to destroy their victims morally as well as physically, to implicate them and drag them down. At the most extreme, there were the special squads of prisoners given the job of running the crematories: organizing such squads, in Mr. Levi’s view, was “National Socialism’s most demonic crime.” But there were many other levels of “privilege,” and immense pressures to take advantage of fellow prisoners in order to cling to life or gain a respite from pain.
Mr. Levi gives an eloquent account of “the gray zone” in which prisoners were set against one another, beginning with the blows from “privileged” prisoners that greeted and utterly disoriented new arrivals. He doesn’t perhaps allow enough for the fact that some people are bound to seize on the existence of such a zone as an excuse for indulging in the comfortable game of “blame the victim,” but his own reactions are as nuanced and undogmatic as the situation demands. He never loses sight of where the primary responsibility for Auschwitz lay, and he knows that a gray zone calls for gray judgments.
He is particularly good, too, on the sense of shame that overcame prisoners, and on the “unceasing discomfort that polluted sleep and was nameless.” It would be absurd, he says, to call this last a neurosis; it was more like the “tohu-bohu” of Genesis, the meaninglessness of a universe from which the spirit of man was absent.
Other topics he discusses include the situation of the intellectual prisoner, the reactions of German readers to his books and what “communicating” meant amid a babel of languages, where many prisoners understood little or nothing of the commands they were receiving. (At one camp, a rubber truncheon was called “the interpreter.”) Reflecting on the violence and oppression that still abound in the world, he doesn’t rule out the possibility that something comparable to the Holocaust could happen again – indeed, he reminds us that in Cambodia, it already has.
Since then, at an uncertain hour,
That agony returns,
And till my ghastly tale is told
This heart within me burns.
Extremely powerful in themselves, these lines somehow become even more powerful in the new context he gives them. But it isn’t only a ghastly tale that he offers; in telling it, he also provides a heroic example of humane and civilized understanding.
Following the theme of C.S. Lewis Space Trilogy, here’s Art Sussman’s cover for Perelandra, the second book of the series, as published by Avon in 1957. Sussman also created the cover of Avon’s 1960 edition of Out of the Silent Planet.
You can view the cover of Macmillan’s 1965 edition of Perelandrahere. The large human figures in yellow-orange are probably symbolic representations of Tindril, the Queen of Perelandra (a.k.a. to we inhabitants of Earth as “Venus”), and her un-named King. There’s also a science-fiction element on the cover in the form of a rocket-plane, but no such craft figures in the story!
And as always, to give you a literary “taste” of the novel’s contents, here’s an excerpt: A conversation between the hero, Dr. Elwin Ransom, and his antagonist, Dr. Weston.
“My dear Ransom,
I wish you would not keep relapsing on to the popular level.
The two things are only moments in the single, unique reality.
The world leaps forward through great men
and greatness always transcends mere moralism.
When the leap has been made our ‘diabolism’
as you would call it becomes the morality of the next stage;
but while we are making it, we are called criminals, heretics, blasphemers…”
“How far does it go?
Would you still obey the Life-Force
if you found it prompting you to murder me?”
“Yes.”
“Or to sell England to the Germans?”
“Yes.”
“Or to print lies as serious research in a scientific periodical?”
“Yes.”
“God help you!” said Ransom.
* * * * * * * * * * *
As the novel progresses, Dr. Weston is transformed into some thing no longer quite human, although physically human in superficial appearance. Here are Dr. Ransom’s observations of what remains of Weston – physically, intellectually, and spiritually – after the latter has succumbed (voluntarily?) to demonic possession.
It [Weston] looked at Ransom in silence and at last began to smile. We have all often spoken – Ransom himself had often spoken – of a devilish smile. Now he realized that he had never taken the words seriously. The smile was not bitter, nor raging, nor, in an ordinary sense, sinister; it was not even mocking. It seemed to summon Ransom, with horrible naivete of welcome, into the world of its own pleasures, as if all men were at one in those pleasures, as if they were the most natural thing in the world and no dispute could ever have occurred about them. It was not furtive, nor ashamed, it had nothing of the conspirator in it.
It did not defy goodness, it ignored it to the point of annihilation.
