Book Review: "The Meaning of Human Existence" by Edward O. Wilson

The Meaning of Human Existence (2014)
Edward O. Wilson (1929)

207 pages

With The Meaning of Human Existence, renowned biologist and Pulitzer prize-winning author Edward O. Wilson could hardly have made a more ambitious, and alluring, choice for a title. Fortunately he rises to the challenge in this slim volume. Building on recent discoveries in genetics, biology and other scientific fields, he describes how certain critical aspects of human nature may have developed due to the evolutionary advantage they conferred. Based on these new understandings, he calls for a re-thinking of millennia-old philosophical and theological doctrines that have attempted to illuminate the “meaning of human existence,” claiming that there is an urgent need to search out new answers to this eternal mystery through a close collaboration of science and the humanities.

To be clear, Wilson does not address in this work the related, though also fundamentally different, question of the “meaning of life.” He does not delve, for example, into why the universe exists, or what constituted the beginning of the universe, questions that science cannot participate in answering, at the very least for the foreseeable future. Wilson focuses here instead on how we humans can pursue a deeper understanding of the meaning of our existence --- of our lives as individuals and as a species.

Wilson notes that for much of history, this question remained the purview of the humanities, that is, of philosophers and theologians. Then, during the age of enlightenment, it suddenly seemed possible that science could answer the question on its own, without resorting to the soft, non-scientific explanations of the humanities. Wilson notes that this path failed to deliver on the early promises of its promotors, as it became clear that --- not surprisingly, in hindsight --- the answers science discovered led only to deeper and more fundamental questions.

Along the way, however, significant steps forward have been taken in our scientific understanding of the development of human nature, according to Wilson, and he argues that in light of these new findings, we can reassess our understanding of the meaning of human existence. As a particular example, he points to the inherent tension in most human beings between their instinctive desire to follow their own self-interest, and their equally instinctive desire to belong to a group, which often requires suppression of self-interest. He argues that recent advances in such fields as genetics and biology support the proposition that there is an inherited predisposition in humans toward holding both of these conflicting instincts, simultaneously.

Wilson describes how the presence of these aspects of human nature, and the resulting tension between them, would have conferred advantages on our ancient ancestors, and so would have represented an evolutionary preferred outcome that became built into our genetic code. The argument is that pure self-interest may have been beneficial to a particular individual in the short run, but would have been disadvantageous to that individual’s tribe in its competition with other tribes, and so, in the long run, also to that individual,. On the other hand, having no self-interest at all would have turned us into what he refers to as “angelic robots” (p. 33), perhaps advantaging the group in a short-term sense, but dooming it over the long run when faced with more dynamic groups, whose members held the two instincts simultaneously and in tension.

The presence of this internal conflict can seem undesirable and unpleasant in the moment --- for an individual faced with a decision between following their self-interest or supporting their community --- but Wilson argues that it is critical to our human existence, to our rise beyond other species in the development of “human-level intelligence and social organization.” (34) Wilson in fact carries this argument a step further, specifically warning against the seemingly imminent use of genetic engineering to improve the human race, in the sense of eliminating such conflicting feelings and emotions, and creating, say, a more emotionally stable version of ourselves. He feels such a move would only diminish a key strength of our humanity, and so place us at risk of stalling in our development as a species.

More to the main point of his work, Wilson goes on to cite recent studies claiming a genetic predisposition in humans to embracing religious beliefs and religious structures. He notes that such instincts would have enhanced the cohesiveness and strength of a tribe relative to others whose members did not have the same genetic pre-disposition, thus fitting neatly into the larger picture of human beings advantageously balancing self-interest and group-interest. He argues, however, that these instincts toward religious and cultural belief systems, which support a group over its rivals, have cohered over the past millennia into dogmas that have resulted in a legacy of on-going discrimination and violence between groups, as we witness so evidently in the world today. What in ancient times provided advantage for one tribe over another, now leads to seemingly intractable conflict.

Building off these and other discussions in the book, Wilson makes a clarion call: the world must use the understanding that science has made in recent years to step back from the various dogmas --- whether religious among the spiritual, or political among the secular --- that pit groups against one another in violent opposition. Through renewed efforts in the humanities, we must move forward toward a new philosophy of human existence, a broader meaning that spans the species, as opposed to the current myriad of ideologies that exist among the groups we’ve divided ourselves into. He argues that science and the humanities must take this step forward together, that neither alone can suffice.

In lucid and engaging prose that invites a reader into a conversation on these topics, Wilson lays out his views on the current understandings of human nature and consciousness, and then coalesces these views into a proposal for a new path forward. To be able to solve the problems we face today --- environmental degradation, fundamentalist violence --- Wilson calls on science and the humanities to develop a new understanding of the meaning of human existence around which humanity as a whole can come together.

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In his chapter Free Will, Wilson discusses this ancient question of philosophers and theologians, again from the context of the latest understandings of science. He concludes that human beings do not, fundamentally, have free will, in the sense that it is at least theoretically possible to capture the set of events that will predict our next decision. Despite that, he argues that we humans can, and in fact must, act as if we do have free will, do have control; he writes “… does free will exist? Yes, if not in ultimate reality, then at least in the operational sense necessary for sanity and thereby for the perpetuation of the human species.” (p. 170)

This lines up with the thinking of scientists such as the theoretical physicist Brian Greene; check out, for example, his interview in front of a live audience for On Being, with Krista Tippett, January 2014.  In the final, on-air version there is a comment that parallels Wilson's thoughts above; follow the links to either the transcript, or the audio of their discussion .

At the audio link there is also the unedited version of the interview, including the following exchange with an audience member (starting around 1 hour, 6 minutes), in which Greene notes that even quantum theory is deterministic.

Audience Member: “… it sounds as if, um, your proposal situates us in a very deterministic universe, and that we are simply, in some sense, um, almost robots acting out of these general laws, and that there’s no novelty within this very, very complex and creative entity that we are as conscious beings.  That’s my first question.

