Category Archives: Books

Pynchon News Is Good News

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Shortly after it was released, Thomas Pynchon’s Against The Day was gifted to me and quickly became one of my favorite novels of all time. This novel is a monster. And because it’s so huge, and his previous novel Mason & Dixon came a decade prior, and it was also huge, and Pynchon is getting on in years, I had this impression it might be his last book.

Fortunately I was wrong and he quickly tossed off Inherent Vice, a hilarious detective novel set at the end of the hippy era. Supposedly, Paul Thomas Anderson’s movie adaptation of Inherent Vice is filming now with rumors of a ensemble cast full of stars. But what’s even more exciting is that Pynchon has a new novel coming out later this year. The novel is called Bleeding Edge and it is set in New York between the collapse of the dot-com bubble and September 11, 2001.

Read the first page of Bleeding Edge here.

I’ve read just about everything Pynchon has written, and his longer novels are my favorite. I particularly love Gravity’s Rainbow and Against The Day because there is so much going on in them, so many different angles to the narratives, and so many different ways to read them, that every person who reads the novel comes out of it with a different experience.

A while ago I picked one angle and wrote a review of Gravity’s Rainbow.

Article first published as Book Review: Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon on Blogcritics.

GRAVITY’S RAINBOW by Thomas Pynchon

Dubbed “The most profound and accomplished American novel since the end of World War II” (The New Republic), Gravity’s Rainbow is a massive, freewheeling, paranoid journey through Europe at the tail end of the Second World War. Novelist and esoterica buff Thomas Pynchon is in top form for this, his third novel. A dense, challenging epic, Gravity’s Rainbow is highly rewarding for those with the attention span and patience to take it on.

From the first line we know the concept of The Preterite, or passed-over, is going to be a prominent theme. “A screaming comes across the sky…” A screaming what? The allusion is to a rocket, faster than sound so its target has no way to hear it coming. And the hunt for this preterite rocket, codename “00000″, and its mysterious black device, the S-Gerat, is a loose analogy of our main character, Tyrone Slothrop. In Pynchon’s own post-modern, self-reflexive words, “Some called [Tyrone] a ‘pretext.’ Others felt that he was a genuine, point-for-point microcosm.” (p. 753) This atypical approach to writing defies expectations, assuring Gravity’s Rainbow a prominent place in the history of the novel, even if it is often overlooked.

Pynchon loves to play with the form. The book introduces a madman’s variety of characters in a stunning array of literary styles. Often hilarious, sometimes shocking, Gravity’s Rainbow is no simple story. Perhaps not since Ulysses by James Joyce has an author swung through the canopy of styles so freely, offering up slapstick, scientific realism, hallucinatory stream-of-consciousness and more. The novel slides from one heterodox story to the next, immersing the reader in the chaos spread across Europe by World War II. Some characters hide, some fall in love or dive into obsession to distract from the reality of wartime, while others charge in headfirst, hungry for glory. And all the while, the real question is being asked – why? Why was there a war? Who made the decisions leading up to it, and how was it determined that war is the best option?

Tyrone isn’t introduced until page 61, but even before that we get a sense of his complicated personality. Tyrone has been the subject of bizarre, pseudo-Pavlovian conditioning that somehow leads him to be sexually aroused just before a rocket strike. Stranger yet is that he seems to have subconscious knowledge of exactly where the rocket will hit, though he thinks he’s just following his libido. We begin to understand that Tyrone’s motivations are not wholly his own. Like everyone in the war, Tyrone is deeply affected by a terrifying situation beyond his control. And like the 00000, we sense that he will only become aware of his true role in all this when it’s too late.

Gravity’s Rainbow has been called meta-historical fiction. The historical context of the story is completely true, but Pynchon draws the reader into the mania of the characters, little tangents and cul-de-sacs of fantasy that elevate the story to the realm of mythology. This sounds intellectual and heady, and it is, but the story never feels dry; sex, drugs, love and mystery drive the plot forward with a knowing humor that is both laugh-out-loud and profound.

