Stacking the deck in 'A Canticle for Leibowitz'

This is an even more extended version of a Goodreads book review than normal. That’s because, in this case, while I overall still think the novel is a five-star on literary style, there are “issues” behind it. 

My original review doesn't have plot spoilers, so you may need to hit the Wiki page for "A Canticle for Leibowitz" to understand why, beyond saluting it as good novelistic writing, I started having a variety of concerns about the author, Walter M. Miller Jr., stacking the deck on the background, or "framing," of the novel.

And, I concluded by moving beyond those initial concerns to some degree of disquiet.

A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr.
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

(That's the initial rating, before this in-depth review; I lowered it to 4 stars after that.)

A damned good book, or so I said in my initial review.

Almost as dystopian as Cormac McCarthy (until the final twists), but without his gratuitous violence in general and gratuitous bloodshed in particular. Possibly deeper in some ways, philosophically. And, per the Wiki pieces on this and Miller personally, reflecting his WWII service as being one of the US bombers that destroyed (probably, though not certainly, unnecessarily) Monte Cassino.

Plot and characters are both good. As are recurring themes. The wordplay in the second part (Fiat Lux), while not on the level of an Umberto Eco, hints in that direction. (I wonder if the name of Leibowitz was in fact such a play.) The "twists" that will later develop can usually be seen in a general way, but not specifically, until you're right there. (A good example of that is Ms. Grales' "second head" Rachel eventually becoming a new Virgin, which I recognized he was getting at right when we got there.)

My only complaint, or bit of perplexion, or something? And, that is that "Lazarus" (a character in both parts 1 and 2, and early in part 3, under various names in the three parts) doesn't make a final appearance somewhere near the end of Part 3. It could be that Miller couldn't figure out how to work him and Rachel both in at the end. (Personally, I would have loved to have seen him as a stowaway on the spaceship.) Or maybe it's a statement by Miller.

And, per Miller's word play, and one last aside on Lazarus? In Part 2, with the two Hebrew phrases, especially the specific way the second riffs on the Shema? I don't know whether Miller intended it or not, but he likely did, with the specific Hebrew word substituted in the Shema riff? Lazarus is also someone else (besides possibly Leibowitz), and that someone else also from the Christian New Testament.

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A note for friends: If you're not religious in general, and haven't been, you may not even grasp at the meaning of the Latin, and if you don't know Hebrew at all? (The first of the two phrases is translated, the second not.) Have Google Translate ready as needed.

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Now, the critique of the backstory.

The biggie is that, if not outrightly stacking the deck, Miller clearly comes down on the side of religion vs. science, and makes it a two-sided battle of religion versus science. The term scientism may not been around in 1959, but that’s arguably what he’s critiquing. (And, by the time I finished this up, if not “stacking the deck,” I’m ready to say he’s putting one, at least, of his two thumbs on the scale.)

First of all, in Part 1, we don’t know enough (in the novel) about the actual Leibowitz to say what exactly he did with nuclear programs. But, that’s minor.

If we’re going to attack science, or even scientism, let us remember that absolutist religion has given us crusades, pogroms and holocausts. Plural. As in, in 1 Samuel, Yahweh telling Saul to commit a holocaust on the Amelekite people and even their livestock. And, it’s not just “western” religions. Think of Buddhism’s 969 Movement in Burma. Or the RSS and Hindutva thought in India.

Second, the miracle of Rachel the teratoma or whatever we shall call her arising from Mrs. Grales? Yet, Miller doesn’t have New Rome trying to move a colony of the Order of Leibowitz from Earth to Alpha Centauri by miracle. Nope, it’s a rocket launch — rockets like those that kicked off both nuclear Armageddons. And, for that matter, there’s no miraculous intervention in either Armageddon.

As for the Tua Voluntas Part 3 “showdown” between Abbot Zerchi and Doctor Cors over the issue of euthanasia? First of all, every religion will soften at the edges, at some point, on some major moral issue. Look at actual Catholicism today vs. times past on suicide. Or it will row its absolutist oar, if deemed necessary, when science challenges. Look at the actual church on abortion and reproduction.

And, in part two, giving the secular scholar Thon Taddeo the last name, auf Deutsch, of "plodding priest" only increases the deck-stacking.

In reality, per Walter Kaufmann, there is no such thing as absolute justice and morals must bend on that, despite Miller sympathetically having Zerchi punch Cors. And, the dying Zerchi thinking that “the battle” was not with pain, but with the fear of pain? His Wiki page notes that Miller committed suicide shortly after the death of his wife, and he reportedly suffered from depression for many years before that, and PTSD over the Monte Cassino bombing. (He had converted to Catholicism after the war, per his own Wiki page.)

There’s also datedness and/or Eurocentric issues. Why not have a “New Lhasa” with Tibetan Buddhism paralleling Catholic Christianity? The primary reason is obvious. "Canticle" is ultimately a paean to the eternal verities of Mother Church.

I will confess that I did not pick up on the Wanderer being “the wandering Jew.” (Wiki's link on the book indicates it is.) The Leibowitz name … “body joke” … may be a pun on that. One wonders, per the Wiki page, if Miller was influenced by Lew Wallace’s “The Prince of India,” where he is the protagonist. That said, that's "interesting" in itself and hold on to that thought.

Page 169, as numbered in the paperback I read, is interesting, with two phrases in Hebrew, but Miller only offering a translation of the first in the book. The second? A riff on the Shema, where I first thought a deliberately corrupted form of Adonai was being substituted for Yahweh, but not true. "Day" (די is Hebrew) for "enough," "sufficient" or "sufficiency," not a shortened Adonai. "Hear, O Israel, sufficiency is our god" ("qoph" used for "he," but Google Translate rendered it as "our god" still, and perhaps it is in modern Hebrew), and sufficiency alone."

A Buddhist riff, or a riff on what Paul was supposedly told, that "my grace is sufficient for you" when he asked for the thorn in the flesh to be removed? After all, the first phrase IS Tents Repaired Here and what did Paul do? 

I'm pretty sure it's not a Buddhist riff. In that case, Paul, like Lazarus, is the wandering Jew? But why? I have no idea on Lazarus, but, with Paul, maybe it's to subordinate him to first pope Peter? Even though Peter was also a Jew? The "wandering Jew" reportedly taunted Jesus. This would fit pre-repentance Saul before he became Paul. But Lazarus never taunted him in the first place. 

All the other wordplay was easy enough to follow. But, the Paul and Lazarus angles are why I didn't think "Wandering Jew." With Leibowitz himself in Part 1, either the real, or the Wandering Jew, he could be seen as redeeming himself and annuling the curse of wandering by joining the Cistercians, etc. But Paul redeemed himself by repentance on the Damascus Road. And, Lazarus, again, never mocked. But, Miller portrays him as Christ's non-Christian follower, or words to that effect.

That said, there's one big issue here. "The Wandering Jew" is of itself not necessarily anti-Semitic per se; but with some modern writers like George Sylvester Vierick taking it that way, and with Miller writing after World War II but in the shadow of it, it's a literary trope that needs to be handled carefully. And, tying it to Leibowitz as a nuclear physicist sure treads closely to Hitler's "Jewish science" motif.

And, with that, I have my answer to the end of the novel, even if it wasn't Miller's answer. Blastoff is to a new Eden, at least potentially, and Ahasuerus can't be allowed to contaminate it.