BG: Ah, so, ah, yes, it, it is hard to accept.  [Long pause, audience laughter]  But I wouldn’t go as far as to say there’s no novelty.  You know, when you bring complex systems together, even when they’re governed by deterministic laws of physics, which, as we understand them … and some people would say ‘well, what about quantum mechanics, doesn’t that sort of take away the determinism,’ no, it doesn’t at all, not at our current level of understanding.  So, the mathematical laws that Schrodinger wrote down for the quantum evolution are as deterministic as the laws that Newton wrote down, they determine probabilities, but there’s no place in those laws for anything other than deterministic evolution.   Now you can get novelty, because when you bring complex things together they can co-mingle and interact in ways that may be surprising, and I’m using human language to describe it, sure it comes right out of the equations but it still can be novel by any human barometer.  So, I wouldn’t say that novelty goes away, but yes, free will may, go away.   

AM: So, free will, meaning choice, there’s no such thing as choice.

BG: That’s right.

AM: I do not choose to love, I do not choose to extend myself, I don’t choose to live, to get back to [?]

BG: Well, it all depends on what you mean by ‘choose’.  So, if by choose you mean that you could have done otherwise, then I would say, yes, but I would say that you need to redefine the meaning of the word choose.  Choose is the sensation of choosing; now it is the fact that the laws of physics were just playing themselves out, and that is fundamentally why you did what you did, but to choose is to have the sensation of making that choice.  And we all have that sensation, and that is a definition which I think works well.  It does require a little bit of re-jiggering of your intuition, to recognize that it may be the case that it, the laws of physics that are behind the scenes doing it all, but yes, that sensation of choice is real.  And that’s what we should re-define free will to mean.  Free will is the sensation of making the choice, even though behind the scenes, the laws of physics were pulling the strings.

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Book Review: "Area X: The Southern Reach Trilogy" by Jeff VanderMeer

Area X: The Southern Reach Trilogy (2014)
Jeff VanderMeer (1968)

 

595 pages

Faced with the unknown, people display a range of reactions, from immobilizing fear to mindless aggression, from cautious wonder to impetuous curiosity. The struggle often becomes one of recognizing whether our natural reaction will put us at greater or lesser risk than some other possible response --- will a quick, aggressive action be what saves us, or will it only make things worse? Encountering something not only unknown but possibly profoundly unknowable heightens these stakes. Just such dilemmas face the characters in Jeff VanderMeer’s Area X: The Southern Reach Trilogy, which bundles three recently released novels into a single volume.

The Area X of the title is a stretch of coastline, blocked off from the public behind vague government reports of some kind of environmental disaster. Officials, however, find themselves with a much more challenging and mysterious truth, as a kind of force field has descended around this piece of the coast, comprising an area of both land and the off-shore ocean, which prevents access except through a single portal on land. Through an agency called the Southern Reach, the government has been organizing an ongoing series of expeditions into Area X, ostensibly to investigate the environmental disaster that has occurred, but in reality focused on understanding the strange force that has gripped this region, and what it may mean for the future.

The first third of the book, entitled Annihilation, opens shortly after the four members of the designated twelfth expedition have entered through the portal into Area X. They soon discover a kind of tunnel in the ground that they had not been expecting, despite the extensive training and information about the region that they had received in preparation for their mission. Descending into the tunnel to investigate, they begin to encounter phenomena not only unexplainable but seemingly otherworldly. The expedition soon falls apart in the face of what seems to be the natural world in Area X rising up against them.

The focus in the second third of the book, Authority, turns to the organization coordinating the expeditions. The Southern Reach, located just outside the one known entrance into Area X, has had little to show for its long-standing efforts to investigate the phenomenon on its doorstep; many expeditions have been sent in, with results from catastrophic to uneventful, but what information makes it back only generates more questions than answers as to the nature of what is happening, and of what sort of long-term threat it may pose. Decades of failure have in fact created a debilitating hopelessness among the employees of the Southern Reach, made worse by a toxic stew of company politics within the secret agency, all of which undermines any new efforts to make progress.

In the final third, Acceptance, the reader is thrust back into Area X, as the struggle between Southern Reach and the forces that hold sway in the strange region comes to a head. As the confrontation escalates, the characters begin to get closer to an explanation for the strange phenomena occurring. Even as their understanding deepens, however, they find themselves left with only more profound questions about the nature of what they face, and its potential threat to the outside world.

In telling the story, VanderMeer manages to deftly control and manipulate a reader’s understanding of what constitutes the full truth of events. For one, he plays extensively with time in the novel. Though the story broadly flows forward from a point early in the mission of the twelfth expedition on toward the climactic engagement with the power at the center of Area X, along the way VanderMeer shifts continually back and forth between the present and the past. Extended flashbacks and jumps back in time to events prior to the twelfth expedition slowly reveal hints about the motivations of the characters and pieces of knowledge the different characters have about the true situation inside Area X. More unsettling for a reader, VanderMeer manipulates events in the novel by revealing them in fragments: a moment will play out, but then some pagers later a main character will remember back to that moment and recall and relate information not covered in the first pass through it. Thus, not only does the reader only gradually build up an understating of the main characters, even the reality of the story must be pieced together from stingily dribbled out bits and pieces.

A second, more unsettling factor for the reader is the knowledge that some characters spend part of the time under hypnosis, ostensibly to protect them as much as possible from realities of Area X that might overwhelm them and so jeopardize the mission of the Southern Reach. But it can be unclear at any given moment in time whether a particular character is under hypnosis. This leaves a reader wondering, as the focus shifts among the main characters in the story, how much of what they relate can be trusted as actual fact, and how much of what they do is of their own free will.

Oddly unsettling too is the lack of definition of time and place in the novel. A few hints and clues leave the impression that the novel is set a few decades into our future, and in the south-eastern United States. But a reader can’t be quite sure. Other than the diverse names of the characters, and the American sounding names of the local towns and establishments, nothing places the story particularly in the United States. A secret umbrella organization, Central, rules over the Southern Reach, and no other government entity is ever mentioned in the novel. Combined with hints that the country has been suffering under increasing terrorist attacks and environmental disasters, the subtle indication is of a dictatorial state; does the government or country of the United States even still exist as we know it today?