Following a variety of WWII fringe groups brings the story into even stranger realms. Shadowy organizations like The White Visitation, PISCES, and Operation Black Wing look at the war through lenses of parapsychology and the occult. Delving into Nazi legend, corporate conspiracy, Kabbalah, the elusive Schwarzkommando, ballistic hermeneutics and a unique brand of rocket mysticism, Gravity’s Rainbow offers up a paranoid dream for hippies and soldiers alike. The novel seems to say that some special form of mass insanity must be responsible for something on the magnitude of a World War. What the cause of this insanity is, exactly, is a little more elusive.

Tyrone is an American-born rocket specialist, a guidance man who frequently peeks his head up into the realm of superhero. His irresistible urge toward sex and predilection for drugs find him stumbling into situations oblivious to the big picture, though he often ends up in the right place. When a hashish pickup goes awry Tyrone raids an opera costume trunk and becomes “Rocket Man”, a stylish WWII hero if ever there was one. Tyrone is not a typical hero, just as Gravity’s Rainbow is not a typical novel. Tyrone is both Preterite and Elect. He is a Chosen One, the special subject of strange experiments in behavioral conditioning. But he always manages to stay out of the limelight, passed over at crucial times while danger misses him by a hair. In one of the more brutal scenes in the book, pair of doctors search a spa for Tyrone, who by now is dressed as a giant pig. Through a case of mistaken identity, Tyrone avoids a horrible future that would more than dampen his sex life. Both his preterition and election save him from the worst of the war.

The same goes for the novel. It is a Bible of countercultural intellectualism, an underground epic for dope smokers and mystics that by its undeniable brilliance was awarded a National Book Award. On the other hand Gravity’s Rainbow was passed over for a Pulitzer Prize despite a unilateral vote. The Pulitzer committee decided instead to hand out no prize that year, presumably because of the morally questionable material throughout the book. Despite the real horrors of WWII and the Nazi party, apparently this fiction was too much for the Pulitzer board to handle. A book like this will likely never be given the prestige it deserves because it deals with too many fringe elements in a sympathetic way. Gravity’s Rainbow blurs morality, details too much real-world corruption and power politics, discloses too much about the business of war, GE and IG Farben, looks at behavioral conditioning and fetishism, and all with strong undertones of anarchy. Books like this are almost always passed over by the Establishment.

Gravity’s Rainbow takes place in the tumultuous fallout of war, and much like the victims of a rocket strike, swirls and writhes to recover what has been destroyed. “My mother is the war,” says mathematician Roger Mexico. Drastic times call for drastic measures, and in a war like this one everyone is affected. Everyone reacts in his or her own way to the visible and invisible causes of war. Despite the chaotic and multifaceted paths taken by our heroes, the many become unified in their loves and fears, all raising a glass in song at the absurd, sublime condition of our world. Nothing is the same after the war. And those who make it through the dense prose of Gravity’s Rainbow will remember it as a benchmark novel like no other.

Gravity’s Rainbow is a novel to be read and re-read, a companion to be studied over a lifetime. Thanks to the grandness of the story, the prodigal complexion of the prose, and Pynchon’s ability to weave minute detail and lofty abstraction into the telling, Gravity’s Rainbow reveals more and more of its secrets with subsequent reads. It grows with the reader, like an old man dispensing wisdom through the years, unafraid to offend or enlighten.

The Secular Bible

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This is the third time recently that Mark Frost has influenced my post (see ‘Two Things “Argo” Missed‘ and ‘Walking With Fire‘). Through his Twitter feed I saw this article by Hunter Stuart about a “Hollywood Power Couple” trying to advertise their new History Channel program The Bible by advocating for The Bible to be taught in public schools.

The point this couple raises in their article (which you can read here) is that The Bible is important as a fundamental text of Western civilization, never mind the religious ethos attached to it. Fair enough. There is no doubt The Bible is one of the building blocks of our culture. It is still by far the best selling book of all time, even beating out 50 Shades of Grey.

They claim The Bible is responsible for many of the phrases that some people use every once in a while. They also claim the allegories originating in The Bible made possible the work of Shakespeare, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Narnia, Matrix and so on. They even quoted the Supreme Court:

“[T]he Bible is worthy of study for its literary and historic qualities. Nothing we have said here indicates that such study of the Bible or of religion, when presented objectively as a part of a secular (public school) program of education, may not be effected consistently with the First Amendment.” (Abington School District v. Schempp)

Naturally the sticky part here is the separation of church and state. The Bible is the foundational book of one specific religion, so the outcry from non-Christians would be unstoppable. It could be argued also that The Bible had a comparable impact on the formulation of The West as Roman imperialism and Greek philosophy. Why should The Bible, taken as a historical and literary document, take prominence?