Ransom perceived that he had never before seen anything but half-hearted and uneasy attempts at evil. This creature was whole-hearted. The extremity of its evil had passed beyond all struggle into some state which bore a horrible similarity to innocence. It was beyond vice as the Lady was beyond virtue.
Among the series’ many imprints over the past eight-odd decades, perhaps the most immediately “recognizable” – in terms of duration of publication and (therefore!) especially cover art – has been the Macmillan edition. Published from 1967 through 1979, all Space Trilogy books with that imprint bore cover illustrations by Bernard Symancyk, about whose career little information is available – albeit Terence E. Hanley at TellersofWeirdTales presents a brief biography at “From Things To Come into The Space Trilogy-Part One“.
Well, Macmillan wasn’t alone. In 1949, 1956, and 1960, Avon Books released its own edition of the Space Trilogy, with unique cover art for each “set”, and within each set, the cover illustrations having been created by different artists.
Certainly the art of the Space Trilogy is varied, but even moreso is the vast commentary the books have engendered across the decades. While the Trilogy can ostensibly be categorized as science fiction, the tropes associated with that literary genre are far secondary to the ideas actually animating the books. These are theological, though not purely couched in the verbiage of theology (the books’ ethos is clearly expressed in a allegorical manner), and concern the nature of good and evil; collectivism versus the worth of the individual as an individual; the nature, exercise, and temptation of power – whether that power be technological, biological, or governmental; the destiny of men as individuals and humanity as a civilization.
Well… The above sentences merely superficially (and ever so tangentially!) scratch the surface of depths vastly deeper.
Well… I can recommended these two discussions concerning the final novel of the series – That Hideous Strength (Avon’s awkward title The Tortured Planet) – at ChicagoBoyz, both by David Foster. They are “Summer Rerun – Book Review: That Hideous Strength” (September 15, 2017), and, “Summer Rerun – Lewis vs. Haldane” (August 31, 2019). These discussions can also serve as a sort-of-segue to the Trilogy’s other two novels.
As a matter of fact, these two ChicagoBoyz posts are what let me to read the first two novels. That Hideous Strength is in my “queue”, for the “world” depicted in Lewis’ final Space Trilogy novel has striking resonance with the world of 2020.
And perhaps – depending on the winds of history and the choices of men – alas, beyond.
Oh, yes, as for cover art?
Here are the covers, front and back, of the 1956 edition of Avon’s first novel in the trilogy – Out of the Silent Planet – by artist Everett Raymond Kinstler.
You can view the cover of Macmillan’s 1965 edition of Out of the Silent Planethere.
Here’s a brief excerpt from Out of The Silent Planet: A conversation between the hero of both “this” first novel of the trilogy and the second, Perelandra: Between Dr. Elwin Ransom, and his (our?) nemesis, “Dr. Weston”, whose religion (if any) seems to be a variation on the theme of what is known to us as “scientism” – not science, which is altogether a thing quite different.
Or, put it another way, deification of rationality.
Thus:
Weston: “…We are only obeying orders.”
Ransom: “Whose?”
There was another pause. “Come,” said Weston at last, “there is really no use in continuing this cross-examination. You keep on asking me questions I can’t answer; in some cases because I don’t know the answers, in other because you wouldn’t understand them. It will make things very much pleasanter during the voyage if you can only resign your mind to your fate and stop bothering yourself and us. It would be easier if your philosophy of life were not so insufferably narrow or individualistic. I had thought no one could fail to be inspired by the role you are being asked to play: that even a worm, if it could understand, would rise to the sacrifice. I mean, of course, the sacrifice of time and liberty, and some little risk. Don’t misunderstand me.”
“Well,” said Ransom, “You hold all the cards, and I must make the best of it. I consider your philosophy of life raving lunacy. I suppose all that stuff about infinity and eternity means that you think you are justified in doing anything – absolutely anything – here and now, on the off chance that some creatures or other descended from man as we know him may crawl about a few centuries longer in some part of the universe.”
There are many ways to “illustrate” a story, without literally illustrating the story.
For example, you can depict characters, events, and settings, either literally or symbolically. You can portray physical objects or places; moods and expressions, or, reactions and emotions.
