On Gravitas

Gravitas is a novel by S. Christopher, centered around a character named Ben, and his evolution at the edge of his thirties. In a few words, Ben lives in a medium-sized American city (that could be Portland, for instance); he's a senior programmer in a small software company; he has a geeky housemate.

The novel has no other real purpose than to depict Ben's life and mind. That has shaped the narrative style, which proceeds by an accumulation of scenes, not necessarily in chronological order, rather than by a well-formed, developing plot. Ben is, by many criteria, successful, but by other traits, he's not strictly in tune with his environment: sometimes he appears to shift by a half-tone, maybe more, leading him to be a spectator of himself (and others). The love (and pain) that a girl will inflict on him will force him out of his shell, at least for a period, and he will live this event as a small, strange trauma, maybe the first of his life, not counting his own birth.

Minor themes are recurrent through the book, indicating that it's better constructed than it would be obvious at a first glance.

One of those themes is the disappearance -- of days, people, words, that seem to slip through Ben's memory, as if reality wouldn't let itself be captured easily as a mind representation, by someone who is reluctant to engage in it fully.

Another theme might be abstraction. I don't find a better word for that capacity -- or defect -- that some people have, to perceive things through an emotionless prism, like one would look at a piece of software, including oneself.

The author uses a dense, rich form of English, full of images. This prolixity suits well the introspective nature of the book.

I enjoyed Gravitas. On an ideal shelf, it would be between P.K.Dick's non-sci-fi novels and Meredith's Egoist.

On Greek myths

I've read a couple of books on ancient Greeks lately. The first one was a book of Plutarch on the oracles of the Pythia of Delphi. Plutarch, best known as an historian for his Parallel Lives, was also for some time a priest of Apollo, so he gives there some first-hand informations.

The second book was a very interesting essay by Paul Veyne, a contemporary French archaeologist and historian, titled Les Grecs ont-ils cru à leurs mythes? (Have Greeks believed their myths?). It begins by general considerations on the ancient Greek religion, and the place of mythology herein; then it takes a more philosophical turn, in the steps of Michel Foucault, and discusses what the notion of truth means.

One of the things that can be noted about the Greek religion, and that is much apparent through those two books, is that Greeks, like many ancient civilisations, did not have a concept of "faith", which we now in the modern western world tend to consider as a common ground for religions -- probably because we're mostly only familiar with the two big monotheisms, Christianity and Islam. No faith: nobody, in the home country of philosophy, would have considered virtuous or honourable to hold a mandated belief, not meant to be discussed or to be subject to inquiry. Incidentally, nobody was scandalised by the numerous philosophers who were arguing about the trustfulness of the oracles or the existence of the gods.

However, while many Greeks simply did not believe in the gods, and even less in their adventures as told by Homer, Hesiod and all the mythography, it appears that they couldn't imagine that those myths were completely invented, and they tried to explain their existence by several theories: for example, that gods were great kings of the past, later divinised, or that the myths were hiding ancient doctrines hidden under allegories.

So what role did myths play in the Greeks' everyday lives? I think that they were part of the tradition, in the noblest sense of the term: the tradition as the foundation for a culture (and that's why they ought to be respected). The myths, the gods and the heroes were common figures, models for good or bad behaviour, a common language of stories and situations that everyone could refer to. Probably, this profusion of the mythical language, and the freedom with which it was treated, created the ideal ground for all the inventions that were made in Greece: mathematics, geometry, theatre, democracy, philosophy, history, and so on.

Intertextuality, as they say

I've just finished reading The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco. Long ago, I thought this was just another crime novel. Then, I got a bit more familiar with Eco's essays, and thought it might be another kind of book after all. I was right: it's not only a crime novel. It's full of references to a load of other minor or major works of literature (and I'm sure I've not even caught 10% of them). The double level of lecture makes it fun to read, if you pay attention.

For example, in the very first page, I could spot an allusion to the opening of Don Quixote. Later, multiple allusions to Dante, including a direct interpolation of a verse of the Divine Comedy into the text. The character Jorge de Burgos, the blind man, guardian of a labyrinth-library, is evidently a nightmarish version of the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges. The delirious dream of Adso, towards the end of the book, is treated like James Joyce could have done. And, last but not least, the hero, Guillaume of Baskerville, is evidently a clone of Sherlock Holmes, with who he shares many physical and moral features (including a predilection for drugs).

Mr. Thorow

I'm reading Hawthorne's Notebooks. During september 1842, Hawthorne meets a strange little man, Mr. "Thorow", from who he buys a canoe that Thorow build himself. After a few pages, I began to realize that the little man was actually Henry David Thoreau, and the wikipedia entry, quoting Hawthorne, confirmed that.

Another neighbour of Hawthorne during those years was Ralph Waldo Emerson; the notebooks contains lots of little amusing facts about him, and Hawthorne befriended him (although he had little sympathy for Emerson's unitarian beliefs).