Because clearly there is more to their agenda than English and History class. If we believe, as Roma Downey and Mark Burnett do, that The Bible is the living Word of God, we have to admit that God borrowed a lot of those stories. The New Testament borrows from the Old Testament. The Old Testament borrows from Egypt, Zoroastrianism, Babylon, and more. Christianity itself would never have existed without Neo-Platonism, but I don’t remember Plato or Plotinus from public school. Don’t we care about the foundations of the foundations of Western civilization?

And as for the literary merits of The Bible, Downey and Burnett might feel a little differently if The Bible was thrown into the English class alongside The Catcher In The Rye and 1984. Imagine the book reports.

“Moses: Murderer Hero” by Little Tyler

“Leviticus: A Comedic Interlude” by Little Billy

“Sexual Motifs and the Mother of Prostitutes in Revelation” by Little Monica

The whole idea of an “historical” Bible stripped of its religious principles is absurd. Were it not for the religious aspect The Bible would not have proliferated as it did, people would not have been “converted/saved” and other people wouldn’t have been burned to death as “heretics”. Are those nasty bits part of the curriculum as well?

In order to have real significance, a reading of The Bible has to presuppose the validity of Christian metaphysics, Christian morality, and the supremacy of YHWH, the Jewish God, who is one of several gods mentioned in The Bible (and the supposed author of the book…but I’m sure He’s impartial).

Please leave your book reports in the Comments section for grading.

Change Your Brain – Pt. 3

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It’s annoying to me when politicos criticize their opponents for “flip-flopping” on issues. Anyone actively seeking enlightenment will tell you that changing one’s mind and opinions is part of the process. It would be nice if politicians were actively seeking cultural enlightenment. Partisanship and one-sided thinking leads to a lack of adaptability.

In the early stages of successful meditation it’s common to have the realization that we are more than just our bodies. We are minds that think and feel, process information, and create new ideas. Except in reproduction and the physical activities of arts and crafts, creativity happens in the mind. Soon the meditator might feel like they are a Mind, first and foremost, that uses the body like a tool.

The belief that “I am a Mind” might lead to metaphysics, belief in God or gods and ‘upper realms’, questions of ontology, spiritism, eschatology, and all sorts of non-physical contemplations. Suddenly one might feel one is more than a mind and settle on the conclusion that “I am a spirit”. Mind and body seem like lower realms caught up in maya, the world of form and matter (in other words, the transitory illusions of everyday life).

As one’s observational powers improve, the mind-blowing successes of early meditation don’t come as often. This could easily lead the practitioner to believe that their experiences of God or higher spiritual dimensions were neurological aberrations brought on by physiological exercises. It’s common for meditators (particularly in Zen) to come back to the firm realization that “I am my body”.

Flip-flopping is part of the game of life, as all life is subject to change. The ability to change one’s mind on big-ticket ideas is actually a good thing, and I would sooner trust a politician who changes his or her mind than one who stubbornly sticks to idiotic beliefs.

A changing world needs a changing brain. Part of changing our brains is contemplating different points of view. The following points of view helped flip-flop me closer to my goal.

Raj YogaRaj Yoga by Swami Vivekananda

As far as I’ve read this is the essential book on the mental side of yoga (of which the physical yogas form only the preliminary). Vivekananda guides you right into theory and practice with direct examples and a sense of playfulness that can carry you through the various humps and dry-spells that are inevitable in this kind of activity. Compared to many of the other, older Indian books on yoga, (like the Shiva Samhita) this one has only a moderate amount of culturally-specific symbolism to decipher. It uses the analogy of the conscious mind as a monkey, jumping about from branch to branch on the tree of knowledge, squawking and eating whatever it can, but resting only in sleep. The techniques in this book can help calm that monkey down, but it goes far beyond that. This is enlightenment training. I recommend this text for anyone who wants to get serious about meditation.