Another way to present an image of a story is by displaying the very text of the story. A nice example of this appeared as the cover of Shocken Books’ 1971 edition of Franz Kafka – The Complete Stories, which was originally published in 1946. The 1971 edition of the book shows a page of the handwritten text of one of Kafka’s stories, though (!) I don’t know the particular story – or perhaps novel – to which the text pertains, and neither the cover flaps nor title page reveal this information. But, for a book cover of a collection of a writer’s writings, Klaus Gemmings’ cover “works”.
As stated on the cover flap,“FOR THE FIRST TIME, all the stories of Franz Kafka – one of the great writers of the twentieth century – are collected here in one comprehensive volume. With the exception of the three novels, the whole of his narrative work is included. The remarkable depth and breadth of his shorter fiction, the full scope of his brilliant and probing imagination become even more evident when the stories are seen as a whole.
The collection offers an astonishing range of insights into the writer’s world: his war of observing and describing reality, the dreamlike events, his symbolism and irony, and his concern with the human condition. The simplicity, precision, and clarity of Kafka’s style are deceptive, and the attentive reader will be aware of the existential abyss opening beneath the seemingly spare surface of a tale.
An irresistible inner force drove Kafka to write: “The tremendous world have in my head. But how free myself and free it without being torn to pieces. And a thousand times rather be torn to pieces than retain it in me or bury it!” For him, writing was both an agonizing and a liberating process: “God does not want me to write, but I – I must write!” Kafka’s work was born from this tragic tension.”
The book’s 1983 softcover edition (with a foreword by John Updike) takes a different approach: Like other compilations of Kafka’s works published by Shocken in the 1980s, the cover displays a small, square-format, untitled, symbolic illustration by Anthony Russo. Perhaps the interpretation of the image is meant to be enigmatic; perhaps left to the reader. If so (I think so), I think the composition of an anonymous man staring through a window – or door? – yes, a door – with two open doors behind him, represents “Before The Law”, the full text of which is given below…
Before the Law stands a doorkeeper. To this doorkeeper there comes a man from the country and prays for admittance to the Law. But the doorkeeper says that he cannot grant admittance at the moment. The man thinks it over and then asks if he will be allowed in later. “It is possible,” says the doorkeeper, “but not at the moment.”
Since the gate stands open, as usual, and the doorkeeper steps to one side, the man stoops to peer through the gateway into the interior. Observing that, the doorkeeper laughs and says: “If you are so drawn to it, just try to go in despite of my veto. But take note: I am powerful. And I am only the least of the doorkeepers. From hall to hall there is one doorkeeper after another, each more powerful than the last. The third doorkeeper is already so terrible that even I cannot bear to look at him.”
These are difficulties the man from the country has not expected; the Law, he thinks, should surely be accessible at all times and to everyone, but as he now takes a closer look at the doorkeeper in the far corner, with his big sharp nose and long, thin, black Tartar beard, he decides that it is better to wait until he gains permission to enter.
The doorkeeper gives him a stool and lets him sit down at one side of the door. There he sits for days and years. He makes many attempts to be admitted, and wearies the doorkeeper by his importunity. He doorkeeper frequently has little interviews with him, asking him questions about his home and many other things, but the questions are put indifferently, as great lords put them, and always finish with the statement that he cannot be let in yet.
The man, who has furnished himself with many things for his journey, sacrifices all he has, however valuable, to bribe the doorkeeper. The doorkeeper accepts everything, but always with the remark: “I am only taking it to keep you from thinking you have omitted anything.” During these many years the man fixes his attention almost continuously on the doorkeeper. He forgets the other doorkeepers, and this first one seems to him the sole obstacle preventing access to the Law. He curses his bad luck; in his early years boldly and loudly; later, as he grows old, he only grumbles to himself. He becomes childish, and since in his yearlong contemplation of the doorkeeper he has come to know even the fleas in his fur collar, he begs the fleas as well to help him and to change to doorkeeper’s mind.
At length his eyesight begins to fail, and he does not know whether the world is really darker or whether his eyes are only deceiving him. Yet in his darkness he is now aware of a radiance that streams inextinguishably from the gateway of the Law. Now he has not very long to live. Before he dies, all his experiences in these long years gather themselves in his head to one point, a question he has not yet asked the doorkeeper.
He waves him nearer, since he can no longer raise his stiffening body. The doorkeeper has to bend low toward him, for the difference in height between them has altered much to the man’s disadvantage. “What do you want to know now?” asks the doorkeeper; “you are insatiable.” “Everyone strives to reach the Law,” says the man, “so how does it happen that for all these many years no one buy myself has ever begged for admittance?”
