Book Review: The Republic by Plato.

Well, I just finished reading this and I'm trying to put my thoughts in order. Far cleverer people than I have spent millennia debating this one so I'm hesitant to form any firm opinions, but here's some things I noticed:

• It really is very readable, being - as it is - a series of imagined conversations between Plato (cosplaying as Socrates) and various Athenians, and as such it's less daunting than I'd normally expect a philosophical work to be.
  
  
• I kept being reminded of Gene Wolfe's prose - whether he and I have read the same translation, or whether this is something inherent in the text, I'm not sure. I did get the distinct impression reading Latro of the Mist that Wolfe was consciously emulating the style of various ancient Greek writers, as part of evoking the setting, but I also noticed that Horn engages in a lot of Socratic dialogues in The Book of the Short Sun. (I can't remember whether Silk also did so in the Long Sun, but I wouldn't be surprised.) Also, Wolfe's use of the term "Whorl" in the Long and Short Suns could potentially be a reference to Plato's cosmological analogy of the Spindle of Necessity.
  
  
• The translator in my edition (the Penguin Classics version translated by HPD Lee) does an excellent job of adding notes to the text to show where he has had to make a difficult choice in translating a particular passage.
  
  
• It's actually kind of funny in places - especially when Plato-as-Socrates is slapping down a particularly objectionable opponent in debate. Idiots on internet forums use the same logical fallacies that idiots did back in Greece.
  
  
• He is angry at the idea that people would say stuff like "God Hates Fags" or "AIDS is God's punishment" or "The Gods/Greys/fairies/Illuminati lurk amongst us in human form" - mainly because he feels this gives a deceptive idea of what God/the Gods is/are actually like, but also because he thinks that it is ultimately harmful to the community for people to say such things. I could go along with that, but he'd censor a heck of a lot of great literature (as well as third-rate fantasy offerings) if he had his way.
  
  
• In fact, when he starts in earnest to describe his ideal state - and, in particular, the upbringing and training of the Guardians who will rule it and serve as its military - Plato gets downright authoritarian, to the point where he advocates casting out and reimagining the entire basis of Greek religion for the good of the state, stated that the rulers of a state are allowed to lie to the citizenry for the good of the state, and argued for revision of the Iliad to gloss over Achilles' less noble acts. So that's religious intolerance, state censorship and propaganda, and historical revisionism all in one tasty package (there's also a healthy dose of eugenics). He even suggests that certain musical instruments should be banned, since they are capable of playing inappropriate music.
  
  
• On the other hand, in a weird twist he advocates all this repression only for the Guardians, his ruling class, who are apart from the manual labourers and writers and actors and poets and the rest of society. The idea that if anyone should work under tight legal restrictions it's the rulers of a society, not necessarily its people, is still with us today (it's what the US Constitution is based on, after all). Plato does, however, seem to be advocating a ruling caste chosen from birth to rule and trained accordingly. One of the first postulates Plato espouses is that specialisation is vital to society, to the point where each person must devote themselves to one career and one career alone, and social mobility is simply unthinkable.
  
  
• On the third hand, Plato firmly forbids the literature and drama he has deemed unsuitable for the education of the Guardians from his ideal state. The restrictions oppressing the Guardians tend to oppress everyone - with exceptions. (For example, the Guardians are not allowed to have personal property and, indeed, are encouraged to not desire it, so that they don't end up putting personal considerations before the public good - although in the other classes wealth is redistributed to prevent pockets of great wealth or great poverty developing.)
  
  
• When an objection is raised that the Guardians can't be very happy in their situation, Plato responds that his philosophical model is to do with the happiness of the entire community as opposed to the ruling class, and moreover it is suggested that if the Guardians have been educated properly then chances are they will be happy despite their Spartan lifestyle. This seems to miss the point; if a particular part of the community is oppressed for the good of the rest, that is hardly a moral or a just community in my mind, and if a Guardian is unhappy in his work how can he be expected to love that work? Plato handwaves and says that the Guardians should be encouraged to love and enjoy their work, but doesn't seem to provide them with any incentives to do so.
  
  
• According to Plato, an elder man dating a youth is free to kiss his boyfriend and touch him "as a father does his son", but it is a sign of poor moral character to go further than that.
  
