200 or so pages of The Years of Rice and Salt

As I've mentioned in previous posts, I have been exploring my interest in sci-fi, and particularly the dystopian novel. This interest began for me in high school when I read books such as Farenheit 451 and 1984. For many years I followed other pursuits and it has only been recently that I have begun to go back to this area of interest. The book that I am reading now, The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson, is something of a departure for me. Although KSR is well known for his sci-fi writing, this novel would more accurately be called a speculative or alternate history. The novel consists of ten books which recount the history of the world, but a world in which the black plague wiped out almost all of the population of Europe and Asian cultures took a place of dominance instead of Western Christianity. KSR uses the concept of reincarnation to provide a sort of continuity in the novel. Each book features a reincarnated version of the same two central characters who are inextricably bound together in a karma group. This device helps to convey the arc of history that KSR builds over the course of the novel because each individual book is tightly encapsulated: the narrative begins at some point in the lives of the characters -- sometimes detailing how they met, other times not -- and ends with their deaths. The result is that the overarching revised history is left largely implied.

KSR finds inventive ways of restating this large theme within the episodic narratives of the individual books. For example, the third book titled "Ocean Continents" focuses on a fleet of Chinese treasure ships that have gotten lost at sea and come across an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean that has not been encountered before. The sailors, having brought small pox with them to the island, infect the islanders and end up taking a young girl with them for their return to the mainland. Kheim, one of the recurring characters wonders if they are justified in taking the girl away from her home even though this means saving her from the certain death that many of her family will face. Kheim considers the speed with which the girl, whom they call "Butterfly," adjusts to life on the ship, which parallels the reader's experience of reorienting, or adjusting, to each new life that the characters appear in. The reader is put into the paradoxical position of knowing more and less than the central characters. The reader knows more because he/she sees the broad arc of the novel, but knows less because the individual lives within each of the books is very minimally glossed. The reader is then forced into a position from which they can see the big picture, the broad historical perspective, but miss out on the intricacies of the lives of the characters presented. This contributes to KSR's purpose because the characters are in tune with reincarnation and often recognize that a single lifetime is a small aspect of the entire "life" of a soul.

The book is fascinating so far. I found it a bit jarring to read at first but it only took the first couple of transitions between historical ages and characters to catch on to the conceit of the novel. The two concepts that interest me the most in the novel are the treatment of character and the treatment of history. KSR develops a complex reimagination of history through his inventive use of "character" in a completely non-traditional way.

Dystopian Novels: Samuel Butler, Religion, and Erewhon

I have been reading a lot of post-apocalyptic, utopian and dystopian novels over the last year. Most of the ones that I have been reading I have read in the past but wanted to take a fresher look. My interest was first sparked after I read Cormac McCarthy's The Road. There was something about the sparse narrative that was well suited to the horror of the story. Maybe I unfairly lump together post-apocalyptic and dys/utopian novels, but they seem to me to share a speculative nature and to, in some ways, have a similar goal of positing a world that is different from our but that looks back on and critiques ours.

The most recent book that I have re-read is Samuel Butler's 1872 novel Erewhon. I first read this book in a 19th century British literature course in my undergrad. I was not impressed with it at the time, which is one of the reasons that I wanted to return to it. I think that I may not have given the book its due when I first read it; I was not terribly interested in 19th century British novels. My interested was also re-kindled in this book after reading a passage about it in Wayne C. Booth's A Rhetoric of Irony in which Booth discusses the paradoxical position on the narrator regarding his stance toward religion. But I'll return to this in a moment.

Much of Erewhon is as I remember it. It is presented as a travelogue. The narrator travels into the unexplored interior of some continent (he does not specify), finds a civilization that has not yet been contacted by the West, lives amongst the people for a time, and then returns to England hoping to make his fortune from his experiences. One of the key differences between this discovered civilization and the one the narrator comes from is that crimes are treated as though they were diseases and vice versa (this is Butler's device to criticize what he sees as the punishment of misfortune under the guise of criminality). One element that I did not notice on that first read is Butler's criticism of religion along with these other elements. At one point Higgs, the narrator, believes that the Erewhonians are one of the lost tribes of Israel and he vows to either make a name for himself by converting this lost tribe to Christianity and thus showing himself to the be equal of the Old Testament prophets or to sell his story and then exploit the natural resources of the unknown country to his own massive profit.

Butler presents this situation less to criticize the institution of religion than what he sees as the duplicity of its adherents. Higgs plans to take full advantage of his fortuitous discovery in whatever way is most advantageous to himself. Rather than desiring to convert the Erewhonians for their own salvation, he desires to convert them for his personal fame. Add to this the fact that he would then elevate himself to the level of the most important Biblical prophets, laying bare his selfish intentions. Higgs relates this to the reader unselfconsciously; he believes that he will be praised for his initiative and business sense.

