Plate 'o Triangles

Still slogging through Stephenson's tome. Some times I feel as if I have been sentenced like Erasmus to copy the book, and eventually I will go mad, or perhaps gather wisdom like Jad. I am 400 pages into Anathem. The story proper began around page 200. Lots of set up, I hope it pays off. There is a lot of Plato, specifically the Timaeus, at least what I can remember from my Philosophy of the Middle Ages class I took as an undergrad. the Ideal world, the world we sense, the world contained by God. I remember drawing diagrams of triangles within triangles for the mid-term in that class. I suppose I could go look it up, but I know I'm not going to do that, instead I'll just rely on my  idea of the ideal of the book (Timaeus) that I can glean from the "speculative" fiction of Anathem. But as the characters in Anathem have said, there are no new ideas. But then there wouldn't be in an infinite number of universes; all ideas would exist if all possible permutations of "worlds" existed. I think the Amber Chronicles played with this idea in a more succinct manner.  I guess I aut to be going now.

Quotes and Cowboy Commentary: Shooting from the Hip

“There is nothing to fear from someone who shouts.”
P140

The whites take over without too much ado, they simply move in and change the narrative of the region.

“There is no story that is not true”
P141

Stories become true depending upon who and how many believe them to be true. “The WMD” during the run up to the Iraqi war for example. The willingness of the villagers to listen to the stories of the missionaries, because throughout the book the people tell stories to each other to explain and reinforce custom and beliefs: the construction of social reality through story telling.

‘“Your buttocks understands our language,’ said someone light-heartdly and the crowd laughed.
“What did he say?” the white man asked his interpreter.’ P145

The blind arrogance of the white culture to not listen even when the villagers are talking. The story of the oppressed does not concern the oppressor.

“But stories were already gaining ground that the white man had not only brought a religion but also a government. It was said that they had built a place of judgment in Umuofia to protect the followers of their religion. It was even said that they had hanged one man who killed a missionary.”

“Although such stories were now often told they looked like fairy-tales. . .”155

The villagers begin to hear what was happening in other villages, but refuse to believe the stories, dismissed as fairy tales. To “foolish” to be true, even with the earlier statement that all stories are true. This was their downfall to not pay attention to the stories that were rampant, to discount tales that did not fit into their social constructs as childish, or womanish.




“The heathen speak nothing but falsehood. Only the word of our god is true” 157

“The story had arisen among the Christians themselves” 158

Nice contrast of ideas: The whites deny that the villagers can have any truth, yet the Christians are the origin of the false story that one of the people killed a “god” without consequence, thus trying to prove the superiority of Christianity over the nativist religion.




They had built a court where the District Commissioner judged cases in ignorance. P174

The difference between the “trial” of the village elders, where they heard the stories of each side and made a judgment based on what was right rather than the “law.” Justice in the village was not blind, but took in to account the people involved. The trial of Okonkwo and the others, by contrast, was a blatant use of power to control the narrative. There was no attempt to hear the villager’s story in any context other than the context of the oppressor.

“Does the white man understand our custom about land?”
“How can he when he does not even speak our tongue?” 176

Not only a different language, but the “way of knowing,” of understanding the meaning of the world around them: a discourse community.


“from the very beginning religion and education went hand and hand “182

to control the story line, or what people believe to be the storyline/cause and effect of their lives, the religion/faith of the people and the education of the people must be controlled in a coordinated fashion. Not that there is a conspiracy to control, but religion and education are very efficient “judges of normality” (Foucault) or reinforcers/editors of the community narrative.

“those who believed such stories were unworthy of the lord’s table” 185

Again, if you believe something “other” than the norm then you are not worthy of full participation in society’s goods. Makes me think of James Gee and his Discourse (big D) communities where in order to acquire the “goods” of whatever group you are in you must be fluent in the discourse of the community. Also who determines what discourse is appropriate is determined by power structures/relationships within those communities. The current “value” of education/college vs. business and making money is an example, the way the talk is being framed, as if it should be debated at all puts the western idea of “liberal” education, or the education of free (liberty/liberal) men at risk. Learn to do something that is of value to business, so you can become a commodity.

“We cannot leave the matter in his hands because he does not understand our customs, just as we do not understand his. We say he is foolish because he does not know our ways, and perhaps he says we are foolish because we do not know his. Let him go away.” 191

“The story of this man who had killed a messenger and hanged himself would make interesting reading. One could almost write a whole chapter on him. Perhaps not a whole chapter but a reasonable paragraph, at any rate. There was so much else to include, and one must be firm in cutting out details. He had already chosen the title of the book, after much thought: the pacification of the primitive tribes of the lower Niger” 209

The last few sentences of the book: perfect. The life of Okonkwo and his world reduced to a paragraph in the omnivorous narrative of the west. Cut out the details because they open up a space for a counter narrative, too messy and confusing.