VanderMeer has crafted a gripping novel that engages a reader on every page in the search for the truth. Taken together, the vagueness of place, the constant shifting in time and finally the uncertain agency of the main characters enhances the mystery of what has happened and will happen in Area X. Through these techniques a reader remains effectively as uncertain about what may constitute the realities of Area X, and the full extent of the government’s attempts to understand and control it, as are the characters themselves.

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Book Review: "Fully Empowered" by Pablo Neruda

Fully Empowered (1967)
(Original: Plenos Poderes; 1962)
Pablo Neruda (1973)
Translated from the Spanish by Alastair Reid

135 pages


Many years have passed since I first discovered the poetry of Pablo Neruda, through a girlfriend from Chile who had a copy of Fully Empowered (Plenos Poderes).  The poems in the collection range from impressionistic descriptions of nature, daily activities or common objects to ruminations on the nature of our lives and those of the poor and working class.  I picked up my own copy of the book some 20 years ago, and a couple of other collections of his work since then. Over the years, however, I’ve had a bit of a conflicted history with his poetry, and have only now read through all the poems in this particular book.

When I first came to Neruda’s poetry I knew little-to-no Spanish, so, although I had bilingual collections of his works, I was reading them in the English translations.  Despite being limited to the versions in English, I found several of his poems deeply affecting.  In Fully Empowered, for example, the poem Births (Los nacimientos), with Neruda’s transcendent description of the moment of birth, struck a powerful chord in me, and remains my favorite among Neruda’s poems. (To read the poem in Spanish, or Alastair Reid’s English translation, follow the link here.)

So too the extraordinary image of love Neruda creates out of a simple, everyday act in To Wash a Child (Para lavar a un niño), and the startling conclusion, in the poem’s final lines, with a bittersweet reminder of our loss of innocence as we grow older:

In that way, newly washed, the child leaps into life;
for later it will have time for nothing more
than keeping clean, but lifelessly by then. 

(Y así recién lavado salta el niño a vivir
porque más tarde sólo tendrá tiempo
para andar limpio, pero ya sin vida.)

And also in this same collection, the powerful image of a spoken word coming to life, in the opening lines of The Word (La palabra):

The word
was born in the blood,
grew in the dark body, beating,
and took flight through the lips and the mouth.

(Nació
la palabra en la sangre,
creció en el cuerpo oscuro, palpitando,
y voló con los labios y la boca.)

But, but … so many of his other poems read flat to me, and I had trouble recognizing in them the inspired beauty many others seem to find in his work. To be clear, I always felt this represented a personal shortcoming, not a valid conclusion on Neruda’s work. (Aside from lacking the background to critically evaluate poetry, I consider what one likes, in literature, music, or art in general, to be a simple preference, not an absolute value; I acknowledge the validity of critical evaluation of art, but not the requirement that critical acclaim implies that any particular person should necessarily find a work appealing.) Over the years I have occasionally returned to the books I own of Neruda’s poems, to give them another go, and see if, from a new vantage point in life, I experience them differently; the result, however, has always been the same --- no particular resonance to much of his work.

Recently, however, I picked up Fully Empowered again, but with a twist: I’ve been learning Spanish over the past years and though my Spanish remains only passable, I know enough to be able to read it, albeit with the support of a dictionary. I randomly opened the book to a few different poems --- intentionally choosing ones I was not already drawn to in their English versions --- and read them now in Spanish, with the help of Alastair Reid’s translations and a dictionary on the side. The result startled me; poems that had seemed so flat in English came almost magically to life for me.

I recognize that literature in general, and poetry in particular, can be extremely difficult to translate in a way that captures both the meaning and the characteristic tone of an author, and not just because words have different nuances of meaning in different languages: each language has too a different, inherent rhythm. Reading Neruda’s poems in Spanish, I was for the first time truly confronted by the chasm that translation can create. The rhythm and the flow of the poems in Spanish combine with their meaning to an extraordinary effect, and the poems now sang out more beautifully than I had experienced them in English.

As a specific example, take the opening lines of Planet (Planeta):

Hay piedras de agua en la luna?
Hay aguas de oro?
De qué color es el otoño?

Focusing on just the first sentence, there is a natural rhythm to it, built around three groupings that all have emphasis on the second to last syllables, and with the very typical for Spanish ‘a’ sound at the end of each grouping:

hay PIEdras ... de Agua …en la LUna

Reid’s translation of the first three lines is:

Are there stones of water on the moon?
Are there waters of gold?
What color is autumn?

Looking again at the first line, one can see how Reid has been able to create a similar rhythm with a direct translation:

are there STONES … of WATER … on the MOON

The pattern is now built around the emphasis being on the single syllable nouns that conclude each grouping, which is a minor difference, but notice that the line loses some of the melody inherent in the Spanish, in which the ‘a’ sounds rounds out each group. Thus, though the enchanting image Neruda creates in this line comes through in the English translation, the lyrical cadence that enlivens the original has been lost.

To be clear, I mean no criticism of Alastair Reid’s translations; if anything I sympathize with the struggles he must have gone through to re-create (a more appropriate term it seems to me, than ‘translate’) these works in English --- with its rhythms and flow so different from Spanish --- while retaining Neruda’s meaning. In a different context, one can understand why some songs, when translated into a different language, retain the popular melody, but are given an entirely different set of lyrics, built to support the melody, not to retain the original meaning.  Reid obviously did not have that option with Neruda’s poetry.

So, I recommend, if you are able, reading Neruda’s poems in their original Spanish, even if you need to lean on the translations and a dictionary for support. The effort will be well-rewarded by the beautiful whole of these works in their original language.

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I also have a CD of Neruda reading some of his poems. I was surprised, when I first heard it, by the monotone voice he uses to recite his works; there is a modulation to his reading, his voice generally rising during a particular line, but he keeps his voice very flat, leaving the impression of intense melancholy or a lamentation. But, upon listening to his delivery over several poems, his approach gradually comes to feel appropriate. And, one’s inclination when reading his poetry is to adopt this voice oneself, whether reading them aloud or silently.