 

Collected FictionsCollected Fictions by Jorges Luis Borges

While all his work seems great, I’m mostly thinking of the two short story collections called The Garden of Forking Paths and The Aleph, both of which are contained in this one handy unit. This is fiction at its most potent. When I used to read Philip K. Dick I would see a blurb on the jacket claiming that Dick was the “homegrown Borges”, and when I finally got around to reading the Argentinian-grown Borges, I found the analogy to be a good one. Reading Borges is a lesson on narrative economy and big ideas. His stories range from historical realism to mystical fable to flat-out fantasy, and his ability to condense huge ideas into short stories is unparalleled in anything I’ve read. Many feel that Borges reinvented the short story and I can see why. Because of the power and brevity, Borges offers the most bang for your buck. I recommend Borges for writers, mystics and intellectuals.

“A man sets out to draw the world. As the years go by, he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short time before he dies, he discovers that that patient labyrinth of lines traces the lineaments of his own face.” – Jorge Luis Borges, from the Afterword to The Maker

 

MagickMagick by Aleister Crowley

Aleister Crowley was a mountaineer, chess master, poet, writer, yogi, black magician, white magician, philosopher, heroin-addict, bisexual sex-addict, “wickedest man in the world”, and all around great guy. His corpus of writing is immense, and Magick might be his most comprehensive masterwork. Detailing necessary training, tools of the trade, philosophical grounding, practical techniques and mystical symbolism, this massive work gives the reader just about everything they need to start practicing real magick. So what is magick? It is the art of causing a change in conformity with the Will. Ceremonial magic has been around for thousands of years and it’s still practiced today. Even with the modern advancements of neuroscience, psychoanalysis and depth psychology, the techniques in this book remain effective. Get to know the strange agencies that live in your subconscious and affect real change in your behaviors and thoughts. The best part of this work is that Crowley tells the reader to avoid imposing any objective validity on the spirits, sephiroth, symbols and so-forth, and simply pay attention to this fact: when certain actions are performed, certain things happen. Things can get weird with this one, so I don’t recommend it for anyone who isn’t mentally and physically healthy. It is for serious students of the occult.

Change Your Brain – Pt. 2

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One of the earliest influential philosophers is Thales from ancient Greece. Since him there has been a continuous succession of thinkers who built upon their predecessors, criticizing what they don’t like, correcting what they can, and emphasizing what makes the most sense. Since Thales we can trace the path of Western thought through to today, mapping the brain change of the world, and it’s all pretty interesting, minus the Dark Ages.

The classical Greek philosophers (Aristotle, Socrates, Plato) set the stage for world philosophy, and many other cultures absorbed their ideas before the formation of distinct philosophies of their own. Some would claim the Greeks were the fathers of philosophy, who made an art of thinking that benefited the rest of humanity. Others would argue that the Greek philosophers stunted the growth of future free-thinkers, limiting would-be revolutionaries with their categories and strict methods.

A goal of many intellectuals is to surpass their formative history and offer something new to the world, whether it be an invention, a way of thinking, or a new analysis of something we’ve taken for granted. It can be hard to break away from tradition and offer something new, but one thing I’ve learned is that the broader the net we cast for information, the bigger the potential catch. Even opposing opinions offer us a chance to compare and contrast and flex our own intellectual and intuitive genius.

I think reading is one of the best uses of time. The following books helped me to think in new ways.

Critical PathCritical Path by R. Buckminster Fuller

Bucky Fuller is an autodidact, inventor, engineer, and revolutionary thinker. His goal is simple: to make things easier for human beings by thinking about a problem and coming up with a novel solution. It doesn’t seem like he made a fortune, but his perspective has influenced a couple generations of scientists, philosophers and entrepreneurs. A major thrust in this work is the idea of ephemeralization (a term he coined), which describes our technological development trend of being able to do more work, more efficiently, in less time, with less material. Think of what a computer looked like in the 1970s and compare it to your smartphone. The brilliance of this book is that Fuller is truly a systems-thinker, and always has the big picture in mind. And best of all, he’s a little kooky. I recommend this book for the socially conscious.

 

Quantum PsychologyQuantum Psychology by Robert Anton Wilson

Written with humour, erudition, and infectious optimism, this handy little manual offers us a new look at our selves. This book is a guided tour to opening new ways of thinking and acting. It asks us to look at what we know of the world, then to look at how we know these things and why. In 200 pages this book challenges every belief, every behavior, and every excuse to avoid being who we want to be. This is a manual about writing your own life script but it is far from being New Age. Wilson’s voice is authoritative, wise and hilarious throughout, and every chapter offers practical exercises for the reader to begin opening new horizons. Recommended for everyone.