Final thought: I can see why this book is often taught in tandem with "Heart of Darkness" and "The Poisonwood Bible." Lots of questions about who is in charge of the narrative, oppressor and oppressed, civilization vs. "primitive" culture.

The Horror. Exterminate them all!

I am he as you are me and we are all together

We are served by organic ghosts, he thought, who, speaking and writing, pass through this our new environment. Watching, wise, physical ghosts from the full-life world, elements of which have become for us invading but agreeable splinters of a substance that pulsates like a former heart. And all of them, he thought, thanks to Glen Runciter. In particular. The writer of instructions, labels and notes. Valuable notes.

p. 796


All very platonistic, things reverting to their previous forms, yet the forms retaining some aspect of the thing from which it is reverting. There is nothing new in the world. The full-life world being comparable to the ideal world of Plato of which everything in the world we live in is but a shadowy reflection. Additionally we are a dream within a dream within a dream: the dreamer and the dreamed infinitely regress into one another like reflections of mirrors facing one another. I also thought about during the quoted passage above, about M. Adler’s idea of the Great Conversation where writers talk to one another across the centuries about ideas and the world which have become for us invading but agreeable splinters of a substance that pulsates like a former heart.” This of course echoes Plato’s Ideals as well. We are but “walking shadows, poor players who strut and fret their moment upon the stage and then are heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing.”


I question the end. Kind of like adolescent writers who bring an end to a complicated plot by saying, “and then I woke up.” Does Dick work this cliché in an effective manner? Or is it just a cliché?

Make a Connection?

I thought I would try to make a connection between two quotes, wound up being three, that Dick puts into the novel near the beginning. But I couldn't. At least not off the top of my head, where I do my best thinking. So anyone want to make a stab at it.

"I, that am curtailed of this fair proportion, cheated of future by dissembling nature, deformed, unfinished, sent before my time into this breathing world, scarce half made up, and that so lamely and unfashionable that dogs bark at me as I halt by them."

from Richard the Third, the beginning: The Winter of our discontent speech. Can be read in its entirety here


Also the music playing at the mortuary in Switzerland. Here are the translations:

Beethoven: Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world
Complete lyrics here

Verdi: Day of wrath, day that
will dissolve the world into burning coals,
as David bore witness with the Sibyl.

Complete lyrics with translation here

Matryoshka Dolls

I am quickly rereading Ubik. As I go I am going to have a running commentary (or at least that is my plan), a kind of dialectical journal. I will write a quote and then digress on whatever comes to mind. This seemed to bother some of you when I did this during “Till We Have Faces,” but “Oh, Well.”

All quotes come from The Library of America edition of Ubik, unless otherwise noted.

“Is a stranger tuning in on you? Are you really alone? That for the telpaths . . . and then the queasy worry about precogs. Are your actions being predicted by someone you never met? Someone you would not want to meet or invite into your home? “ p. 616

Eerie parallel to spybot software, and unauthorized wiretaps. I wonder, as did Herbert at this point in the novel, if the fear in our world is a manufactured control that has no basis in fact. Similar to Foucault’s panopticon, where because we think we are being watched we act as if we actually are being watched thus nullifying the need to be watched because we act the way we are “supposed” to act, or rather how we are told to behave.


“In the earphone words, slow and uncertain, formed: circular thoughts of no importance, fragments of the mysterious dream which she now dwelt in.” p. 619.

Again, I am rereading Ubik, so I tend to notice details in quotes that echo/inform themes which coalesced, at least for me, more as the novel came to a close. I think this line about Runciter’s “half-life” wife is a fairly good description of the “advertising” epigrams which begin each chapter. “Ubik” being the generic name for whatever product is being sold. The ads, like advertising and news bits in which we are imbued, are of “no importance” they are simply fragments which surround our waking lives, and perhaps send their tendrils into our dreams as well. It is like the idea of James Gee in which we are all a member of a discourse community where we take on the language and the implicit and tacit ideologies of those communities. It is not that there is a formalized dogma that must be followed; but, even more insidious, we simply take on the belief systems as we take part in the community or the dream in which we dwell. This plays out in the novel as Runciter’s wife’s half-life is influenced by another stronger half-lifer and as well as who is in control of who’s reality as the novel plays out its Russian doll-like panopticon of control.