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Poem by Pablo Neruda: "Los nacimientos" ("Births")

My favorite among Pablo Neruda's poems is Los nacimientos (Births), from the collection <u>Plenos Poderes</u>,which, with Neruda’s transcendent description of the moment of birth, as well as his trenchant portrayal of how unknowable to us the two most important moments in our life remain, struck a powerful chord in me.

The poem in its original Spanish, as well as a version in English farther below, are from the book <u>Fully Empowered</u>(my review here), a bilingual edition of the collection <u>Plenos Poderes</u>, translated from the Spanish by Alastair Reid.

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Los nacimientos

Nunca recordaremos haber muerto.
 
Tanta paciencia
para ser tuvimos
anotando
los números, los días,
los años y los meses,
los cabellos, las bocas que besamos,
y aquel minuto de morir
lo dejamos sin anotación:
se lo damos a otro de recuerdo
o simplemente al agua,
al agua, al aire, al tiempo.
Ni de nacer tampoco
guardamos la memoria,
aunque importante y fresco fue ir naciendo:
y ahora no recuerdas ni un detalle,
no has guardado ni un ramo
de la primera luz.
 
Se sabe que nacemos.
 
Se sabe que en la sala
o en el bosque
o en el tugurio del barrio pesquero
o en los cañaverales crepitantes
hay un silencio extrañamente extraño,
un minuto solemne de madera
y una mujer se dispone a parir.
 
Se sabe que nacimos.
 
Pero de la profunda sacudida
de no ser a existir, a tener manos,
a ver, a tener ojos,
a comer y llorar y derramarse
y amar y amar y sufrir y sufrir,
de aquella transición o escalofrío
del contenido eléctrico que asume
un cuerpo más como una copa viva,
y de aquella mujer deshabitada,
la madre que allí queda con su sangre
y su desgarradora plenitud
y su fin y comienzo, y el desorden
que turba el pulso, el suelo, las frazadas,
hasta que todo se recoge y suma
un nudo más el hilo de la vida,
nada, no quedó nada en tu memoria
del mar bravío que elevó una ola
y derribó del árbol una manzana oscura.
 
No tienes más recuerdo que tu vida.

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Births

We will never have any memory of dying.

We were so patient
about our being,
noting down
numbers, days,
years and months,
hair, and the mouths we kiss,
and that moment of dying
we let pass without a note ---
we leave it to others as memory,
or we give it simply to water,
to water, to air, to time.
Nor do we even keep
the memory of being born,
although to come into being was tumultuous and new;
and now you don’t remember a single detail,
and haven’t kept even a trace
of your first light.

It’s well known that we are born.

It’s well known that in the room
or in the wood
or in the shelter in the fisherman’s quarter
or in the rustling canefields
there is a quite unusual silence,
a grave and wooden moment as
a woman prepares to give birth.

It’s well known that we were all born.

But of that abrupt translation
from not being to existing, to having hands,
to seeing, to having eyes,
to eating and weeping and overflowing
and loving and loving and suffering and suffering,
of that transition, that quivering
of an electric presence, raising up
one body more, like a living cup,
and of that woman left empty,
the mother who is left there in her blood
and her lacerated fullness,
and its end and its beginning, and disorder
tumbling the pulse, the floor, the covers,
till everything comes together and adds  
one knot more to the thread of life,
nothing, nothing remains in your memory
of the savage sea which summoned up a wave
and plucked a shrouded apple from the tree.

The only thing you remember is your life.

Book Review: "Station Eleven" by Emily St. John Mandel

Station Eleven (2014)
Emily St. John Mandel (1979)

333 pages

It can happen that a novel seems to fall clearly into a particular genre, and yet that one finds that classification insufficient and even misleading. Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel, left me with just such an impression. Unquestionably the novel is post-apocalyptic fiction; stating that, however, may be doing this enchanting novel a great disservice. For although fans of that genre will certainly enjoy this work, even if you normally shy away from such books you should give this one a go: you will love it for the remarkable story St. John Mandel tells.

While many end-of-the-world novels key in on the action-adventure aspect of the catastrophe and can certainly make for thrilling reads, the most engaging and affecting novels in this genre turn their focus onto the human reactions prompted by living in a radically changed world; so, for example: the gradual, agonizing realization that the end of mankind has become inevitable in the aftermath of a nuclear world war in Nevil Shute’s On the Beach; the long, painful and slow recovery from another such war that the characters struggle through in Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker; and the unnamed catastrophe that has left a man and his son wandering through a desolate world in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Like these and other compelling novels in this category, St. John Mandel allows the mechanics of the apocalypse to play out mostly in the background; her story instead follows the struggle of the survivors to come to grips with life in its aftermath, and looks back to the time before the disaster strikes to moments that reverberate forward into the post-apocalyptic future.

The story opens during a staging of King Lear in Toronto, at which Arthur Leander, a famous actor playing Lear, suffers a heart-attack. An audience member, Jeevan Chaudhary, jumps onto the stage to try to revive him, as a young girl, Kirsten Raymonde, watches the commotion from a nearby corner. A child with a minor role in the play, Kirsten had been befriended by Arthur during the long weeks of rehearsals, often escaping the commotion of the show preparations by visiting his dressing room to play alone as he readied himself to go on-stage. Despite all the efforts to save Arthur, he ends up dying --- but we quickly learn that within days everyone in the theater that night save Jeevan and Kirsten will soon be dead as well. A highly contagious, and very deadly and fast-moving flu has skipped beyond its hazy origins in the Republic of Georgia, and begun spreading like a wildfire across the earth, arriving in particular by plane that day into Toronto. As King Lear plays out in the theater, hospital staff in the city find themselves overwhelmed, though the general population remains largely unaware of the danger, if only for a few hours more.