The doorkeeper recognizes that the man has reached his end, and, to let his failing senses catch the words, roars in his ear: “No one else could ever be admitted here, since this gate was made only for you. I am now going to shut it.”
(Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir)
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Here are four other stories by Kafka, the page number of each denoting the softcover edition. In terms of depth (upon depth, upon depth, upon…) each tale is stunning in its own way.
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The Next Village (404)
My grandfather used to say, “Life is astoundingly short. To me, looking back over it, life seems so foreshortened that I can scarcely understand, for instance, how a young man can decide to ride over to the next village without being afraid that – not to mention accidents – even the span of a normal happy life may fall far short of the time needed for such a journey.”
(Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir)
Prometheus (432)
There are four legends concerning Prometheus. According to the first he was clamped to a rock in the Caucasus for betraying the secrets of the gods to men, and the gods sent eagles to feed on his liver, which was perpetually renewed. According to the second Prometheus, goaded by the pain of the tearing beaks, pressed himself deeper and deeper into the rock until he became one with it. According to the third his treachery was forgotten in the course of thousands of years, forgotten by the gods, the eagles, forgotten by himself. According to the fourth everyone grew weary of the meaningless affair. The gods grew weary, the eagles grew weary, the wound closed wearily. There remained the inexplicable mass of rock. The legend tried to explain the inexplicable. As it came out of the substratum of truth it had in turn to end in the inexplicable.
(Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir)
A Little Fable (445)
“Alas,” said the mouse, “the world is growing smaller every day. At the beginning it was so big that I was afraid, I kept running and running, and I was glad when at last I saw walls far away to the right and left, but these long walls have narrowed so quickly that I am in the last chamber already, and there in the corner stands the trap that I must run into.” “You only need to change your direction,” said the cat, and ate it up.
(Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir)
The Departure (449)
I ordered my horse to be brought from the stables. The servant did not understand my orders. So I went to the stables myself, saddled my horse, and mounted. In the distance I heard the sound of a trumpet, and I asked the servant what it meant. He knew nothing and had heard nothing. At the gate he stopped me and asked, “Where is the master going?” “I don’t know,” I said, “just out of here, just out of here. Out of here, nothing else, it’s the only way I can reach my goal.” “So you know your goal?” he asked. “Yes,” I replied, “I’ve just told you. Out of here – that’s my goal.”
“Maybe you’ve always thought of war as a business for the tough and the unimaginative.
It has been said that the best soldier leaves his emotions at home;
that pre-battle training is a period calculated to harden both mind and body.
But what of the boy who cannot harden?
What of the lad who cannot put his sensitivity in a suitcase and store it for the duration?
Walter Miller tells us.”
– Introduction to “Wolf Pack”, by Walter M. Miller, Jr., Fantastic, September-October, 1953
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If the spirit of an age – its dreams and moods; fancies and wonders; fears and hopes – is reflected in its literature, then a prime example of such remains Walter M. Miller., Jr.’s 1959 novel, A Canticle for Leibowitz. Based on and derived from three short stories published in the mid-1950s – the first of which shares and perhaps inspired the novel’s title – only a decade after the development of atomic weapons and amidst the (first?) Cold War, Miller’s tale was one of many works of science-fiction that presented a vision of the world, and particularly man’s place within that world, subsequent to a global nuclear war.
In this context, I strongly recommend the recent (October, 2020) essay about Miller’s Canticle by Pedro Blas González, “A Canticle for Leibowitz and Cyclical History“. Therein, Dr. Gonzalez discusses Miller’s novel through the lens of Catholicism (to which Miller converted after the war), viewing the novel as an expression of Miller’s interpretation and understanding of the nature of history. As implied (albeit not specifically mentioned) within Dr. González’s essay, and moreso readily understood through a reading of the Canticle, Miller did not view human history as being “progressive” – and thus not having an “arc” in any direction – but instead, as being cyclical, even if those cycles would occupy great intervals of time.
