Book Report February 2024

Take the bad with the good

Not a good month for reading for Danny Boy over here. Between childcare and stringing together enough work to make a little money, it’s been hard to find the time and energy. Whatever, excuses are boring. I finally finished Elden Ring (I spent probably 12-15 hours just fighting Malenia, but I did beat her eventually) so at least that will stop sapping my brain. Until the expansion comes out in June, that is. Can’t wait to devote another full day of my life to learning all the attack patterns of Malenia’s brother Miquella. Anyway, let’s do the books and hope for a more studious March. 

Blindness, José Saramago, 1995

This book is astounding. I have rarely read something that successfully manages such propulsive storytelling and deep consideration of human nature at the same time. The voice of Saramago’s narrator is fascinating: rather superficial on its face, stuck in cliches and snap judgments, but constantly transcending those limitations, prompted by the situation to ponder deeper things and give the characters the space to find inner reserves the narrative voice didn’t believe they had. 

Afflicted with “White Blindness,” an epidemic quickly devastating a city and then entire country, the characters are quarantined in a decommissioned mental asylum where they will receive food deliveries but no other assistance. They all remain nameless. There’s the first blind man, the doctor, the doctor’s wife, the girl with dark glasses, the boy with the squint. The characters quickly agree that names are pointless for the blind—they are merely voices now. 

As the inmate population swells the conditions deteriorate. This is one of the most harrowing books I’ve encountered, a descent into the dark heart of man’s capacity for evil, both out of malice and blithe self-interest. This is also, however, one of the most moral books I’ve encountered. Saramago knows exactly what he’s doing and never revels in his characters’ suffering. This is a story of dehumanization that never commits the cardinal sin of itself engaging in dehumanization. 

I would be remiss not to say a little about how skillfully Saramago develops his characters and lets their natures and proper roles emerge. The doctor’s wife—even her name is dependent on someone else—emerges as a character of immense inner fortitude and deep contemplative power. From her initial appearance as a conventional housewife to the incredible speeches she delivers in the novel’s back third on fate and duty as she single handedly keeps our band of main characters alive—she continually outpaces the narrator’s expectations and the reader’s in a way that always feels organic and earned. An incredible achievement. 

Chapterhouse: Dune, Frank Herbert, 1985

I’ve been working through the Dune series for the last couple years but quirks of scheduling have somehow resulted in none of them showing up in the book reports so far. This is No. 6, the last one Herbert wrote before he died and his son stepped in to finish the series. The gaps between my returns to the series have been lengthening as my enthusiasm has dropped with each successive book. This will certainly be the last one I read. 

I could give you the plot summary but why bother? We’re approximately 8,500 years past the time of Paul in the first book, the only recognizable faction remaining from then is the Bene Gesserit, and just about every character is some sort of clone or deep Atreides descendant. Books 5 and 6 bear so little relation to the first four and are so misguided that there’s no point in trying to get into the specifics of the plot. 

There’s the further issue that the later Dune books feature so little plot anyway. Compared to what followed, the first book is a master class in action storytelling—stuff happens, characters move through space and arrive in new situations and form relationships with new characters. Herbert quickly lost his nerve and, beginning with the second book, Dune Messiah, almost exclusively wrote scenes of characters sitting in rooms thinking over their situation. Particularly in Heretics and Chapterhouse, Herbert establishes a status quo and then just sits in it for the entire length of the book. Get 200 pages into Chapterhouse and *literally* nothing will have happened—you will have simply received numerous different perspectives on the state of play of the standoff between the Bene Gesserit and the Honored Matres. 

Actually, screw it, let’s talk about this storyline. Okay so there’s a 5,000 year timejump between books 4 and 5, during which time the empire of Paul’s son Leto II crumbled and humanity jetted off in every direction into the unknowns of deep space, escaping the careful control of Bene Gesserit breeding programs. We simply cannot get into the eugenicist aspects of Dune! They’re bad! Moving on!! The Bene Gesserit sisterhood sent some of its people out in the Scattering. Now, 5,000 years later they’ve returned as the fearsome Honored Matres, exactly like the Bene Gesserit but evil—weren’t we supposed to think the Bene Gesserit were evil in the first couple books? Whatever they’re the good guys now—who, I swear to god, use their incredible sexual prowess to enslave men. 

That’s the setup to Heretics, the fifth book. In the sixth, Herbert one-ups his divorced-energy misogyny by deciding it’s time to talk about the Jews. Once Paul gets turnt off that spice and develops the ability to see the future and all its permutations, it becomes incredibly important for characters to be able to escape the prescient gaze of the Atreides, the Spacing Guild, and other factions with seers. Eventually certain Atreides genetic lines develop this ability—maybe by crossbreeding repeatedly with successive clones of Duncan Idaho?? I forget. In Chapterhouse, Herbert suddenly says, By the way, there’s another group of people who have innate prescience-invisibility. It’s the Jews, because they got so good at hiding on Old Earth, due to all the pogroms. Absolute loony-toons shit. Insanely racist. Do not endorse.

Where was I going with this? Here’s my take on the entire Dune saga: Herbert should have stopped after the first book. But if he had to write more he really should have stopped after the second when he saw what a disaster it was. But if he really really had to write more, under no circumstances should he have written past the fourth. When you go to the theater next week for the movie, just remember, if they keep making these films long enough, we’ll eventually get evil leotard-wearing nuns who have weaponized [Jenna Maroney voice] their sex-tuality as well as [Mel Brooks voice] Jews!... In!... Space!...