Booth writes of a critique that is more subtle but exposes Butler's ironic intention in the work. After escaping a difficult situation, Higgs says ". . .As luck would have it, providence was on my side." Booth's point is that Higgs attribute his salvation to both luck and God, clearly a contradictory statement. Booth continues to parse the semantic advantages of Butler's selection of the word "luck" over "fortune" and "providence" over "God," but the point remains. In this example, as in the one I cited above, Higgs professes a kind of piety that he seems not to actually feel. Had his beliefs been true, he would have sought to convert the Erewhonians whatever the benefit to himself and he also would have attributed his salvation to God alone. The fact that he does not -- and these are just two examples of many -- indicates that his professions and his true beliefs do not match up.

Although religion is not Butler's primary focus in this social allegory, it is an important element of the text. His method of treating religion is fairly standard in dystopian texts of this kind, however. For the critique to be effective, Higgs must remain unaware of his hypocrisy. This should, ideally, lead to the reader's questioning his or her own beliefs to determine whether or not they match up with his or her actions.

Since the dystopian novel has been a fascination for me lately and because I have been thinking about them a lot, I have planned a series of posts about both utopian and dystopian literature. This may end up including some post-apocalyptic stuff, too. Coming up: some general thoughts about utopian and dystopian literature, a segment on Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, narrative technique in dystopian novels, and much more.

Time's Viscid Pawprint

Jars of beans from John Coykendall's visit.

This past week I began the orientation for my new job at Beardlsey Farm. It has been some time since so much was asked from me, in terms of time; not having a steady job this summer has had its drawbacks, but I have been happy to have the time to do anything that I wanted--canning, spending time with farmers, gardening. At this point of transition, I feel uncertain, stretched a little thin. As a result, I've been uneasy, agitated. In this time of change, I want to remind myself to pay attention to the things at hand, the everyday objects, which can be good anchors. In this, I couldn't not be reminded of Robert Pinsky's chapbook First Things to Hand. I'll share this poem with you.

3. Glass

Waterlike, with a little water
Still visible swirled in the bottom:

Earth changed by fire,
Shaped by breath or pressure.

Seemingly solid, a liquid
Sagging over centuries
As in the rippled panes
Of old buildings, Time's
Viscid pawprint.

Nearly invisible.
Tumbler. Distorting,
Breakable--the splinters
Can draw blood.

Craft of the glazier.
Ancestral totem substance:
My one grandfather
Washing store windows
With squeegee and bucket,
The other serving amber
Whiskey and clear gin over the counter,
His son my father
An optician, beveling lenses
On a stone wheel. The water
Dripping to cool the wheel
Fell milky in a pale
Sludge underneath the bench
Into a galvanized bucket
It was my job to empty,
Sloshing the ponderous
Blank mud into the toilet.

Obsidian, uncrystallized silicate.

Unstainable or stained.
Mirror glass, hour glass, dust:
Delicate, durable measure.

Why I can't read The Pale King right now

This story goes back a month and a half and it also goes back six years. The different time-spans will become apparent in just a moment. This story is about David Foster Wallace and his posthumously published but incomplete novel The Pale King. Kat bought me a copy of this last novel for my birthday when we were in Louisville and it has sat on my shelf since then. Had this been a completed novel, I would have begun reading it almost immediately, but there is something about attempting to read this incomplete novel that has been bothering me.
This part goes back six years when a friend of mine suggested that I read Wallace. Not knowing where to begin, I picked up a copy of Oblivion, his most recent collection of short stories at the time. The first story, "Mr. Squishy," put me off completely and I couldn't even get through the whole thing. The story includes, in part, an intensely detailed description of a focus group and the products under review. The density of detail threw me because I had not read anything like it before. I didn't realize until much later when I reread the story that the alienation I felt was purposeful -- the obsessive attention to detail in the story parallels the narrator's unhealthy obsession with retail snack-cakes and presages his eventual hostile actions. It was more than a year before I picked up Infinite Jest and I found more of the same in that novel. I found it dense beyond belief and a little knowing -- precious, in a word.
The thing rubbed me the wrong way from start to finish from its incredible depth of irony to the extensive use of end notes, but I stuck it out and read the whole thing. I was alternately bored and frustrated by it, but I kept thinking about it. In fact, I kept thinking about it for more than a year, much longer than I would expect to think about a book I thought I didn't like. Then I reread it and changed my thinking completely about it. The characters I had found so annoying the first time around became vivid and struck me as true representations of flawed individuals this time around. The timeline, built so heavily upon what I thought were dull, scatological jokes struck me as trenchant social criticisms. In short, I fell in love with the work. To this day -- after rereading the novel another half-dozen times -- Infinite Jest has become one of my favorite novels of all time.
This contributes to the trepidation I feel about reading The Pale King. Even DFW's other works, which I hadn't particularly liked, have resonated with me more since reading Infinite Jest. It is because that novel means so much that I can't read The Pale King right now. My fear is that, because it is a partial novel, it will be mediocre -- it won't live up to the other works. This, of course, would be disappointing. The greater fear I have is that it will be brilliant, even in its incomplete state. I fear reading this fragment and recognizing in it the greatness of his previous work, knowing that it will never be complete.
The last novel by David Foster Wallace will have to sit on my shelf a while longer, until I'm ready to see it. Or at least until my curiosity outweighs my trepidation. It has more value for me as a metaphor for the cut-off life of its author -- I'm content to leave it at that for now.