  
• His ideas about war are rather quaint - he suggests that the children of the Guardians should be sent out on horseback, with a few elders to look after them, to watch the Guardians at war, so that when they grow up they are more prepared for battle. The idea that any general would devote his best horses to allow the nation's children - the best possible hostages the enemy can hope for - to watch the war is ludicrous. (Also, the prize for soldiers who excel themselves is kisses from all the other soldiers, male and female.)

Book Review: There's a New World Coming by Hal Lindsey

This is a real treat, from a kook-spotting perspective: one of the series of books on Biblical prophecy by Hal Lindsey, whose works include the bestselling The Late Great Planet Earth and influenced Jack Chick as well as innumerable other scholarship-light, brimstone-heavy theologians. It's out of print now - presumably because so many of its claims are hilariously wrong and out-of-date. It is structured as a verse-by-verse commentary on Revelations, and is evidently Hal's idea of a scholarly deconstruction of the book.

Some of the best examples of Hal's lunacy:

• Hal calls the Rapture "the Great Snatch". Hurr hurr hurr.
  
• Hal is gay for Jesus.
  

  "I'm not sure of all the reasons why Jesus still has His wounds, but personally, I'm very glad He does. I want to look at those scars and touch them often..."
  
  "Every opportunity these angels and Elders get, they drop on their faces and praise the Lord. Perhaps you've heard it said that the angels in heaven rejoice when one sinner is saved. I'm sure they're happy for the sinner that has been redeemed, but I have a suspicion that the real reason for their joy is that it gives them another opportunity to go down on Jesus fall down on their faces and praise the One who made the sinner's salvation possible."
  
  "...God Himself will wipe away every tear. One of the tenderest memories an adult has is that of his mother kissing his sore finger and wiping away the tears from his eyes. Oh, what we have to look forward to in Heaven!"
  
  "Jesus offers Himself as the thirst-quenching Water of Life. When a man drinks of this fountain, he never again thirsts in the depths of his soul.... All you need to do is 'Come'."

  
  
• The song that the heavenly hosts sing in praise of the Lamb which opens the Seven Seals will be a country-style ballad.
  
• After the Rapture happens, precisely 144,000 Jews will convert to Christianity. They don't get to kick back in Heaven and relax during the Tribulation like the rest of the faithful - no, they'll have to suffer through the Tribulation and evangelise the world during it. A lot of the people they convert will be executed by the Antichrist, but the 144,000 don't get to rest until the Tribulation ends and Jesus comes back - while they'll suffer torture, hunger, plague, persecution, imprisonment and pain, God won't let them die. Meanwhile, the other Jews will make a pact with the European and Jewish Antichrists (or the Roman Antichrist and the False Prophet, as Lindsey sometimes calls them).
  
• Two entire tribes of Jews - Dan and Ephraim - will be excluded from the above because Ephraim provoked the civil war between Israel and Judah back in Old Testament times, and because the Jewish Antichrist (distinct from the European Antichrist) will come from the tribe of Dan. No tribes of Israel are lost, none at all.
  
• The European Antichrist is alive as of the time of writing (1973).
  
• Hal is gay for Jews, in a totally patronising way.
  

  "Most of us know that when a Jewish person determines to do something, it usually gets done."

  
  
• The legions of the demon Apollyon will fly Cobra helicopters out of hell and fire nerve gas at people, but will not succeed in killing anyone.
  
• Communist China will invade everyone, at the bidding of its four demonic masters.
  
• Hal knows nothing about history.
  

  "It's also interesting to note that throughout history there's never been a great invasion of the West by the East."

  
  
• Communist Russia leads the world in the study of witchcraft.
  
• Satan resided in outer space after he was kicked out of Heaven, but will be forced down onto Earth at the end of days.
  
• At the time of writing, the EU (or the European Common Market as it was then known) had only 9 member-states. Hal asserted that when the 10th member state joined, the European Antichrist would take over the EU.
  
• In order to pave the way for the New Heaven and the New Earth, God destroys the old universe by cancelling the weak and strong nuclear forces, causing every atom in the old universe to explode.
  