The story jumps quickly forward to the Year 20 after the flu, and we meet a group of itinerant musicians and actors, including Kirsten, who call themselves the Traveling Symphony. We gradually learn that within just a few weeks of that fateful night in Toronto the flu killed off some 99% of the population, with many others losing their lives in the chaotic aftermath; survivors carry on in a world that has suddenly gone dark and empty. Through this radically changed world the Traveling Symphony follows the shores of the lower Great Lakes, stopping to play music and perform Shakespeare at small settlements that have sprung up in clusters of buildings.

When not practicing or performing, the members of the company have a lot of time on their hands and, not surprisingly, their thoughts and discussions often drift back to the time before the flu, and the difficult years that have followed in its wake. Kirsten in particular spends much of her time trying to piece together the mystery of her past; too young to have more than hazy memories of the time before the epidemic, or the first violent period after it, she builds her efforts to remember around a few objects from that time that she carries in her backpack, but whose origin and meaning she cannot quite recall. She does know, however, that they are somehow associated with Arthur Leander, and when searching empty houses for goods the group can use, she keeps an eye out for information on the famous actor in magazines or books, that might reveal the background of these talismans she carries. St. John Mandel builds her story around Kirsten’s struggle to build a clearer picture of her past, and on the people who in part shaped it, whose lives in the time before the flu provide the clues that inform the reader of what has been hopelessly lost for Kirsten in the ashes of the pandemic.

The Traveling Symphony retraces each year a route along the lakes that they are familiar with, avoiding the rumored violence of interior lands farther from the lake shores, though they find that even communities they visit regularly on their travels can undergo dramatic and sometimes dangerous change. Just such a transformation has occurred in a town they visit early in the story, and the effects of this encounter propel the theater group off their normal route into unfamiliar territory; it also eventually leads Kirsten to uncover further links to her past.

The story does not proceed linearly, however; instead St. John Mandel moves fluidly from the events of Year 20 back and forth through her characters’ pasts, telling their back stories in the years leading up to the outbreak, and, for those who survived, from the years after the pandemic has struck. She shifts deftly between different periods of her characters’ lives, revealing decisions and actions that in reflection they themselves would undoubtedly have most likely considered unimportant and even arbitrary, but that ultimately reveal lives linked together by just such accidental, unintentional choices. What could have quite easily become a confusing mishmash --- crisscrossing time and place --- unfolds here seamlessly. St. John Mandel’s light touch captivates as she reveals mysterious and uncertain connections, and then slowly, deliberately, unveils the history behind them.

As I continued deeper into this novel, St. John Mandel’s approach left me with a feeling that I don’t recall having experienced in my previous reading: even when I had nearly finished the book, I still had the odd feeling that I was reading the opening act --- the character set-up that tends to occur early in the plot of a story. That feeling even persisted through what was the obvious climax scene. What became clear was that the dangerous moment of the climax, or even the earlier devastation of the flu itself, were not the point of the story. Instead, the crux of the novel lies in the mixture of coincidental and intentional actions that had a significant impact on Kirsten but that occurred in a history whose details were largely lost to the devastation of the flu, and in the attempt by Kirsten to piece together what she can of her hazy past and so create a cohesive understanding of it for herself.

Station Eleven, then, deals not just with the struggle to live in the aftermath of an apocalyptic event; this wonderful, engaging tale looks beyond that simple theme, delving into the difficulty of the survivors to make sense of their place in an altered world, based on their own uncertain memories and the physical artifacts that remain. The story reveals too how the smallest of actions in the world before the pandemic could sometimes create what feel like great mysteries for the survivors, mysteries they generally find difficult to unravel as they look back to the time before Year 0. This struggle plays out differently for each of them of course: some were adults when the flu spread and remember everything that came before, though it begins to take on the aspect of a mirage; others, like Kirsten, were only children when the disease struck and have only vague memories of the earlier world; and then there are the very young, who know only the stories they hear from their elders, and the rusting and broken down world around them. For each of them their own particular understanding of the past colors their view of the present, and their hopes for the future.

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Book Review: "The First Bad Man" by Miranda July

The First Bad Man (2015)
Miranda July (1974)
276 pages

Authors often seem to establish a certain tone and intensity early on in their novels that they then, aside from some quickening around the climax, maintain through to the end. Not so Miranda July in her book The First Bad Man. What begins as a rather riotous character study explodes suddenly into an erotic duel before taking a vertiginous drop into adulthood. The one constant is a comedic backbeat that both softens the edges of a cast of quite odd characters, but also serves to make them feel more real.

As the story opens, Cheryl Glickman is headed to an appointment with a doctor recommended by a colleague at work; the doctor is only in town a few times a year, and Cheryl has made the appointment principally in the hopes of meeting her colleague in the doctor’s waiting room, and so establishing a connection with him outside of work. Convinced that he will be there when she enters, she approaches the office door practicing the conversation she will have with him, so that it will come off with just the right level of nonchalant surprise. Her preparations are for not, however, as she finds only a receptionist present when she opens the door to the waiting room.

This opening scene serves as a fitting introduction to our narrator, and her method of coping with the struggles and disappointments in her life by experiencing much of her interaction with others deep inside her own imagination. The illusion of control and rationality that this allows her may make the world a less scary place for her, but proves an unstable foundation as, not surprisingly, real people and situations continuously veer off the scripted path she has laid out, forcing her to react to things she had not anticipated and so feels supremely unprepared for.

Cheryl most perfectly realizes her desire for control when at home. Living alone, she has developed a carefully structured set of behaviors that individually can seem not quite unreasonable when she describes them, but together form a picture of a compulsive, obsessive personality. She has, for example, packed away all of her dishes except for one set, so that she never ends up with a sink full of dirty dishes; and, like a fuel-conscious driver, she optimizes tasks in such a way as to maximize the efficiency of each trip through her house. She has a system in place at home, and she sticks to it.

This constant struggle for control has its consequences, however: Cheryl suffers from a psychosomatic illness, globus hystericus, the feeling of a lump in the throat which obstructs swallowing, though no actual lump is present. Cheryl experiences this to various degrees whenever she feels overwhelmed and unable to maintain her desperately tight grip on her life and surroundings.