Though doubtless inspired by technological developments and geopolitics of the mid-twentieth century, the two animating ideas of Miller’s novel extend well beyond science fiction, for they represent chords of thought embedded deep within the psyche of men, nations, and civilizations. These are the idea of an apocalypse, and, the gradual and tenuous rebirth of civilization after centuries during which the collective knowledge of the past (perhaps our present?…) has become myth at best, and utterly forgotten at worst. However, rather than concluding upon a note of redemption, the book’s final chapters leave the reader with a sense of deep ambivalence, for the novel suggests that the currents of history are by nature cyclic.
Despite the novel’s origin during the Cold War, Miller’s inspiration for A Canticle for Leibowitz seems to have arisen from something simpler, immediate, and intensely personal: His military service during the Second World War, during which he served as an aerial gunner and radio operator in the United States Army Air Force. Specifically, the impetus for his creation of the stories and novel was his participation in a combat mission during which his bomb group participated in the destruction of the hilltop abbey of Monte Cassino. As discussed in academic and popular literature (see Alexandra H. Olsen’s paper in Extrapolation, William Roberson’s Reference Guide to Miller’s life and fiction, and Denny Bowden’s essay at Volusia History) on a fundamental level Miller world-view was profoundly affected, if not irrevocably altered, by the experience.
Though most sources (at least, web sources) about Miller describe his military service in general terms, Roberson’s Reference Guide specifically identifies Miller’s military unit: The 489th Bombardment Squadron. The 489th was one of the four squadrons of the 340th Bomb Group (its three brother squadrons having been the 486th, 487th, and 488th), a unit of the Mediterranean-based 12th Air Force which flew B-25 Mitchell twin-engine medium bombers. During the time that Miller was a member of the 489th (probably late 1943 through mid-1944) the squadron was stationed at the Italian locales of San Pancrazio, Foggia, Pompeii, and the Gaudo Airfield.
The 489th’s evocative unit insignia, which doubtless adorned the leather flight jackets of many of its officers and men, is shown below…
The best resource on the web (certainly better than anything in print!) for information about the 489th and 340th is the website of the 57th Bomb Wing Association. This resource, covering the 57th’s four bomb groups (the 310th, 319th, 321st, and 340th) gives access to an enormous amount of information, as original Army Air Force Group and Squadron histories and Mission Reports, (many of which are transcribed as PDFs), and, a plethora of photographs. Typical of Army Air Force WW II military records, there’s a degree of variation in the quantity and depth of this information from group to group, and, squadron to squadron: Records for some (most?) combat units are complete, though there are inevitable gaps, “here and there”.
In documents pertaining to the 489th, I’ve discovered three references to Miller’s military service.
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First, Timing: A record of combat missions flown by the 489th during the February of 1944. For the fifteenth of that month, the record – like that for all other missions – is unsurprisingly laconic: “Benedictine Monastery, Italy. 6 planes.”
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Second, Identification: Miller’s name appears within a list of airmen who, already having received the Air Medal (for completing five combat missions), had been awarded two Bronze Oak Leaf Clusters, thus signifying the completion – by the end of February – of up to fifteen combat missions. His name is listed eleventh from the top in the “upper” list…
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Third, Verification: This “third” document – also found at 57th Bomb Wing – is what’s known in the parlance of the WW II Army Air Force as a “Loading List”, meaning that it lists the names of crewman assigned to specific planes during a combat mission or sortie, on an aircraft-by-aircraft basis. This Loading List, covering 489th Bomb Squadron aircraft and crews which participated on the Cassino mission of February 15, 1944, shows that seven of the Squadron’s B-25s took part in the mission.
Each plane is denoted by a three-digit number, which represents the last three digits of the B-25s Army Air Force serial number. This is followed by the number “9” and a letter, the “9” representing the 489th Bomb Squadron, and the adjacent letter – a different letter for every plane in the squadron – uniquely identifying each B-25 in the squadron. Each such number-letter combination was painted on the outer surface of the twin vertical tails of the squadron’s planes, a practice shared by the 340th’s other three squadrons. This is followed by information about the planes’ bomb loads, which – in all cases but one – were three or four thousand-pound demolition bombs.
Then, we come to the crews themselves, which follow the same general sequence: P (Pilot), CP (Co-Pilot), B (Bombardier), R (Radio Operator), G (Aerial Gunner / Flight Engineer), and TG (Tail Gunner).
