| Contact Ted Gioia at tedgioia@hotmail.com Visit his web site at www.tedgioia.com Great Books Guide is an Amazon.com associate Visit Blogcritics |
OTHER ARTICLES OF NOTE
FROM GREAT BOOKS GUIDE
Exhuming Robert Musil: A
Fresh Look at The Man Without
Qualities
The Fourteen Skies of Michael
Chabon
Life After Potter
The Nobel Prize in Literature
from an Alternative Universe
Hamlet Wore Ladies
Underwear (and other literary
secrets outed)
FROM GREAT BOOKS GUIDE
Exhuming Robert Musil: A
Fresh Look at The Man Without
Qualities
The Fourteen Skies of Michael
Chabon
Life After Potter
The Nobel Prize in Literature
from an Alternative Universe
Hamlet Wore Ladies
Underwear (and other literary
secrets outed)
Great Books Guide
| RECENT NOVELS REVIEWED BY TED GIOIA 2008 Jim Harrison [click here] José Saramago [click here] Toni Morrison [click here] Roberto Bolaño [click here] Chuck Klosterman [click here] Paul Auster [click here] Philip Roth [click here] Julian Barnes [click here] Marilynne Robinson [click here] Tim Winton [click here] Jonathan Miles [click here] Jhumpa Lahiri [click here] Joseph O'Neill [click here] Richard Price [click here] Tobias Wolff [click here] Donald Ray Pollock [click here] Charles Bock [click here] Geraldine Brooks [click here] 2007 Alan Bennett [click here] Mario Vargas Llosa [click here] Denis Johnson [click here] Philip Roth [click here] Ann Patchett [click here] Junot Diaz [click here] Matt Ruff [click here] Ryszard Kapuściński [click here] Roberto Bolaño [click here] Jack Kerouac [click here] John Leland [click here] Ian McEwan [click here] Khaled Hosseini [click here] Don DeLillo [click here] Michael Chabon [click here] Haruki Murakami [click here] Jonathan Lethem [click here] Michael Ondaatje [click here] Steven Hall [click here] |
A Canticle for Leibowitz
by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
Reviewed by Ted Gioia
When literary critic Wyatt Mason recently ridiculed A Canticle
for Leibowitz in the “Sentences” blog he runs for Harper’s, he
was amazed at the heated backlash from readers. As a seasoned
book blogger, Mason must be used to
critics getting criticized, but the
intensity of response from fans of
Walter M. Miller, Jr. “took the soup,”
in his words. “Readers voted early and
often,” Mason explained. “I got handed
my hat.”
A highbrow critic poking fun at a science
fiction book is nothing new. But the
story behind this story is even more
unsettling. Mason dismissed A Canticle
for Leibowitz on the basis of the first
sentence alone! It wasn’t even clear
whether he had read the whole book. (It later turned out that
he hadn’t.) And this supposedly skilled reader of texts even
managed to mis-interpret these few words. He misses entirely
the tongue-in-cheek humor of the opening sentence, attacking
novelist Miller (whom he doesn’t even mention by name in his
blog post—after all, who cares about some hack genre writer?)
for the phrase “girded loins” which is clearly offered by the
author with a wry smile.
I wonder if Mason would launch a preemptive assault on a
book by Thomas Hardy or Saul Bellow on the basis of a single
sentence in a novel he hasn’t read. Okay, I know that Mason
calls his blog “Sentences” . . . but really! Such dismissals reveal
less about the quality of sci-fi books or Miller’s novel—which is
quite well written, by the way—then about the snobbishness
and biases that still pervade the supposedly egalitarian and
open-minded world of literary criticism. “I’m all for sci-fi,”
Mason clarifies. Oh, but of course. “Or, at least, have never
turned up my nose thereto,” he adds. Except, that is, when he
turns up his nose at it.
Mason promises to read the rest of A Canticle for Leibowitz.
But I have some doubts that he will enjoy the book even after
the chastening response he received from its devoted fans, who
have kept this book in print for almost a half-century. Miller
offers a less than flattering portrait in his novel of Thon
Taddeo, who is not exactly a literary blogger, but is close
enough for discomfort. Taddeo is an intellectual who likes to
make high-blown pronouncements on the basis of very few
facts (does that sound familiar?). In fact, this whole novel is a
plea for folks not to engage in preemptive attacks—a general
category which must include, somewhere in its taxonomy, the
judgment of a book by its opening sentence.
Taddeo is one of those who “fumble awhile with error to
separate it from truth,” yet too often “seize the error hungrily
because it has a pleasanter taste.” This type of epistemological
musing is all too typical of Miller’s book, which takes ideas
very seriously. Indeed, A Canticle for Leibowitz takes them
seriously in a way that few contemporary novels do. The long
drawn-out discussions of concepts that once served as the
centerpieces of big books (The Brothers Karamazov, The
Magic Mountain, or perhaps most pronouncedly The Man
Without Qualities) went out of fashion around the time Moses
Herzog started writing crazy letters to dead people. Instead of
encountering something like the Grand Inquisitor, we are more
often treated to bad sex scenes nowadays. But as Dostoevsky
reminds us, we all get what we deserve: angels enjoy a glimpse
of God’s throne, while insects are given sensual lust. Miller, for
his part, clearly aspires to the latter, and is proud to be part of
this once vibrant tradition of novelists who incorporate serious
Socratic dialogues into their fiction.