Cheryl’s ordered, if fragile, world comes crashing down when she reluctantly agrees to take in Clee, the 20 year old daughter of the couple who own the business where she works. Monosyllabic, messy and self-absorbed, Clee quickly turns Cheryl’s carefully constructed life upside down. As Clee ignores or maliciously violates the cleanliness and order of the house, Cheryl descends into a case of globus hystericus that leaves her barely able to drink even water.

Eventually things come to a head and Cheryl strikes out in frustration, physically attacking Clee. She loses the battle to the much younger and stronger woman, but to Cheryl’s surprise, the scrum does temporarily resolve her globus hystericus; it also unleashes unexpected feelings between the women. As the mercurial and ill-defined relationship between the two develops --- with its own peculiar and very physical rules of attraction --- Cheryl must balance her natural tendencies for control and structure in her life with the uncertainty and disorder that accompanies these new feelings. When Clee then reveals news that completely redefines the relationship between the women, Cheryl must confront the comfortable world she had created in her imagination, and decide whether to let that it go for a new and radically different life.

Many scenes and passages in the story had me laughing to myself as July’s cast of oddballs reveal their neuroses and blind-spots. But her humor does not come across as malicious. When we laugh at what a character says or does it is accompanied by some portion of sympathy that comes from recognizing through them the parts of ourselves that we try so hard to hide --- our own neuroses and blind-spots. Thus we can engage with the characters in the novel, instead of simply laughing at their flaws.

It must be mentioned that anyone squeamish about reading sex scenes may be put-off by this book. Though the scenes mostly play out in Cheryl’s imagination, or are reported to her after the fact, they encompass a fairly wide range of rather explicitly described activities, and so are not for the every reader. Some are actually more unsettling than erotic, and others so over-the-top as to be more humorous than erotic, but July doesn’t hide behind implication or flowery language in these scenes.

Hopefully that warning won’t scare you off of The First Bad Man, however, because it is an affecting read. What begins as a fairly innocent comedy evolves into a rowdy, over-the-top love story in the middle third, a careening ride of confused passions. In the final third July executes a dramatic shift that, like a rider on a roller coaster dropping into a free fall, provides a precipitous drop into new emotional struggles that had me glued to the page to find out how things would be resolved.

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Book Review: "Die Welt von Gestern" ("The World of Yesterday") by Stefan Zweig

Die Welt von Gestern (1942)
(The World of Yesterday)
Stefan Zweig (1881-1942)
304 pages

And I have often come to recall the words an exiled Russian said to me some years back: ‘In earlier times a person had only a body and a soul. These days he also requires in addition a passport, otherwise he won’t be treated as a person. (285)

This poignant yet trenchant statement toward the end of Stefan Zweig’s book The World of Yesterday captures in brief the profound cultural and societal changes that occurred during the first few decades of the twentieth century. In Europe in particular, a social order that had largely dominated the continent for centuries --- while undergoing at most gradual change -- disintegrated suddenly and nearly completely in the crucible of World War I. Previously stable cultural foundations upon which people had relied for generations gave way to new norms and political structures so fundamentally different that the youth of the post-war world could scarcely imagine or understand the lives and times of their parents and grand-parents.

Zweig looks back over this period in his book, recalling the dramatic transformations experienced by European society. Part history, part autobiography, the book can perhaps best be characterized as a cultural biography of Western and Central Europe from the 1880’s to the start of World War II. For much of his life Zweig traveled extensively in Europe, seeking out distinguished literary and cultural figures in Berlin, Paris and elsewhere. His visits to these cities and his relationships with the writers and thinkers with whom he met form the framework of the book, and through his recollections of them he gives a sense of the world as it was before WWI, and as it became in the war’s aftermath. He also makes clear how much his own thinking and writing were impacted and ultimately re-directed by the shocking destructiveness and senselessness of the war, and the disastrous economic consequences experienced during the post-war years.

The World of Yesterday generally seems to be characterized as an autobiography, but I find that categorization uncompelling. It is true that Zweig tells stories of his family, his schooling, his travels and his experiences, through which the reader certainly learns about the author himself. But rather than being focused on his own life, these descriptions seem intended to provide a structure to a narrative focused on illuminating the cultural, social and political environment of the world of his youth, that is, before WWI, and the significant and wide-ranging changes that occurred as a result of that war. So, for example, Zweig briefly mentions his parents early in the book --- but in the context of the differing histories of his father and mother, using them to shed light on the differences between the Jewish educated elite of the cities (his mother’s family) and those of the smaller provincial towns (his father’s), how these groups interacted with one another, and the Jewish impact on society in Austria and Vienna. Of his first wife, of 18 years, there is only one reference, in passing, in the context of a story he tells about helping an Italian friend in trouble with the Mussolini regime; his second wife he only mentions because they happen to be at the marriage registration office in England at the moment reports come in that Nazi Germany has invaded Poland, and so has effectively gone to war with Britain. Remove these two references and a reader would assume --- viewing this book as an autobiography --- that Zweig remained a bachelor his entire life.

Whether autobiography or history, what does come through clearly in the text is that Zweig’s view is, perhaps not surprisingly, colored by and weighted toward his upper-middle class background. Even given such a bias, however, a reader’s understanding of this period in our history benefits from his keen observations and insights.

The book is divided almost exactly into two halves, and it is relevant to wonder if Zweig’s intent for the scope of his narrative changed over the course of the writing, which he apparently started in 1934 and completed in 1942. The first half of the book truly deals with the world of yesterday of the title, a pre-WWI cultural order already, from Zweig’s point of view in the 1930’s, seemingly a part of the distant past. It is only speculation, but it may be that by the late 1930’s, as the start of the Second World War became inevitable and Zweig recognized the impact of the changes wrought by the earlier world war on the path toward this new conflict, that he carried his story forward into the new, post-WWI age to describe more deeply the war’s impact.