 

StoryStory by Robert McKee

This book, and its author, are a little bit legendary in the film industry for a variety of reasons. McKee attacks the construction of a screenplay using big, fundamental ideas that shed light on what stories have to offer to the human experience and what makes a story satisfying. His aggressive writing style almost challenges the reader to prove him wrong when he explains why character is story, why story must be told through conflict, and why there must be a major emotional value change in every scene, sequence, act, and movie. When I first got the book I assumed, since I like so-called art films, that I would disagree with a lot of what he had to say. After all, Eraserhead doesn’t have much in common with, say, Paul Blart: Mall Cop. But most of the points McKee makes hold true for just about every movie, every novel, every short story, short film, opera, play, campfire story, drunken anecdote…Recommended for anyone interested in storytelling.

Change Your Brain – Pt. 1

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One of the most exciting areas of modern science is the study of neuroplasticity. Neurologists and behaviorists have known for decades that most behaviors are learned through repetition. Synapses fire between neurons when the brain is working, and after enough repetition these neurons form relatively permanent bonds.

In recent years scientists have been showing us that brain training is not just reserved for psychologists, behaviorists, or neurologists. Meaningful change is available for everyone. Neuroplasticity is for the end-user, meaning those of us who have brains.

When we think of changes we would like to make in our lives, few of us choose things that are impossible. I doubt serious people get depressed because they cannot levitate themselves or read minds clearly. Most often the changes we would like to see are practical – we want more money, a change in career, or to be happier.

Real changes like this are achievable, and the answers to our problems are often obvious. Work hard and ask for a raise, find a better job, stop sweating the small stuff. But we are all creatures of habit and often lasting changes like these can seem unattainable. The reason these changes seem unattainable is because our neurons are simply not used to firing in the particular way we want. This means that even conceiving of life as we would like it to be is a challenge to our existing thought patterns.

If we agree that behaviors are learned through training, reiteration, and neurological fortification, why should any realistic change be out of reach? Being unfamiliar with something is a lame excuse not to try it and we all know it. If we want change we should be willing to challenge the things we value, to reassess things we find distasteful, and to search out ideas we haven’t even heard of.

These three books challenged my beliefs and enriched my mind.

"The Sacred and the Profane"1. The Sacred and the Profane by Mircea Eliade

Mircea Eliade is a Romanian scholar who takes an academic approach to spiritual problems. He has written profoundly on yoga, shamanism, mythology and philosophy. The Sacred and the Profane is a study of holiness, giving new language to concepts I previously only intuited. With incredible scholarship Eliade relates the idea of the “sacred” with time, space, and psychology in a way that simply makes sense. The approach to the sacerdotal is likened to erecting a pillar in space. This pillar is obviously not literal, but extends away from the world toward our conception of the “holy”. This justifies the idea of holy places and non-temporal states of being while placing them firmly in our secular world. I would recommend this book to atheists and materialists.

 

"The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind"2. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes

This groundbreaking work posits that early man actually spoke with the gods, as most ancient literature asserts. It asks why early literature is replete with references to the gods, why most theurgic speech comes in metered form, and why this is much less common now. The thesis is that the human brain was different back then – that the right and left hemispheres of the brain were more distantly connected because the corpus callosum had not yet solidified as a bridging structure between the lobes – and that the so-called dialogue with gods was actually the two hemispheres of the brain communicating with each other. This sounds far out, but this long essay puts forward a fascinating argument that sheds new light on ancient history. What this means if true is that our conception of human consciousness as something that has gradually evolved since the time of the neanderthal is wrong, and that human consciousness as we know it is a relatively new phenomenon on earth. This is the kind of book that, while you read it, your eyebrows raise higher and higher. Since I have heard nothing like this theory anywhere else, I recommend this book to anyone.

 

"Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer"3. Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer by Dr. John Lilly

Using computer language, this beautiful, bizarre little manual describes the behavioral patterns of our body-brain complex (the biocomputer), and implies how we might reprogram our software (ideas and behavioral patterns) to achieve personal change. The language can seem tough to wrap one’s head around at first, but there’s nothing quite like learning a new jargon to get those synapses firing in new ways. The book also talks about metaprograms, which are the subconscious routines that set the table for behavioral programs. For example, I will be less likely to appreciate hip-hop (program) if I am subconsciously racist against black people (metaprogram). Once the learning curve of language is mounted this book reads like a slender, elegant volume of instructions on creating new behaviors. Recommended for wordy sad-sacks.

