Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons by Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut is one of my favourite novelists.  Alas, I have read all his novels.  As much as I would like to read them again, it is time to turn to his works of non-fiction.

Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons is a collection of Vonnegut's essays, lectures and other non-fiction writing from the period 1966 to 1974.  This is also the period in which he produced his masterpiece novel Slaughterhouse-Five.  The title refers to three concepts invented by the prophet Bokonon in Vonnegut's 1963 novel Cat's Cradle. Each concept, in the final analysis, is an illusion masquerading as a truth. So it is one of Vonnegut's tongue-in-cheek, po-mo jokes to apply this title to his non-fiction.

Vonnegut often has a bleak view of human beings.  He acknowledges that humans are capable of love and kindness and other positive behaviours, but he does not allow this to blind him to the darker side of our nature.  He describes himself as a black humourist, and he says this about his ouevre:

Black humourists' holy wanderers find nothing but junk and lies and idiocy wherever they go.  A chewing-gum wrapper or a used condom is often the best they can do for a Holy Grail.

And he draws our attention to a lot of this kind of thing in this volume.  His essay about his humanitarian visit to Biafra in the closing days of the war with Nigeria is particularly harrowing.  Other essays dealing with science are more hopeful, and others are neutral in tone.  

In the preface, Vonnegut says:

If a person with a demonstrably ordinary mind, like mine, will devote himself to giving birth to a work of the imagination, that work will in tempt and tease that ordinary mind into cleverness ... I am not especially satisfied with my own imaginative works, my fiction.  I am simply impressed by the unexpected insights which shower down on me when my job is to imagine, as contrasted with the woodenly familiar ideas which clutter my desk when my job is to tell the truth.

It may well be the case that Vonnegut is a better novelist than he is a non-fiction writer.  Even so, this collection is thought-provoking, informative and (sometimes) amusing.  Worth reading for the insights it offers of the man and his work.

Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse by David Mitchell

Few people do outrage better than David Mitchell.  Think about his many appearances on the Q.I. television show - it only takes a non-sequitur or a bit of ambiguity to set off his sense of outrage, often with hilarious results.

In Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse, Mitchell's outrage is front and centre.  This time it is modern life, especially life in a post-Global Financial Crisis world, that gets him going. 

Mitchell ranges across wide variety of topics, including offence-taking and forced apologies, corporate monopolies, sport, politics and chocolate-flavoured toothpaste.  His observations are acute, his analysis is deep, and his pronouncements are often as withering as they are humorous. And all this is wrapped up in an eloquent, coherent and forceful prose.

The text itself is a compilation of articles Mitchell wrote for Britain's Observer newspaper over a number of years.  This sometimes works to the detriment of the book as some of the writing is highly topical, and the nuances of certain topics may be lost on contemporary readers.  Also, as Mitchell was writing for a U.K. audience, some of the matters he raises may not be that identifiable for readers from other parts of the world. This is a quibble, and the quality of Mitchell's prose and thoughts more than make up for it.

Overall, Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse is an entertaining, revealing and thought-provoking book with many laugh-out-loud moments.  Of course, this has outraged me, and I await author's unreserved apology.

The Salmon of Doubt by Douglas Adams

I remember The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (H2G2) came out at exactly the same time as when I was asking myself the great questions about life, the universe and everything.  How improbable is that?

It was a sad day when I heard about Douglas Adams' death in 2001.  At that time, I had already read all five volumes of the H2G2 trilogy and the two Dirk Gently novels.  Although I loved the original radio series of H2G2, I was more than underwhelmed by the Dirk Gently novels and the last two installments of H2G2.  So when this posthumously published volume came out in 2002, I had no desire to read it.  Fifteen years later, at the prompting of a 

sweet nostalgic twinge for Douglas Adams, I tracked down The Salmon of Doubt.

I am glad I did, because I became acquainted with a side of Douglas Adams I did not know: Adams the non-fiction writer.  This book contains a large selection of essays and writings on various matters, such as science, technology, religion and education.  Each is written with a great deal of clarity and varying amounts of seriousness and humour, and each demonstrates that Adams was a man capable of deep thought. 

The The Salmon of Doubt also includes some short fiction as well as a draft of the unfinished Dirk Gently novel from which this volume derives its name.  These are less successful works.

Overall verdict: Mostly Serious.

The Inner Reaches of Outer Space by Joseph Campbell

Originally published in 1986, this is the last work of Joseph Campbell published in his lifetime.  It consists of three essays.

In the first essay, Campbell examines human history to date.  He finds that humans are very concerned with nourishing themselves, reproducing themselves and acquiring and accumulating power and territory.  As for compassion, he finds that this is something extended only to people in the in-group, whether it be village or nation.  Campbell points out that we live in the space age but our myths are still those of the bronze age, still myths of in-groups. A space age mythology, he feels, must be one that involves universal compassion.  Our planet is too small now for in-groups.

In the second essay, Campbell looks at what myths are and how they can be applied correctly.  Myths, he thinks, are something that gets denoted by language and images of the phenomenal world but which connote something that transcends the phenomenal world and cannot be described by language or represented by images.  He calls this thing eternity.

In the final essay, "The Way of Art", Campbell compares the aesthetic theories of Aristotle, James Joyce and ancient India.  Art, he says, is something which can generate mythologies, and it can lift us out of our limited understanding of the world and put us in touch with the great mystery of existence.

The Inner Reaches of Outer Space is not as easy to read as some of Campbell's other work, but it an impressive work of thought and scholarship.  I enjoyed it greatly.

Publishing details: The Inner Reaches of Outer Space - Metaphor as Myth and as Religion by Joseph Campbell (New World Press, Novato C.a., 2002. pp.146)

Myths of Light by Joseph Campbell

Pure genius.  Joseph Campbell is the Deep Thought of mythography and comparative religious studies.  He has the knack of comprehending the important and complex questions and answers of life, the universe and everything and transmitting his findings in a supremely entertaining and understandable form.

Campbell begins by relating the Hindu story "The Humbling of Indra", in which the top god of the pantheon has his colossal ego lanced by a small child.  We learn how ego is delusion, and how everything we need to be happy is really within us.

The rest of the book is an examination of the three main religions of the East - Jainism, Hinduism and Buddhism - as seen through their theology and their mythology.  He also explains the social and spiritual development of the individual by way of the several yogic philosophies: raja, hatha, jnana and bhakti (breathing, stretching, thinking, adoring).  If you have ever wondered what chakras are all about, this is the book for you. 

There is a challenge for western readers, especially those from Christian, Jewish and Muslim backgrounds: these myths are not about good vs evil, they are about being and non-being.  It is an idea about religion and spirituality that can seem very alien to some of us.

Sounds daunting? Don't forget that Campbell makes it easy for his readers.  Even so, this is a book to be read slowly for several reasons.  One is to savour the prose.  Another is to take time to consider the images and ideas Campbell describes.  A third is assimilate the message - bliss: if you don't get it here (and it is within you), you ain't gonna get anywhere - and it is a message well worth the effort.

Publishing details: Myths of Light - Eastern Metaphors of the Eternal (New World Library, Novato Ca., 2003. pp.166)