The concluding section of this tripartite novel is dominated by
a debate between an abbot and a doctor on the morality of
mercy killing. When is it valid to terminate a life in order to
limit the risk of future suffering? Is pain the greatest evil (as
the doctor insists), or is the desperation with which the sufferer
responds to pain (as the abbot counters) the real tragedy here?
You might be tempted to dismiss this thematic element of A
Canticle for Leibowitz as a dry, theoretical matter—until you
learn that author Miller was a Roman Catholic who later
committed suicide. His life, and its termination, embraced both
sides of the debate . . . and as much more than an intellectual
query.
Miller’s novel focuses on the members of a monastery who are
pledged to preserving knowledge and culture in the aftermath
of a nuclear holocaust. They are inspired by a murky tradition
of a scientist named Leibowitz (later Saint Leibowitz). Leibowitz
himself—or at least his alter ego—seems to linger on in the
flesh, a post-nuclear realization of the myth of the Wandering
Jew. (Miller lived for a while in the 1950s with sci-fi writer
Judith Merril, and her Judaism interacts with his Catholicism
in the pages of this novel.) The monks emulate Leibowitz and
his quest to save some remnant of learning during the new Dark
Ages, when all books and ideas are suspect. Miller's novel is
divided into three separate stories, self-contained novellas set
in the same locale but at different time periods, but each
revolving around the same over-arching themes.
On a simple level, the book takes the real historical experience
of the Middle Ages— when a faith-driven church often became
the chief custodian of secular culture and tradition—and
projects it into the future. But the real substance of A Canticle
for Leibowitz is less the bare story, but rather Miller’s
sensitivity to the nuances and paradoxes that accompany his
tale at every turn.
His life was part of the paradox. Miller was a radio operator
and tail gunner during World War II. He participated in 55
combat sorties, including the 1944 mission that destroyed the
oldest monastery in the Western world, the Benedictine abbey
at Monte Casino, founded in 529. Was Miller a war hero? Or
was he a villain who toppled a cherished monument of
European culture? Or perhaps a bit of both? Clearly Miller’s
work on this book was his way of wrestling with these very
issues.
Twenty years after Miller wrote his book, Michel Foucault
sensitized academics to the murky relation of knowledge and
power, and the ways the latter often hides behind the screen of
the former. Yet few novels explore this matter with as much
sensitivity and irony as Miller brings to play in A Canticle for
Leibowitz. Here are big questions for musing. What
responsibility does faith have towards the intellect, and vice
versa? Are the two, as Thomists would suggest, ultimately
compatible and complementary, or do they inevitably enter
into a battle for supremacy? Above all, why preserve the
learning that led a previous civilization to destroy itself? Or, to
put it on a more personal level, what should our attitude be
toward knowledge that might destroy even a single individual?
No, these are not typical subjects for a sci-fi novel. Or even for
literary fiction these days. But Walter M. Miller is not your
typical writer. You can find that out for yourself. But you will
need to read beyond the opening sentence.
This review originally appeared on Blogcritics.
by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
Reviewed by Ted Gioia
When literary critic Wyatt Mason recently ridiculed A Canticle
for Leibowitz in the “Sentences” blog he runs for Harper’s, he
was amazed at the heated backlash from readers. As a seasoned
book blogger, Mason must be used to
critics getting criticized, but the
intensity of response from fans of
Walter M. Miller, Jr. “took the soup,”
in his words. “Readers voted early and
often,” Mason explained. “I got handed
my hat.”
A highbrow critic poking fun at a science
fiction book is nothing new. But the
story behind this story is even more
unsettling. Mason dismissed A Canticle
for Leibowitz on the basis of the first
sentence alone! It wasn’t even clear
whether he had read the whole book. (It later turned out that
he hadn’t.) And this supposedly skilled reader of texts even
managed to mis-interpret these few words. He misses entirely
the tongue-in-cheek humor of the opening sentence, attacking
novelist Miller (whom he doesn’t even mention by name in his
blog post—after all, who cares about some hack genre writer?)
for the phrase “girded loins” which is clearly offered by the
author with a wry smile.
I wonder if Mason would launch a preemptive assault on a
book by Thomas Hardy or Saul Bellow on the basis of a single
sentence in a novel he hasn’t read. Okay, I know that Mason
calls his blog “Sentences” . . . but really! Such dismissals reveal
less about the quality of sci-fi books or Miller’s novel—which is
quite well written, by the way—then about the snobbishness
and biases that still pervade the supposedly egalitarian and
open-minded world of literary criticism. “I’m all for sci-fi,”
Mason clarifies. Oh, but of course. “Or, at least, have never
turned up my nose thereto,” he adds. Except, that is, when he
turns up his nose at it.