Rewriting the Watched Pot

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I made the NaNoWriMo deadline and wrote 50000 words in a month. I’m pretty happy with that feat. My novel Residuum is almost done. With a chapter and a half left to write, it sits at just under 200 pages. I definitely recommend the experience to anyone interested in writing because it forces your fingers to the keys.

A lot of writers will tell you that “writing is rewriting”. It’s not, really. Writing is writing. NaNoWriMo doesn’t allow you the time to rewrite. If you want to make that total, you have to plow through your work without looking back. Rewriting comes later. I plan to do some large-scale editing on my novel before submitting it to anyone.

The phrase “writing is rewriting” speaks to the fact that first drafts are rarely right. Ideas take time to develop and should be considered from a lot of angles, so the adage is implicitly telling us that we need to reread our stories, soak them in, and reconsider them from different perspectives.

In the throes of prose it’s tough to tell if your audience will pick up on everything, or if you’ve overwritten something. When a writer is typing away he or she often isn’t considering the prose from an abstract perspective. But a worthwhile novel should work as both concrete drama and abstract notion. This is why John Grisham novels don’t make sense to me. There is solid storytelling, master craftsmanship, but no substance. The stories don’t elevate me. Once I finish one of his books the only time I ever think of it again is as an example of well-wrought-but-meaningless literature.

But Grisham gets it done and makes a good living at it. He’s successful because he’s productive, and this is the value of NaNoWriMo to me. Writers write every day. And with a deadline like that, you have to write every day, word by word, until it’s done. You can see every day your novel gets that much closer to the goal.

It reminds me of the phrase “a watched pot never boils”. First of all, no pot ever boils; it’s the water that boils. Secondly, a watched pot will definitely boil if you watch it long enough (provided the conditions allow it). So the phrase is patently false. However, it is meaningful.

“A watched pot never boils” describes the plasticity of subjective time. The passage of time is directly related to the amount and quality of stimulation we experience. The stimulation of someone twisting a corkscrew through your leg is apt to make one minute seem like half an hour. When we watch a more or less stationary object, time can stretch out like taffy. When our minds are occupied, time seems to move faster. The adage implies that we have short attention spans.

People less anal than me don’t nitpick at the falsehood of age old phrases. I do it because it amuses me. Falsehood is a fact of life. False but meaningful phrases work because words are tools that can be used in creative ways. Fiction and poetry are the best examples of this. I hope people other than me will find my novel meaningful.

P.S. For a mind-expanding read on language and communication, check out The Structure of Magic, a two-volume set by John Grinder and Richard Bandler on neurolinguistic programming (NLP).

NaNoWriMo 2012 – Week 4

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It’s the final push to make 50000 words. I’m not quite there, though by Friday night I will be. Yesterday I noticed an interesting thing: usually I’ve been writing every morning and a little bit in the evening, but as my work plans were a bit different yesterday I didn’t get a chance in the morning. By evening I felt anxious, even though I knew I would sit down to write. It’s strange how quickly the body adapts when you start doing something every single day. It was a physical craving, this anxiety, just like cigarette addiction.

Residuum sits at just over 45000 words, but Wednesday will be a light day on the word count because I’m going to a concert. Six Organs of Admittance is playing The Drake in Toronto and it should be the perfect thing to psyche me up for the finale of my book.

I recently purchased this 6 Organs album from Rotate This. It’s a 3LP set of old and unreleased 4-track recordings called RTZ. It was put out by Drag City, of course. They are the same label who recently supplied my Ty Segall, Movietone and Rangda LPs. I recommend them all, but if you’re looking for psychedelic folk – and why wouldn’t you be? – RTZ is mind-blowing.

Nov. 21 – 2124 words.

Nov. 22 – 1437 words.

Nov. 23 – 1438 words.

Nov. 24 – 1738 words.

Nov. 25 – 3799 words.

Nov. 26 – 1767 words.

Nov. 27 – 1006 words and counting – I’ve still got some steam left in me tonight.

