The Pagan Christ (Book Review)

Tom Harpur The Pagan Christ (2004) One half of Harpur’s thesis is that around 300 to 400 CE the Church authorities deliberately suppressed and misrepresented as many traces of the pagan origin of the Christian doctrine as they could. He traces the Bible back to the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and claims that the Christ figure originates in Isis/Osiris. He bases his argument primarily on the researches of Alvin Boyd Kuhn, but also draws on Hindu, Greek, Gnostic, and many other sources.
     The other half of his thesis is that the Pagan Christ is the divine light that inheres in every human being. This insight, he claims, was conveyed by myth, which has been “literalised” by the Church, and so the true understanding of the Gospel has been distorted and kept from us. In addition, this insight would bring all religions in the world into one tent, if only the anti-mythological efforts of the Abrahamic organised religions weren’t so effective and divisive.
     Harpur is bit of a crank, I think, but his central message is true enough. The myths do all express the same truth, that we all partake of the divine light. That truth is itself a myth, that is, it is a story and concept that creates significance and meaning. And we do have a regrettable tendency to take stories literally, instead of grasping them as symbols of truths that cannot be expressed literally. Myths are on the one hand stories that justify and explain ritual, and on the other, apprehensions of the meanings expressed through those rituals. People of faith have always, I think, understood this. Superstition consists of taking myth as having the same operational truth as science and craft; in other words, superstition is myth turned into magic. One could go on about this opposition between faith and religion, but I’ll just give you two sentences that I think are true:
     – Faith is the ability to tolerate doubt.
     – God does not like religion.
     As scholarship, Harpur’s book is (based on my own limited reading) incomplete and simplistic. The development of the Bible is as far as I know a far more tangled skein of influences and sources than his account indicates. As testimony to how one man came to a deeper understanding of what his Christian heritage could mean, it’s honest and sincere. Many people will find his story helpful; and many others will feel threatened by it. Worth reading by anyone who needs to find at least a hint of an answer to the central question: Can we make meaning out of, or find meaning in, our lives? **½

Muppets in Space (Movie Review)

Muppets in Space (1999) [D: Tim Hill. The Muppet crew and others] The last Muppet movie, done by the numbers, but die-hard Muppet fans will enjoy it. But even they will likely not want to watch it twice.
     Turns out Gonzo is an alien. He receives strange messages from Space, which indicate that his people are searching for him. Eventually they land (they’re a bland rock band, if you can imagine such a thing), but Gonzo decides to stay with his friends on Earth. There’s a deranged security officer who’s convinced that an invasion of earth is imminent. He kidnaps Gonzo, Kermit and friends get him out, in the end Gonzo’s people invite the security man to travel the Universe with them. So that’s all right.
     The movie’s an attempt to recapture the magic of the show, with every major Muppet appearing, but the energy of the show and of earlier movies is lacking. Correction: the zaniness is missing. The movie is too slow: the writers didn’t have enough ideas to fill the 88 minutes at the speed that engages delighted suspension of disbelief, and so every scene is a few seconds too long. Besides, we’ve seen it all before, in other movies. Riffing on movie tropes and cliches is of course what the Muppet Show was about. Pity that the makers of this movie weren’t quite up the usual standards. **

Flatterland (Book Review)

Ian Stewart Flatterland (2001) Ian Stewart is one of my heroes. He can make complex ideas simple enough that anyone with high school math should be able to understand them. He’s also something of a polymath: he ranges outside mathematics into biology and cosmology. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Stewart_%28mathematician%29
for more, including a bibliography.
Flatterland book is a sequel of Abbott’s Flatland, a classic that has never been out of print.  See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatland
     The book ranges far beyond geometry, however, leading up to the question “What shape is our universe?” Stewart brings Victoria Line (and us) to the answer step by step, with the guidance of the Space Hopper, who is able to take Vikki outside space. The mathematician’s need to avoid fuzzy thinking is demonstrated, which makes this an excellent book for anyone who wants to get past the notion that arithmetic is all there is to math. But what makes the book charming is Vikki’s character (she’s smart and courageous), and Stewart’s penchant for puns. There are frequent allusions and pastiches of the Alice books, too.
     I’m not sure how a mathematical naif would read this book. I find it difficult to say how much my prior knowledge of most of the concepts in this book helped me to follow the story. It certainly helped to get most of the jokes. However, I’ll recommend this book anyway. If you don’t get it the first time, read it again. The chapters are short, the illustrations not only conceptually accurate but often amusing. This is a book that will appeal to people who like to take their learning in small doses. ***