Zweig opens with the following line: “If I try to find a succinct phrase to describe the time before the First World War during which I grew up, I am hopefully the most succinct if I say: it was the golden age of security and certainty.”(11)   He spends the first half of the book recalling this period of security experienced by his parents’ and grandparents’ generations, and reflecting on his own experiences and recollections as a youth at school and out on the town with friends. Looking back to the Vienna of his youth, he recalls the wonderful arts scene, including music, theater and literature, which drew his and his fellow students’ attention away from their schoolwork. At the same time, he decries the very conservative, patriarchal society that existed, in which men must nearly be turning gray before achieving a position of any influence, and women have little to strive for beyond housework and protecting their reputation.

Having describe the Vienna in which he grew up, Zweig broadens his story to a more European focus. From his university days onward, Zweig traveled extensively, and spent seemingly as much time abroad as in Austria. Though he made it as far as the United States and India, most of his travels were to the major cities of Europe, where, having earned an early name for himself in Vienna as a writer, he turned the connections his success offered him into opportunities to be introduced to leading European writers and thinkers of the day. His recollections of the cities he visited, and the cultural luminaries he came to know, make up a significant part of the first half of the book, and form the lens through which Zweig describes European culture of this period.

I have read commentaries on the book that chastise Zweig for prideful namedropping and a dissembling disingenuousness on this account.  Such a criticism is not completely without merit. To give but one example that such critics might likely cite, Zweig recalls a meeting with Theodor Herzel, who was editor of an apparently well-known literary revue magazine of the time; Zweig handed over a prose piece which Herzel read on the spot and accepted immediately for publication. “It was,” Zweig comments, “as if Napoleon stopped on the battlefield to pin the Knight’s Cross of the Legion of Honor on a young Sargent.”(81) In one sentence Zweig manages to highlight the importance of Herzel as a cultural figure, the success Zweig’s own writing enjoyed, and what could be taken as a disingenuous surprise at that success. At this and other moments in the book Zweig can be argued to have ventured into the grey area between recollection and self-congratulation, though on the whole I found that his references to the literary and cultural figures he met enhanced the historical insights of his recollections.

At almost exactly the halfway point in the book Zweig concludes his description of the pre-WWI period with the observation: “Then, on June 28, 1914, the shot in Sarajevo was fired, and the world of security and creative rationality in which we were born, raised and at home was, in one single instant, smashed like a hollow, clay container into a thousand pieces.”(152) Clearly, such an observation can only be made in hindsight, but Zweig describes in the second half of his book how WWI lead to the destruction of the old European order, and how the peace agreements eventually imposed on the losers, and the economic problems that followed, led to social and political developments that propelled Europe into a second world war only a generation after the first.

He notes that the cultural and governing structures discredited by WWI left a gaping vacuum after the war, not least in what had been the Austro-Hungarian Empire, where, as he takes the train back home after having spent the last months of the war in Switzerland, he is witness to the last Hapsburg emperor on a train into exile, having abdicated his throne. Zweig’s homeland becomes a “mutilated torso” (e.g., 198), consisting of the tiny, newly created Austria; he notes that there, as throughout Europe, the absence of established structures led to wide-ranging political and social experimentation.

An entirely new youth no longer believed their parents, their politicians, their teachers; every order, every proclamation of government was read with a mistrusting eye. Suddenly the post-war generation brutally emancipated itself from all that had been taken for granted and turned its back on every tradition, determined to take their fate into their own hands, leaving behind all of the old ways of doing things and switch with one lurch toward the future. (210)

Generally he finds many positive aspects of the resulting changes, such as newfound freedoms in social mobility and personal behavior. He notes, however, that with this period of experimentation came also the dangers of excess, as the old norms governing behavior that had guarded the “golden age of security and certainty”(11) suddenly held little constraining weight; charismatic leaders found willing followers among impetuous youth, forming gangs that clashed for recognition and power, and in Germany, Austria and elsewhere easily intimidated governments that had little perceived authority.

Another feature of the inter-war period that Zweig recalls with particular sympathy --- no doubt because it eventually impacted him so directly --- was the sudden, dramatic increase in people leaving their former homelands. This occurred in part as an outcome of the negotiated settlements at Versailles, which realized the idea of self-governance by ethnic groups, offering newfound enfranchisement to many, especially in central and south-eastern Europe. The creation of these new, small, ethnically coherent states, however, had the unexpected consequence of initiating massive flows of people who found themselves on the wrong side of the borders drawn to establish the new national groupings. Coming at a time of spreading economic collapse, these often poor and unskilled refugees, suddenly found themselves unwanted minorities in their homeland, but also not welcome in the new nation created for their fellows. The other driver of refugees was of more violent origin: the new political experimentation mixed with a wave of economic collapse to breed brutal, nationalist regimes. In Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia and other countries, ethnic cleansing and political oppression created further surges of suddenly stateless refugees --- which Zweig as a Jew experienced first-hand in his flight from his Austrian homeland.

Zweig also comments on how the events of WWI and the post-war period irrevocably transformed his work as a writer. His experiences during the war, the post-war chaos and the rise of fascism left him feeling that his earlier work lacked importance and weight; he now turned his focus to: “Promote with greater emphasis and broader impact the idea that had over the past years become the principle one of his life: for the spiritual unification of Europe.”(228)  He describes in the book how, through his experiences, he developed a strong sense of the critical importance of connections and organizations that could function beyond the borders of individual countries or even small groups of countries, to counteract what he saw as the destructive tendencies of nationalist, partisan feeling. His regret that President Wilson’s proposed League of Nations failed to get off the ground after WWI, and his despair at the rise of violent, populist leaders whose brutal governments led the descent into the second world war form a central theme of the second half of his book.

