gwax's rumblings

I have, just now, fin­ished read­ing A Canticle For Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr. and, I must say, it is a fan­tas­tic read. The occa­sional use of Latin and Hebrew caused the book, at times, to fly over my head but I believe that may well have been the point.

The book is a story in three parts of a Catholic abbey estab­lished in the wake of a nuclear holo­caust. This par­tic­u­lar abbey has been charged by its founder, one Brother I. E. Leibowitz, with accu­mu­lat­ing and pre­serv­ing human knowl­edge. Much as the Irish monks dur­ing our last dark ages, these monks are the shep­herds of knowl­edge in the next dark age.

In spite of being in the future, the book con­stantly feels as though it is in the past, and it pro­vides me with a sym­pa­thy and fond­ness for Catholicism that I have not felt before. While I still can­not abide the dogma of the great Catholic empire, I must admit that they do serve us all by pre­serv­ing knowl­edge, at times.

One quote, from the lat­ter por­tion of the novel, tick­led my fancy a great deal:

They man­aged only to demon­strate that the math­e­mat­i­cal limit of an infi­nite sequence of “doubt­ing the cer­tainty with which some­thing doubted is known to be unknow­able when the ‘some­thing doubted’ is still a pre­ced­ing state­ment of ‘unknowa­bil­ity’ of some­thing doubted,” that the limit of this process at infin­ity can only be equiv­a­lent to a state­ment of absolute cer­tainty, even though phrased as an infi­nite series of nega­tions of certainty

– A Canticle For Leibowitz (pp. 301–302)

The quote is not par­tic­u­larly rep­re­sen­ta­tive but, to be hon­est, I feel that it would be hard to find any quote that would be prop­erly rep­re­sen­ta­tive of this book.

A Canticle For Leibowitz is a won­der­ful read; one of few, recently, that has suc­ceeded in keep­ing my atten­tion from start to fin­ish, and I highly rec­om­mend it.

I have just fin­ished read­ing The Illuminatus Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson and have enjoyed every moment of it (a sur­pris­ing detail con­sid­er­ing my read­ing habits and its 805 page size). Many thanks are in order for my good friend Rob Malchow who rec­om­mended the book to me this past summer.

The book is a present day (as of the writ­ing 30 years ago) sci­ence fic­tion about inter­wo­ven con­spir­a­cies, poltics, myter­ies, mys­ti­cisms and occultism. The tone ranges from thor­oughly lucid to com­pletely absurd and jumps around too fast, too slow and at the right pace all at once. You will think that you know what’s going on when you do not and vice versa. The ref­er­ences, real and fake, will amuse you to no end. In the end, you won’t know what’s real any­more and you’ll have a greater appre­ci­a­tion for the word “No”.

Hail Eris
All hail Discordia

And remem­ber, you are a Pope

I was in Barnes & Noble recently and I found Bruce Campbell’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor (I know that I men­tioned this is an ear­lier post, but it deserves a full entry).

So yeah, any­way, it’s a really awe­some book. Basically, it’s a good behind the scenes look at the film and tele­vi­sion indus­try and gives you the impres­sion that Bruce Campbell really is a good guy. Truth be told, I grabbed the thing because I’m a pretty big fan of the guy’s work and turned out to really enjoy read­ing the book. It’s got a good col­lo­quial feel to it and I was able to get through it in two sit­tings (long sit­tings because I read slowly, but two nonethe­less). Sadly, it’s been rather a while since I last fin­ished a book, but I guess that’s kind of a tes­ta­ment to how much I enjoyed this book.

So yeah, I highly rec­om­mend this book for any Bruce Campbell fan, B movie fan, Sam Raimi fan, film buff or any­one else look­ing for a good read.

I have just fin­ished read­ing Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenace by Robert M. Pirsig and to say that I was moved would be to make a gross under­state­ment. I started to choke up a few chap­ters before the end and spent the last two in tears; this book has struck a very pow­er­ful chord with me and I would have a very hard time explain­ing why to any­one that has not also read the book. The chord that this book has struck is a very deep one indeed. I am at a loss for fur­ther words.

I recently decided to reread my copy of Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai by Yamamoto Tsunetomo (I have the William Scott Wilson trans­la­tion) and in read­ing the Foreward I dis­cov­ered that it’s an abridged ver­sion. William Scott Wilson decided only to pub­lish about 300 of the roughly 1300 pas­sages in the actual Hagakure. Mister Wilson has done a very good job of choos­ing ~300 excep­tional pas­sages, but it leaves me want­ing. I have my prin­ci­ples (some eccen­tric) and I don’t like read­ing books in an abridged form.

As a fur­ther note, I have looked to see if there are any unabridged copies in English and come up with noth­ing. I was also unable to locate any com­plete copies in the orig­i­nal Japanese (though this may be my fault and not due to their non-existence).