Low-Flying Aircraft (Book Review)

 

John Ballard Low-Flying Aircraft (1976) Ballard is probably best known for The Empire of the Sun, made into a movie by Spielberg in 1987, and for Crash, filmed by David Cronenberg (1996). This collection of SF stories consists of his usual near-future, post-collapse settings, featuring protagonists who are oddly unable to make the necessary crucial decisions in their lives. They are examples of  “New Wave science fiction”, or so the Wikipedia article on Ballard says. Initially interesting because of their studied weirdness, they quickly become boring. Ballard too often imitates himself.
     There’s no question that Ballard has earned a reputation as an important writer, but in my opinion he was merely lucky enough to express a kind of spiritual panic that at the time was widespread in Western culture. He claimed influences from surrealist painting, and proposed collage-like structures for fiction. Both surrealist content and non-linear narrative have become common-place since he discussed these ideas. For Ballard to survive, he has to be more than one of the pioneers. I don’t think he has much more than pioneering experiments to recommend him. His style is flat and often boring, his characters not so much enigmatic as empty. Of course, all that may be deliberate.
     The title story tells of a couple awaiting the birth of their child in a crumbling, abandoned resort town whose only other occupants are a doctor and his nearly-blind companion. If the child is a blind mutant like the previous ones, it will be killed. Every day, the doctor flies into the mountains spraying phosphorescent paint about, to guide mutant creatures which are blind to most of visible colours, but which can see the ultraviolet light reflected and emitted by the paint. The doctor claims the blind mutant children being born to the remaining fertile women are humankind’s successors: it seems normal children are simply not being born, yet women become pregnant very easily. The protagonist disagrees with the doctor’s conclusions, yet allows him to take the baby away to where it will be cared for, while he tells his wife it was correctly disposed of.
     The tone and ambience of these stories is curiously stifled. Although presumably momentous events have happened and will continue to happen (the destruction or disappearance of humankind is not to be taken lightly, after all), the feeling is that nothing happens, that action is frozen, or so constrained that no one can make decisions. I can see why readers of a certain kind, or at a certain stage in their spiritual development, would be attracted to such fiction, and praise it as New Wave, or whatever, but in me it caused an almost paralyzing ennui. I finished only about half of the stories, so little did they engage my sympathies, summon my empathy, or arouse my desire to find out what would happen next. Many of them had the feel of experiments, trials, attempts to make something of the kernel image or idea with which the creation of every story begins. They felt like the kinds of exercises students in creative writing classes produce. They will no doubt interest a crop of PhD students some time in the future. *

Three Minute Fiction for NPR

3 minute fiction contest, round 8, NPR
Wolf Kirchmeir, 11 to 13 March 2012
The contest required starting with the given first sentence, and writing 600 words or less. Unfortunately, only legal residents of the US are eligible to compete. The song was not planned. I’ve been working on it for some time, and was surprised and pleased at how easily it came as part of this story. The story came via the usual process: start the work, let it mull for a couple of days, try again. Repeat as needed. Then it comes easily, the subconscious writer has been at work. It did a lot more than develop the original idea. The 600-word limit forced pruning, hence the occasionally telegraphic syntax. The comma error in the given sentence is not mine. Link to NPR contest page:
http://www.npr.org/2012/03/10/148251671/three-minute-fiction-round-8-she-closed-the-book?ft=1&f=1032
...................................................