Mason promises to read the rest of A Canticle for Leibowitz.
But I have some doubts that he will enjoy the book even after
the chastening response he received from its devoted fans, who
have kept this book in print for almost a half-century. Miller
offers a less than flattering portrait in his novel of Thon
Taddeo, who is not exactly a literary blogger, but is close
enough for discomfort. Taddeo is an intellectual who likes to
make high-blown pronouncements on the basis of very few
facts (does that sound familiar?). In fact, this whole novel is a
plea for folks not to engage in preemptive attacks—a general
category which must include, somewhere in its taxonomy, the
judgment of a book by its opening sentence.
Taddeo is one of those who “fumble awhile with error to
separate it from truth,” yet too often “seize the error hungrily
because it has a pleasanter taste.” This type of epistemological
musing is all too typical of Miller’s book, which takes ideas
very seriously. Indeed, A Canticle for Leibowitz takes them
seriously in a way that few contemporary novels do. The long
drawn-out discussions of concepts that once served as the
centerpieces of big books (The Brothers Karamazov, The
Magic Mountain, or perhaps most pronouncedly The Man
Without Qualities) went out of fashion around the time Moses
Herzog started writing crazy letters to dead people. Instead of
encountering something like the Grand Inquisitor, we are more
often treated to bad sex scenes nowadays. But as Dostoevsky
reminds us, we all get what we deserve: angels enjoy a glimpse
of God’s throne, while insects are given sensual lust. Miller, for
his part, clearly aspires to the latter, and is proud to be part of
this once vibrant tradition of novelists who incorporate serious
Socratic dialogues into their fiction.
The concluding section of this tripartite novel is dominated by
a debate between an abbot and a doctor on the morality of
mercy killing. When is it valid to terminate a life in order to
limit the risk of future suffering? Is pain the greatest evil (as
the doctor insists), or is the desperation with which the sufferer
responds to pain (as the abbot counters) the real tragedy here?
You might be tempted to dismiss this thematic element of A
Canticle for Leibowitz as a dry, theoretical matter—until you
learn that author Miller was a Roman Catholic who later
committed suicide. His life, and its termination, embraced both
sides of the debate . . . and as much more than an intellectual
query.
Miller’s novel focuses on the members of a monastery who are
pledged to preserving knowledge and culture in the aftermath
of a nuclear holocaust. They are inspired by a murky tradition
of a scientist named Leibowitz (later Saint Leibowitz). Leibowitz
himself—or at least his alter ego—seems to linger on in the
flesh, a post-nuclear realization of the myth of the Wandering
Jew. (Miller lived for a while in the 1950s with sci-fi writer
Judith Merril, and her Judaism interacts with his Catholicism
in the pages of this novel.) The monks emulate Leibowitz and
his quest to save some remnant of learning during the new Dark
Ages, when all books and ideas are suspect. Miller's novel is
divided into three separate stories, self-contained novellas set
in the same locale but at different time periods, but each
revolving around the same over-arching themes.
On a simple level, the book takes the real historical experience
of the Middle Ages— when a faith-driven church often became
the chief custodian of secular culture and tradition—and
projects it into the future. But the real substance of A Canticle
for Leibowitz is less the bare story, but rather Miller’s
sensitivity to the nuances and paradoxes that accompany his
tale at every turn.
His life was part of the paradox. Miller was a radio operator
and tail gunner during World War II. He participated in 55
combat sorties, including the 1944 mission that destroyed the
oldest monastery in the Western world, the Benedictine abbey
at Monte Casino, founded in 529. Was Miller a war hero? Or
was he a villain who toppled a cherished monument of
European culture? Or perhaps a bit of both? Clearly Miller’s
work on this book was his way of wrestling with these very
issues.
Twenty years after Miller wrote his book, Michel Foucault
sensitized academics to the murky relation of knowledge and
power, and the ways the latter often hides behind the screen of
the former. Yet few novels explore this matter with as much
sensitivity and irony as Miller brings to play in A Canticle for
Leibowitz. Here are big questions for musing. What
responsibility does faith have towards the intellect, and vice
versa? Are the two, as Thomists would suggest, ultimately
compatible and complementary, or do they inevitably enter
into a battle for supremacy? Above all, why preserve the
learning that led a previous civilization to destroy itself? Or, to
put it on a more personal level, what should our attitude be
toward knowledge that might destroy even a single individual?
No, these are not typical subjects for a sci-fi novel. Or even for
literary fiction these days. But Walter M. Miller is not your
typical writer. You can find that out for yourself. But you will
need to read beyond the opening sentence.
This review originally appeared on Blogcritics.