Where was Walter M. Miller, Jr.? He’s there: He was a radio operator in the aircraft commanded by J.M. Kirtley, B-25 “#141”, or, “9X”.
As the 57th Bomb Wing includes Loading Lists for other missions flown by the 489th (and the 340th Bomb Group’s three brother squadrons), doubtless Miller’s name appears in these documents, as well. But, this will suffice for now.
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The image below may be akin to the view seen by Miller on February 15, 1944: Captioned,”Formation of North American B-25s of the 340th Bomb Group enroute to their target – Cassino. March 15, 1944,” the picture is United States Army Air Force photo “68261AC / A22901”, and can be found within the (appropriately) entitled collection “WW II US Air Force Photos“, at Fold3.com. The planes are aircraft of the 488th Bomb Squadron, the “give-away” being the “8C” (“8”, for 488th) code on the vertical tail of the aircraft in the left center.
But, Walter Miller did not participate on the day’s mission, for his name is absent from the 489th’s Loading List for March 15….
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The results of war: A view of the remnants of the town of Cassino (foreground), and the hilltop abbey (upper center), in Army Air Force Photograph 62093AC / A25003. Curiously, the caption on the rear of the photo states, “Bomb damage to Monte di Cassino Abbey, Cassino, Italy, after bombing attacks by Allied planes. The centuries-old monastery had been used by the German defenders as a strong point to block the Allied drive on Rome,” but the words “Monte di Cassino Abbey” are crossed out.
The image is undated, but it was received by the Army Air Force or War Department in November of 1944.
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As mentioned in the Wikipedia entry for the novel, and, discussed by Alexandra H. Olsen, A Canticle for Leibowitz, published in October of 1959, was created by melding and altering elements, characters, concepts, and plot devices from his three previously published post-cataclysmic stories (all having appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction) into a single work, and, adding passages in Latin.
The three stories which formed the basis of the novel were:
“A Canticle for Leibowitz”, published in April of 1955 (pp. 93-111) “And the Light Is Risen”, published in August, 1956 (pp. 3-80) “The Last Canticle”, published in February, 1957 (pp. 3-50)
A final tale in the series, “God Is Thus”, appeared in Fantasy & Science Fiction in November of 1997 (pp. 13-51), thirty-eight years after the novel’s publication.
But…
…though the motivation for the ultimate creation of Canticle of 1955 was Miller’s participation in the bombardment of Monte Cassino, evidence for the emotional impact of that is clearly evident in an earlier story of a vastly different literary nature: This was “Wolf Pack”, which appeared in the September-October, 1953, issue of Fantastic. Among the thirty-eight works of short fiction listed in Miller’s biographical profile at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database, “Wolf Pack” was the 26th, while “Secret of the Death Dome”, published in Amazing Stories in 1951, was the first. “Wolf Pack” appeared two years before “A Canticle for Leibowitz’s” publication, in the 1955 The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
Though I’ve thus far barely (!) skimmed the story, it seems to belong entirely to the realm of fantasy as opposed to science fiction, for it relates a combat flyer’s confrontation with his conscience – himself? – on levels symbolic, psychological, and perhaps supernatural.
As for the artistic aspects of the Fantastic story – visual art, that is! – here’s the two-page opening illustration for the tale…
…and here’s an accompanying illustration, showing representations of a B-25 bomber (viewed from above) and a bombardier peering through a generic “black box” looking bombsight (not quite a Norden bombsight!), both visual elements being surrounded by symbolic vignettes of villages. Both pieces are by Bernard Krigstein, whose work is much more strongly associated with comic books than pulps.
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Continuing on a theme of art, here’s the cover of Bantam Books’ 1961 paperback edition of the novel, which shows a monk against a backdrop of a destroyed city’s skyline. Though the artist’s name isn’t listed, perhaps he was Paul Lehr, given the era of the book’s publication, and, the visual style of the composition.
In terms of Miller’s use of Latin, here’s the prayer uttered by Brother Francis Gerard of The Albertian Order of Saint Leibowitz, which appears very early in the novel’s first part (“Fiat Homo”), during the Brother’s exploration of the remains of a fallout shelter somewhere in the American Southwest. The allusions to the actuality and legacy of nuclear war are explicit and vivid, and – recited in the format of prayer rather than prose, with each of the three central groups of verses being thematically linked – powerfully expressed and visually evocative.