     She closed the book, placed it on the table, and finally, decided to walk through the door. He half rose from the chair. Turning, she gazed at him with cool eyes, closed the door gently behind her. He sat down, touched the book, opened it. “To Genevieve, Love, John” in his florid handwriting.
     He watched her walk to her car. The sun lit up the street like a movie set, bright colours glowing. He imagined he heard a song half-remembered: She’s leaving home, bye, bye. The music drifted through his memory of their last conversation. “There’s frozen meals downstairs,” she said. “The package tells you how to cook it in the microwave.” He stood in the door, holding the book, his first gift to her. “Do you want this?” he asked. She glanced at the bag on the chair beside her. “I don’t think I have room for it,” she said. He put the book down in front of her. “Read it,” he said.
     He watched as she opened the book, glanced at the inscription, leafed through it, and stopped to read. “Come live with me and be my love,” she read, her voice clear and neutral, “and we will all the pleasures prove.” Paused. “Not much pleasure lately”, she said.

*****

     She closed the book, placed it on the table, and finally, decided to walk through the door. I should have a flashback here, she thought. To the days when reading meant something to me. Though it never did, really. Mean something. I read that book because John gave it to me. It mattered to him. Seemed to matter to him.
     She turned and gazed at him. He gave me that book to show he cared, she thought. The book didn’t mean anything to him, the poems meant nothing. It was bait. They were love poems, he was playing a part. The bait worked, his desire for me trapped me. Trapped us both. That’s what he wanted.
     She walked to the car. She knew he watched her. The colours of the gardens were clear and luminous, the houses looked like paper cutouts. She got in the car and drove away. Come live with me and be my love. Words, words, words. Tricks to get you into bed. And we will all the pleasures prove. Not much pleasure lately, she thought.

*****

     She closed the book, placed it on the table, and finally, decided to walk through the door. The butterfly on the rose bush greeted her ecstatically: “I’ve been waiting for you”. She smiled, held out her finger. “Hello Fred”, she said. Fred settled on her finger and preened in the sun, his wings iridescent blue and purple. “Let’s make a song, alternating lines. When we’re done, we’ll sing it. I’ll start.”

We’ve been together 50 years
Through many a calm and storm.
We’ve shivered in the rain and snow
But true love has kept us warm.

Now sun and wind have brought us here
To gardens of delight and joy,
We’ll kiss and dance till night comes down,
Till we’re again a girl and boy.

Till we’re again the girl and boy
That met so long ago,
Till we’re again the boy and girl
That learned true love is slow.

True love is slow, it outlives time,
It bears all kinds of weather,
Now, after fifty years of love,
We still want to be together.

“That’s good”, said Genevieve. Fred’s wings opened and closed slowly. She leaned down to let them brush against her lips. “Come live with me”, she murmured, “and be my love.”

Our Town (Review)

Our Town (Thornton Wilder, 1938) Presented by Theatre SMC (Sault Ste Marie) D: J Lauzon & L Durat. With Vernon Bailey, Bridget Murphy, Alexandra McCauley, Andrew Lorimer and others.
     We went to see this play at the Quonta competition in Elliot Lake. It was the only one Marie wanted to see. It was well done, as far as I could tell a faithful revival of Wilder’s original vision (I saw the play many years ago in Edmonton.) The story, set in Grover’s Corners,  is well known: Emily, the central character, is shown growing up, falling in love and marrying the boy next door, eventually dying in childbirth. Several other characters recur, and the Stage Manager (who speaks directly to the audience) brings us up to date on the events in Grover’s Corners since the previous act. The set is a nearly bare stage, the story moves forward in set-pieces (many of which were even then already cliches of stage and screen), and the wonder is that this severely schematic script can and does engage us.
     Thornton’s talent was using stereotypes in a way that we forget they are stereotype. There is enough particularisation that we care about the characters, yet Wilder continually reminds us that we are watching what amounts to an almost abstract fable, a parable, about the value of ordinary life and ordinary people. This life is all we can be sure of having, so we should value the people that we love and who love us.
     The production was very good. Murphy as Emily was especially good. Vernon Bailey found just the right note of matter-of-factness as Stage Manager that his direct talk to us seemed natural. The pace was occasionally slower than I thought it needed to be, and over it there hung a whiff of Reverence for a Classic. But overall I enjoyed the play. Well done. ***

The Hugging Trees

The hugging trees on December 26 2012. See March 8 post for an earlier photo.