Robert Frost Poem

Every now and then, I am reminded of the name of this blog, and the fact that more often than not, I write about food, but not literature or philosophy. And although Matt engages with philosophy more often than I, I still read and teach a course on writing about literature. I'm not making any promises, but I'd like to post about literature more often.

I taught this poem a few weeks ago, and had forgotten about how complex it is. Now that I'm grading student essays on poetry, I thought I'd revisit it and share it with you.


The Silken Tent

She is as in a field a silken tent
At midday when a sunny summer breeze
Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent,
So that in guys it gently sways at ease,
And its supporting central cedar pole,
That is its pinnacle to heavenward
And signifies the sureness of the soul,
Seems to owe naught to any single cord,
But strictly held by none, is loosely bound
By countless silken ties of love and thought
To everything on earth the compass round,
And only by one's going slightly taut
In the capriciousness of summer air
Is of the slightest bondage made aware.


My students often miss the comparison that begins the poem, and so I spend a couple minutes at the beginning of class explaining how it works. I also like this poem because it reminds me that summer is on its way, and soon.

Eating Animals

I read Jonathan Safran Foer's book Eating Animals over a year ago--shortly after it was first released--but have been thinking about it since then, on and off, and was reminded of it again recently. It wasn't anything specific that reminded me, but I was thinking about the ways in which an argument becomes compelling, and I was reminded of Foer. Foer does not advocate for veganism, but what he does do is open a conversation (or a mindset or a framework) in which veganism becomes a meaningful stance to a greater number of people. He examines the kinds of relationships that people have with food--with meat, specifically--and he traces those relationships to their origins, both in terms of conceptualization and production. Foer exposes the kinds of activities that make meat production possible on the level demanded by the population of the United States. He is not the first to do this, as many are quick to point out; in fact, he does not discuss anything that is beyond the scope of such authors as Gary Francione or Michael Pollan (I know that these two are rather different in their perspectives, but they are useful in this illustration specifically because of their differences). As I was reading Eating Animals, I kept trying to pinpoint the exact factor that made the book different from others I'd read on the same topic--I thought that it was somehow more compelling, more convincing, and more capable of inciting people to re-write their own outdated and harmful relationships with food. I could see how the book could encourage people to either refuse to eat meat altogether or consider more seriously the origins of meat and the ramifications of continuing to consume it.

The looming question, nonetheless, was always "why is Foer so compelling?" As a vegan, I find Gary Francione's books and opinions to be clear, straightforward, and quite convincing. I like Francione's insistence on vegan education and consistency (of beliefs and practices) as major ways of enacting change; Foer, on the other hand, presents himself as someone who often wavered in the ethics of food choices, and oscillated between being an omnivore and being a vegetarian. However, when speaking to others about veganism, I am more likely to mention Foer, not Francione, despite the fact that I disagree with several of his points.

This week, as I was reading through Carl Dennis' Poetry as Persuasion--the section on political poetry, specifically--I realized exactly what it is that makes Foer's voice more effective--it is not only Foer's willingness to speak more for himself than for the overall cause, but also his recognition of the limits of his position. Dennis maintains that this is an element necessary for effective political poetry, lest is become propaganda. Foer does not impose limitations, but opens possibilities for dialogue, as I mentioned earlier. Carl Dennis also argues for "a greater openness to the world" rather than a "subjective agenda." Foer, in his empathy with the great variety of people--from animal rights activists to "livestock" farmers, does this, too. I certainly do agree with Francione in my own personal beliefs in practices--that veganism is the moral baseline; but people have to first stop to consider food at all before stopping to consider the ethical implications thereof. Thankfully, based on the recently-passed Dietary Guidelines, people are starting to reconsider food. And this is a step in the right direction, indeed.