A spiritu fornicationis, Domine, libera nos. From the lighting and the tempest, O Lord, deliver us.
From the scourge of the earthquake, O Lord, deliver us. From plague, famine, and war, O Lord, deliver us.
From the place of ground zero, O Lord, deliver us. From the ruin of the cobalt, O Lord, deliver us. From the rain of the strontium, O Lord, deliver us. From the fall of the cesium, O Lord, deliver us.
From the curse of the Fallout, O Lord, deliver us. From the begetting of monsters, O Lord, deliver us. From the curse of the Misborn, O Lord deliver us. A morte perpetua, Domine, libera nos.
Peccatores, te rogamus, audi nos. That thou wouldst spare us, we beseech thee, hear us. That thou wouldst pardon us, we beseech there, hear us. That thou wouldst bring us truly to penance, te rogamus, audi nos. (pp. 14-15)
(In just a moment, Brother Gerard will discover a relic from the life of Saint Leibowitz…)
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Of the larger folded papers, one was tightly rolled as well, and it began to fall apart when he tried to unroll it; he could make out the words RACING FORM, but nothing more. After returning it to the box for later restorative work, he turned to the second folded document; its creases were so brittle that he dared inspect only a little of it, by parting the folds slightly and peering between them.
A diagram, it seemed, but – a diagram of white lines on dark paper!
Again he felt the thrill of discovery. It was clearly a blueprint – and there was not a single original blueprint left at the abbey, but only inked facsimiles of several such prints. The originals had faded long ago from overexposure to light. Never before had Francis seen an original, although he had seen enough hand-painted reproductions to recognize it as a blueprint, which, while stained and faded, remained legible after so many centuries because of the total darkness and low humidity in the abbey. He turned the document over – and felt brief fury: What idiot had desecrated the priceless paper? Someone had sketched absent-minded geometrical figures and childish cartoon faces all over the back. What thoughtless vandal-
The anger passed after a moment’s reflection. At the time of the deed, blueprints had probably been as common as weeds, and the owner of the box the probably culprit. He shielded the print from the sun with his own shadow while trying to unfold it further. It the lower right-hand corner was a printed rectangle containing, in simple block-letters, various titles, dates, “patent numbers”, reference numbers, and names. His eye traveled down the list until it encountered: “CIRCUIT DESIGN BY: Leibowitz, I.E.”
He closed his eyes tightly and shook his head until it seemed to rattle. Then he looked again. There is was, quite plainly:
“CIRCUIT DESIGN BY: Leibowitz, I.E.”
He flipped the paper over again. Among the geometric figures and childish sketches, clearly stamped in purple ink, was the form:
The name was written in a clear feminine hand, not in the hasty scrawl of the other notes. He looked again at the initialed signature of the note in the lid of the box, I.E.L. – and again at “CIRCUIT DESIGN BY …” And the same initials appeared elsewhere throughout the notes.
(Proof of the Saint’s existence! Here’s the “Circuit Design Form” bearing his signature, from page 23 of the Bantam paperback. Absent from “Canticle” in the 1955 edition of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, in book form, it really catches the reader’s attention.)
There had been argument, all highly conjectural, about whether the beautiful founder of the Order, if finally canonized, should be addressed as Saint Isaac or as Saint Edward. Some even favored Saint Leibowitz as the proper address, since the Beatus had, until the present, been referred to by his surname.
“Beate Leibowitz, ora pro me!” whispered Brother Francis. His hands were trembling so violently that they threatened to ruin the brittle documents.
Created in 1981, the play is comprised of fifteen segments, each of roughly a half-hour duration. The informational blurb at Archive.org states, “The radio drama adaptation by John Reed, and produced at WHA by Carl Schmidt and Marv Nunn. The play was directed by Karl Schmidt, engineered by Marv Nunn with special effects by Vic Marsh. Narrator – Carol Collins and includes Fred Coffin, Bart Hayman, Herb Hartig and Russel Horton. Music was by Greg Fish and Bob Budney and the Edgewood College Chant Group.”