Considering the book as a whole, an intriguing question for readers concerns Zweig’s psychological and emotional view of the pre-WWI period, and whether he felt that the changes that resulted from the war were on balance positive or negative. In that sense, the title can potentially be misleading: The World of Yesterday has a bit of a nostalgic ring to it, perhaps ever so slightly pre-disposing a reader opening the book for the first time to the opinion that Zweig is looking back longingly to the time of his youth, before WWI shattered that world so completely. From his descriptions in the early part of the book it seems clear that Zweig did enjoy a relatively carefree youth. As a member of the educated elite, he benefited from the privileges that accompanied that standing, able to attend the best schools, travel extensively, find comfortable work, and write. Though he also had a productive and relatively comfortable stretch of years immediately after WWI, by the early 1930’s he could feel the cultural storm that was brewing in central Europe, led by the nationalist and Fascist groups that were gaining political influence in Austria, Germany, Italy and elsewhere, and their battles with both the cultural elite and communist groups in many of these countries. As the fascist groups gained strength, he was driven from his homeland, and his life deteriorated quickly and from his perspective irreversibly, as he spent the last 10 years up to his death a stateless exile in England, the United States and finally Brazil.

Given all of these facts, however, it would be an over-simplification to understand his book as a longing to return to a previous, happier time. As Zweig makes clear, the world of yesterday, that is, of the late 1880’s up through WWI, did provide a relatively stable and safe society, but in exchange for an order and expectation that tightly constrained behavior and opportunities for everyone based on their place in the society. Workers, farmers, women --- even the elite --- each had their defined place and roles, strict expectations on how they could behave and what they could expect to do in their lives.

Zweig several times acknowledges the distance between the cultural state of the world in which he wrote the book, in the 1930’s, and that of his youth; in the early part of the book he describes for the reader life in Vienna in particular and Europe in general in the years before WWI as “a world without haste. The rhythm of the new speeds had not yet transferred from the machines --- from the car, the telephone, the radio, the airplane --- to people; time and age had a different measure.” (27) He recalls the impact this slower “rhythm” of the world had on day-to-day life, in thoughts that have surely crossed the minds of many today when the world seems too hectic: “How Lilliputian were all of those worries, how still those times! They did a better job of it, that generation of my parents and grandparents, they lived quietly, living their lives straight and clear from one end to the other.”(28)

A reader would, however, be too rash in their judgment, if they declared these words a clear indication of Zweig’s longing for the world of his youth, for he continues, in the very next sentence:

And yet, I don’t know whether I am jealous of them for that. How distant they lay in their stupor from all of the truth, the bitterness, from the vagaries and powers of fate, how they missed out on all of those crises and problems that crush the heart but at the same time magnificently expand it. How little did they understand, muddling through their lives in security and possession and sense of comfort, that life can also be excess and suspense, continuously surprising and uplifting from all sides; how little did they realize, in their touching liberalism and optimism, that every day that dawns outside their window can shatter our lives. Even in their darkest nights they were not able to imagine in their dreams how dangerous mankind can be, but also not realize how much strength mankind has to be able to live through dangers and withstand ordeals. We, hunted though all the rapids of life, we, ripped out by the roots from our erstwhile lives, we, forever beginning anew wherever on earth we are driven to, … we, for whom comfort is a legend and security a childish dream --- we have felt the suspense from one end of the earth to the other and felt the impact of the continuously new in every fiber of our beings. Every hour of our lives was connected with the fate of the world. Suffering and passionate, we have lived far beyond our little existence, outward into time and history, while they limited themselves within their own lives. Every one of us, therefore, even the least of our kind, knows today a thousand times more about reality than the wisest of our ancestors. But nothing was given us as a gift; we have paid the price for it fully and completely.  (28-29)

Thus emerges a conflicted and ambiguous comparison of the world of his youth to that he experienced over the two decades after WWI. A reader can question whether and how Zweig’s views on this comparison may have evolved over the years from 1934 to 1942 as he wrote the book. Did he come to the work in 1934, having just begun a self-imposed exile from his Austrian homeland, with a view of the new freedoms available since end of WWI as a largely a positive development, even if they came at a stiff price? Or, did he begin the work with a nostalgia for the carefree days of his youth, when his future seemed relatively clear and accessible, and then, as his years in exile dragged on and his beloved Austria became ever more definitively inaccessible, did he find the need to create a more positive view of the existence and cultural order to which he was now bound?

Though one may ponder Zweig’s motivations for writing the book, such questions in no way diminish the fascinating window he provides into this period of dramatic cultural, social and political change, particularly in Europe. Born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire of the late 1800’s, Zweig witnessed many of these changes first hand. The Vienna of his youth was a cultural and political center of Europe, with a stable and powerful monarchy that had endured for centuries, and seemed destined to rule into the future. With the onset of WWI, Zweig observed in growing horror the destructive senselessness of the conflict, and, as the war concluded, witnessed the shocking downfall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, its emperor abdicating and its lands split into many smaller countries, leaving the “mutilated torso” of his Austria. During the post-war years Zweig watched nervously as fascist groups first agitated for power and then assumed it throughout Central Europe. Disheartened that these groups would undermine the peace and cooperation among nations that he dedicated the latter part of his life to supporting, he also saw their impact on the lives of individuals, he himself fleeing Austria in 1934 as a part of a growing wave of refugees from all around Europe.

In 1942 Zweig committed suicide in Brazil --- an exiled and stateless Jew far from his Austrian homeland --- apparently just a day after sending his publisher the completed manuscript for this book. Thus, he died at what might be considered the darkest point in the 20th century, with Nazi forces apparently unchallengeable and his own dream for cooperative international institutions, such as the future United Nations and the European community, seemingly in the realm of unimaginable fantasy.

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Compare the quote that leads off this review with a similar sentiment in a recent book by Eduardo Galeano, Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone (follow the link for my review).

Maybe we refuse to acknowledge our common origins because racism causes amnesia, or because we find it unbelievable that in those days long past the entire world was our kingdom, an immense map without borders, and our legs were the only passport required.(2)

The book is in the public domain, and the edition I have is from the publishing house Renovamen Verlag; as you can see from the cover shot, and can find described in on-line reviews, this is a very stripped down edition of the book. (One reviewer suggests that this was simply printed directly from the Gutenberg Project text.) There is no table of contents, no index, no variety in the format and the chapter headings barely set apart from the text. There are barely any margins, and so it is simply 304 pages full of straight text, with no variation except being broken (thankfully) into paragraphs.

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