NaNoWriMo 2012 – Week 2

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My sci-fi novel Residuum is going well. I wrote every day this week, which is the key. The best thing about NaNoWriMo is that it shows day to day how easy it is to write a novel. You get to see the momentum in the climbing word count and it’s inspiring. As I’m fully in fiction mode, all I’m offering this week is a progress report with a little bonus at the end.

Nov. 7 – I wrote two full chapters for 3117 words. This was a bit much for a work day, but I was able to write on the train.

Nov. 8 -1834 words for the novel and a few hundred toward a draft of a review I’m working on.

Nov. 9 -1898 words.

Nov. 10 – I wrote 4000+ words in two chapters but didn’t finish until close to 2 A.M. It was my kind of weekend. It featured writing, reading (Neil Young’s Waving Heavy Peace), and listening to a lot of music. I took a break between chapters and watched Casino Royale. Decent movie, but it should have been 35 minutes shorter.

Nov. 11 – 2000+ words in what I expect will be the longest chapter in the first act.

Nov. 12 -1308 words all written in the evening while very tired in what I expect will be the shortest chapter in the first act.

Nov. 13 – That’s today. I wrote 1828 words today and almost all of it before work in the morning. I don’t know what was in my coffee, but it’s the fastest I’ve written so far. Then I put together this blog post.

I plan to do two chapters tomorrow, right on track to meet the deadline. I’m very glad to have the outline to work off of and I’m glad I spent the first five days hammering it out. My total word count now is 17507.

The bonus, should you choose to accept it, is a bit challenging. It’s a long drone I recorded years ago called Overmind. I’ve added it to the Music page. Be warned: this track is not for everyone. Anyone who gets through it gets a seat at the alien roundtable with me on December 21st, 2012, front row for the End of History.

Have a nice week.

 

NaNoWriMo 2012

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My posts this month will be a little different. I’ve been looking to make time to write a novel and I recently stumbled on the NaNoWriMo site (National Novel Writing Month). The site and programs seem like a good idea. Not because the world needs more novels, but because an official site dedicated to the cause is motivating. It was only because of a Google+ alert that I even learned about the site, but it’s already inspired me to get started. I’m confident I’ll finish my novel by the end of the month.

The goal is 50 000 words by midnight November 30th. This is a pretty hefty word-count for thirty days. If you start on November 1st, you have to write 1600 words every day. Most of my blog posts are less than this and I only do them once a week. Because I outline my writing projects, I have only starting writing prose this morning, but have a six-thousand word outline to work from which will allow me to write more quickly and ensure I don’t make decisions on the fly that will derail the story as I write.

Residuum is a psychedelic sci-fi novel set in a dystopian future.

Check out their site, follow NaNoWriMo and myself on Twitter, and if you’re not participating, consider it for next year.

So Far:

Nov. 1 – I began serious outlining, roughing out major plot points and working my way up to the inciting incident.

Nov. 2 – Finished outlining the first act and the first two scenes of my second act, had some Scotch.

Nov. 3 – Outlined most of the second act and sat unthinking until my subconscious gave me a hint about the climax and how to interweave the multiple plot lines into a meaningful conclusion.

Nov. 4 – Finished the outline by roughing in the third-act scenes.

Nov. 5 – Got up early and revised the very beginning of the outline, trying to make sure appropriate seeds were planted in the beginning so the themes and character development bloom properly by the end of the book. Roughed out this blog post after work and continued with the outline revision.

Nov. 6 – Started writing prose this morning after missing the Go Train at Union. On my return trip I finished my first chapter (1387 words). Finished this blog post and watched some hilarious and frustrating American election coverage.

I now need to write about 2000 words per day to finish on time. I’ll be focused on fiction for November so I’ll be giving progress reports and hopefully posting more music to my Music page in the coming month.

Transvaluate the Negative

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19th century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was highly controversial due to his outspoken disdain for Christianity, which he felt glorified the meek over the strong, death (and the lie of an afterlife) over life itself, and self-restraint over natural, ineluctable human impulses. He also believed traditional Christian morality was a type of propaganda meant to imprison the masses inside a false idea of “good”, stifling the vitality and will of individuals to ensure a complacent, easily dominated and controllable herd. He probably would have gotten along with Ayn Rand if he didn’t also disdain women.