Book Review: My Life In Orange by Tim Guest

From the age of 4 to 10 Tim Guest lived in communes of the Osho-Rajneesh movement in the UK, India, Oregon and Germany. His mother - and later his father - had been attracted by the group's promise of spiritual enlightenment without asceticism, but were ultimately disillusioned. The thrust of Tim Guest's memoir is his experience as a child growing up in a community which - it becomes rapidly clear - simply didn't have much time for children.

Followers of Baghwan Rajneesh were encouraged to get vasectomies and hysterectomies, Guest tells us, because according to the Bhagwan anyone qualified to have children would not want to have them anyway. Frequently, Tim shows us how he and the other children of the cult members (and this book falls very much into the cult confessional genre) were simply left to their own devices. A recurring theme of Guest's is his relationship with his mother: he frequently tells us about his efforts to get her attention when she (as far as the reader can tell) simply wasn't interested. Even when Tim receives his new name from Rajneesh (all devotees received new names) and rushes to show her, she's too busy with a meditation group to give him any time.

At the same time, though, Guest has clearly done his research on the movement to fill in the gaps; there are details which a 6 year old couldn't have ever picked up on mixed in with his childhood reminiscences, and these tell the story of the latter days of the movement, and his mother's doomed task to build a Rajneesh city (yes, a whole city) in Britain. The book is not just a product of Guest's strange childhood, but his attempt to reclaim the childhood (since his mother burned all photograph and records of that part of her life when she and his father left the cult). While the context provided is certainly useful, the long chapters describing the trials and tribulations of the movement aren't quite integrated enough with the rest of the text, and tend to break up the flow.

Unlike other cult confessionals, My Life In Orange doesn't at first regale the reader with stories of coercive techniques to keep members in line or to punish those who leave the sect, and on that level it's tempting early on to see the Rajneesh movement as a relatively harmless group - the meditiations are certainly gruelling, but that's true of monastic prayer and contemplation in many religious symptoms (although dark hints of child abuse, financial wrongdoings, and cult persecution are present from the beginning). Tim shows us a religious community which simply sidelined and ignored children and reinforced the bad habits of their parents, encouraging them to spend more time in meditation or indulging in free love than in being with their children. Later on in the book, the group begins to spiral out of control, as Sheela - Rajneesh's gun-toting assistant - ousts Rajneesh's previous secretary and steers the group down a paranoid, authoritarian path.

Tim's unique perspective makes this book a refreshing change from melodramatic, harrowing stories that provide the substance of other cult confessionals: this is an sometimes hilarious, sometimes sad story of a boy's strange childhood, in a community where every adult was expected to be a parent to him and nobody ever was. The Guardian did a "condensed in the style of the original" summary of it here which is a fair assessment.

Book Review: The Big Knockover by Dashiell Hammett

This disappointed me; I'm very keen on Hammett's work, and having loved The Continental Op I was looking forward to reading another compilation of short stories and novellas featuring Hammett's nameless detective protagonist.

However, a fair amount of the stories in the book represent experiments on Hammett's part. The stories in The Continental Op are, pretty much without exceptions, hard-boiled detective stories before anyone else had written them, and extremely pure examples of the genre at that. Their tight focus, the lean writing style and the high degree of realism are all excellent qualities. The writing style is still there in The Big Knockover, but some of the stories seem unpolished (at least one, Tulip, is an unfinished fragment of a story); the realism is usually there, but is sometimes threatened by the over-the-top violence.

It's the focus, though, which I feel suffers most in this collection. A fair number of the stories involve Hammett dabbling in other genres of pulp fiction but at the same time attempting to keep the Continental Op involved, causing the stories in question to feel like bastardised pastiches. Corkscrew, for example, is a Western in the guise of a detective story, and This King Business uses the old turn-of-the-century adventure story cliche of trouble happening in a fictional tiny European country. Some of the pure detective stories are solid gold - Fly Paper and The Gatewood Caper rank alongside the best in The Continental Op. Others, however, suffer in comparison: Dead Yellow Women's attitude to the Chinese dates it badly (which is a real shame, considering how many of Hammett's other works are timeless), and The Gutting of Couffignal and The Big Knockover itself involve cartoonish violence which sits poorly with the rather low-key style I tend to associate with Hammett's work.

Compared to The Continental Op, the stories in this collection are of decidedly secondary importance. I won't be holding into it.