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These are covers of the three 1950’s issues of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in which appeared the three stories from which were derived Miller’s novel, and, the cover of Fantasy & Science Fiction in October-November of 1997, which was the venue for the last story in the series. Ironically, none of the four issues feature cover art actually pertaining to Miller’s stories or novel. Much the same was so for 1951 issue of Galaxy Magazine in which appeared Ray Bradbury’s “The Fireman”, later published in book form as Farhenheit 451: That issue featured cover art by Chesley Bonestell.
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The cover of the April, 1955 issue features a close-up from Chesley Bonestell’s stunning panorama “Mars Exploration”. Notice that the painting shows a strip of green – vegetation – at the base of weathered background hills. Well, this was the mid-1950s, over a decade before Mariner probes revealed the true nature of the Martian surface. Then again, maybe Mars is “green”, but a deeper, below-the-surface kind of green?
“Mars Exploration” (painting), by Chesley Bonestell, at RetroFuturism (subreddit)
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (covers for April, 1955, August, 1956, and October-November, 1997), at Pulp Magazine Archive (Archive.org)
Bond, Harold L., Return to Cassino, Pocket Books, Inc., New York, N.Y., March, 1965
Bowden, Denny, Secret Life / Death of the Author of the Greatest Science Fiction Novel – Born in New Smyrna, Died in Daytona Beach, at VolusiaHistory.com
Majdalany, Fred, The Battle of Cassino, Ballantine Books, Inc., New York, N.Y., 1957
Olsen, Alexandra H., Re-Vision: A Comparison of Canticle for Leibowitz and the Novellas Originally Published, Extrapolation, Summer, 1997
Piekalkiewicz, Janusz, Cassino – Anatomy of the Battle, Orbis Publishing, London, England, 1980
Roberson, William H., Walter M. Miller, Jr.: A Reference Guide to His Fiction and His Life, McFarland and Company, Inc., Jefferson, N.C., 2011
Webley, Kayla, Top Ten Post-Apocalyptic Books: A Canticle for Leibowitz, Time, June 7, 2010
Unlike Anthony Russo’s cover illustrations for the series of Schocken Books titles covering the works of Franz Kafka (published from the late 1980s through the early 1990s), the cover art of Ernst Pawel’s highly praised 1984 biography of Kafka, The Nightmare of Reason – A Life of Franz Kafka (Farrar – Straus – Giroux), is an illustration of a different sort: Jacket designer Candy Jernigan used a photographic silhouette of Prague Castle to symbolize the physical, social, and psychological “world” of Franz Kafka’s writing. Perhaps the image was made from a color negative, with the color saturation of the final image having been enhanced during printing. Or, perhaps the picture is simply an accurate representation of the colors of the Prague skyline at dusk.
Either way, the combination of black-clouded yellow-orange sky, with the castle in the distance, is quite striking.
By way of comparison, this September, 2014 photograph, from Park Inn at Radisson, shows a sunset view of the Castle from the Charles Bridge.
Ernst Pawel, a novelist and biographer, died on Tuesday at his home in Great Neck, L.I. He was 74.
The cause was lung cancer, his family said.
Mr. Pawel’s 1984 biography of Franz Kafka, “The Nightmare of Reason,” won several prizes, including the Alfred Harcourt Award in biography and memoirs, and was translated into 10 languages. In a review for The New York Times, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt called the work “moving and perceptive.”
Mr. Pawel was also the author of “The Labyrinth of Exile,” a biography of Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism. He had recently finished a book about the German poet Heinrich Heine and at the time of his death was working on his own memoirs, “Life in the Dark Ages.” Both books are to be published posthumously, his family said.
He was born in 1920 in Breslau, then under German rule but now part of Poland, and fled Nazi Germany with his family in 1933, settling first in Yugoslavia and four years later immigrating to New York City. After serving as a translator for Army intelligence during World War II, he received a bachelor’s degree from the City University of New York.
He was the author of three novels, “The Island of Time” (1950), “The Dark Tower” (1957) and “In the Absence of Magic” (1961), and numerous essays and book reviews. Fluent in a dozen languages, he worked for 36 years as a translator and public relations executive for New York Life Insurance. He retired in 1982.
He is survived by his wife of 51 years, Ruth; a son, Michael, and a daughter, Miriam, both of Manhattan, and a granddaughter.
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A Nightmare of Reason was published by Vintage Books in 1985, in trade paperback format. (Unfortunately, I don’t know the cover artist’s name!)