But Nietzsche felt he could wake people from their religious trance to the true power of their intellect and will. Among his philosophic legacies is the “transvaluation of values”, which he espoused through his professional life, particularly in his book The Antichrist. The goal of the “transvaluation of values” is to abolish dogma and stagnant thinking in favour of evaluating ideas with fresh, modern thinking. The idea is that people shouldn’t act a certain way simply because they’ve always acted that way. People should question accepted ideologies to ensure they remain relevant. Though Nietzsche has obvious flaws as a man, I find his writing inspiring, extremely intelligent, and I think the “transvaluation of values” is a potent concept that becomes more important as time goes by.

Though the idea of the “transvaluation of values” is attributed to Nietzsche, it has periodically sprung up through history, many times altering the world. After Rome conquered Greece and renamed their gods, Julius Caesar reconsidered the god-concept and decided he was a god. He did this while moving nations with his will, shaping civilization forever. Jesus Christ transvaluated the values of Judaism, triggering the worldwide Christianity (or versions of Christianity) we know today. The Prophet Mohammed later offered a slightly different version.

And we see this in art throughout history. Whether it’s the surrealism of Salvador Dali or the cubism of Pablo Picasso, the mythologized documentaries of Werner Herzog or the depth psychology of Carl Jung, sea change in culture is caused by a breakthrough in thinking, and the breaking down of previous forms. Because Everything is subject to change, the transvaluation of values allows for constant feedback, for adapting to the flow of things physical and psychical.

I previously said that George R. R. Martin’s success with A Game of Thrones is primarily commercial and not an artistic breakthrough. In reevaluating my opinion I asked myself why his work is so commercially successful. I believe it’s because he has transvaluated the form of the traditional epic hero quest. Using the form of the epic fantasy novel, he has posited a new value that might reflect a more current vision of ourselves. Many would say his work offers a more pessimistic vision of society.

[The following contains spoilers for A Game of Thrones. Be warned. Spoilers in red.] The main character of the first book is Ned Stark, father of the Stark family, Lord in the North, and a shining example of integrity. He has so much integrity that the audience forgives him for killing his daughter’s pet dire wolf, an innocent animal, because he acts out of duty. Most popular writers would avoid having their main protagonist and focus of empathy murder an animal – people sometimes are more willing to accept the murder of another human than an innocent animal. But this hero breaks the taboo. So what?

I’ll tell you so what. This action is a signpost, foreshadowing the author’s own willingness to do the unthinkable in an epic fantasy: at the climax of the novel, the innocent Ned Stark is beheaded in front of his daughter. Killing off the main character and primary protagonist in the first book of a lengthy series shows us George R. R. Martin’s opinion of the epic fantasy, in contrast to Tolkien. The epic fantasy is stunted when tethered to one character. The idea of an epic is that it should span a vast world over a vast amount of time. Killing the main character tells us in no uncertain terms that A Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire is much more than the story of one man, more than the story of one family. It is a story of whole world, and each book broadens the readers’ horizons, deepening their connection to the work as a whole.

These days our culture seems to be attracted to pessimistic world views. There are many examples of this kind of transvaluation – consider that every new superhero franchise tries to offer a grittier, darker version of essentially childish fantasies. This could be a simple reflection of the pessimistic worldviews held by society, but it could also be a reflection of people’s resilience. Despite the lunacy of the world, we carry on. Life is compromise and people are willing to take the good with the bad.

A potent method of spreading a meme is to transvaulate an old symbol. It’s best if the symbol is simple and well defined. Satanists turned the crucifix upside down. Nazi’s appropriated the swastika which was originally a Hindu symbol. Nixon used Churchill’s “V” for Victory. And more recently, The Watchmen by Alan Moore takes the ubiquitous yellow happy face and adds a drop of blood to it. What this means is clear in the opening chapter of the book as the “hero” Rorschach stands above a city telling us that one day the people will ask to be saved, and he will tell them “no”.

Whatever our opinion of society’s current state of values, “transvaluation of values” ensures that over time these values will change just like the world around us. And periodic reassessments give us opportunities to create our own set of values that will make us happier and let us grow. Even as Nietzsche said “God is dead,” he delivered the concept of the self-made Superman. Whatever your opinions on Nietzsche, the idea of liberating the latent faculties of every individual is one of the most positive messages in history.