Three tales of awakening Consciousness

This is just one of those random things that've caught my attention whenever I've stumbled across them in my reading or viewing and I thought it would be an interesting thing to take a look at.
Be warned though. It's going to get a teeny bit dark.

It concerns three interpretations in three different properties concerning the time when, and this is provided you follow along with evolution theory for the moment, mankind, in earlier form or not, first became aware of his self.

Three moments for the awakening of man's consciousness. 2 are semi-positive and one is very much negative.

Coming fresh out of the review for Something Wicked This Way Comes it seems right to put this one before the rest. It's a positive little story, or at least more positive than the others, and in the book itself its introduction is mostly odd as it comes from a man who is deeply introspective and as such has made up his mind about life's purpose.

"First things first. let's bone up on history. If men had wanted to stay bad forever, they could have, agreed?Agreed. Did we stay out in the fields with the beasts? No. In the water with the barracuda? No. somewhere we let go of the hot gorilla's paw. Somewhere we turned in our carnivore's teeth and started chewing blades of grass. We been working mulch as much as blood, into our philosophy, for quite a few life-times. Since then we measure ourselves up the scale from apes, but not half so high as angels.

It was a nice new idea and we were afraid we'd lose it, so we put it on paper and built buildings like this one around it. And we been going in and out of these buildings chewing it over, that one new sweet blade of grass, trying to figure how it all started, when we made the move, when we decided to be different.

I suppose one night hundreds of thousands of years ago in a cave by a night fire when one of those shaggy men wakened to gaze over the banked coals at his woman, his children, and thought of their being cold, dead, gone forever.
Then he must have wept. And he put out his hand in the night to the woman who must die some day and to the children who must follow her.

And for a little bit next morning, he treated them somewhat better, for he saw that they, like himself, had the seed of night in them.
And he felt that seed like slime in his pulse, splitting, making more against the day they would multiply his body into darkness.
So that man, the first one, knew what we know now: Our hour is short, eternity is long."

So in telling this tale, he gives voice to his understanding of life's futility. Nothing lasts for ever and sorrow is inevitably coming. A bleak end to everything. Nihilism. There is, however, one thing he spends time on and one thing that he does deem worthy of merit and it is something that shines through in his story.

"With this knowledge came pity and mercy, so we spared others for the later, more intricate, more mysterious benefits of love...

...What could he say that would make sense to them? could he say love was, above all, shared experience?..

..We have common cause against the night...

..We love what we know, we love what we are."

The love people carry for one another, the love between family members, something that is above all, A shared experience. Something one shares, something of another that is also in oneself; ultimately still something selfish. But a connection ascribing deeper meaning to something that has none. The appearance of meaning and purpose where all is once again illusion. But a welcome illusion nonetheless. A reason to keep going.

But despite this aspect of his welcome positivity, this is still about consciousness so...

"So, in sum, what are we? we are the creatures that know and know too much."

-----

Another one of the tales I wanted to look at comes from Ligotti's Conspiracy Against the Human Race. Oddly it's been nominated for the Bram Stoker award. I think someone might not've got the point.

"For ages they had been without lives of their own. The whole of their being was open to the world and nothing divided them from the rest of creation.
How long they had thus flourished none of them knew.
Then something began to change. It happened over unremembered generations. The signs of a revision without forewarning were being writ ever more deeply into them. As their species moved foreward, they began crossing boundaries whose very existence they never imagined.
After nightfall, they looked up at a sky filled with stars and felt themselves small and fragile in the vastness. Soon they began to see everything in a way they never had in olden times.
When they found one of their own lying still and stiff, they now stood around the body as if there were something they should do that they had never done before. It was then they began to take bodies that were still and stiff to distant places so they could not find their way back to them.

But even after they had done this, some within their group did see those bodies again, often standing silent in the moonlight or loitering sad-faced just beyond the glow of a fire. Everything had changed once they had lives of their own and knew they had lives of their own."

Here we are again with a group of newly awakened primates, looking up at the stars in dawning comprehension of how small they really are. How little they themselves matter.
With a dawning awareness of death and what it means.

And here too, the texts' 'They', begin to love.

When they see the shapes of lost ones beyond the fire, sad-faced and lonely, they are of course conjuring up images of their dead ones out of the sorrow arising from the loss of a loved one.

Oddly re-reading this segment now also called to mind another memory.

Someday they'll have secrets, someday they'll have dreams.

-----

Though I've added some relevant tales on the sly here and there, now we come to the third of the stories I wanted to talk about. One of the three overt ones that speak of the time before the thinking man comes into the knowledge of his own thinking.

'...Been that way since one monkey looked at the sun and told the other monkey "He said for you to give me your fucking share."...'


Huh, I thought that was gonna be a little longer.
And of course, it actually is. This story has a 1000 connotations because of its position in and relevancy to True Detective Season 1. You just can't go and name them all.

It's Rustin Cohle's views and experiences that inform everything about this story.
As such, spoilers for True Detective season 1.

The first thing that is apparent in this story is the unfiltered, negative nihilism. There is nothing redeemable about humanity in this story. It is remarkable that as smalle as it seems it actually says alot. It is undisguisedly a story with a basis on greed and violence, designating the human race as 'monkeys', imbuing them from the get-go with swearing and obscenity. There is no mention whatsoever of Love.

It's a harsh contrast with the other tales and it begs the question. Why is there no filter on Rust's nihilism? Where is the necessary positivity to make these ideas palatable?

Is it the fact that Rust, at the end of the tv-show, seems to find an eventual catharsis in his glimpse to the workings of the universe (Though he is in truth lying to himself again. It is what he does.), that the show can get away with a bleak statement like this?
Is it because it's easier to dismiss these ideas because as they're in a tv-show they stem from a visual point of view, and are thereby easier to dismiss?

In an out, make way make way for the very next scene, of deep dialogue and the strumming of snares and then to firing of guns, and action, make way make way make way?

There's no real opportunity to let these things sink in because we are given no time to soak them up. There's always something next and though the tv doesn't pause, the ideas do. and when they do, they fade away in the general clamour of sensory stimulation.

It is in part because, In the written word, in books, these ideas are insidious and they reverberate around without pause and maybe an alleviating pressure is somewhat necessary. The methodical writer can also not think of these themes without giving every aspect of the theme a look, and in turn they become a part of the whole, inextricable.

Or maybe these tales, taking a hypothetical caveman, who still has hope, who views a possible coming loss of his family. simply must be in harsh contrast to the modern caveman, squatting drunk in his cave , who has already been forced to face the terrible bleakness head-on, who has already lost his hope and has already hit the flat wall of reality and who has to go on living, despite having already have had the worst happen to him; the loss of his family, the loss of  love.

When Rustin thinks he connects to his daughter at the end of Season 1. The love returns. and he becomes a new man, barely recognizable from how we have seen him thus far.

-----

The answer to nihilism, going by these three interpretations, is love. A panacea to the bleak introspection to the fate of all life.

But, inescapably, through time or other unforeseen calamities, love will inevitably fall away and we'll all end up staring at the dark doorway once again, without surcease, until we ourselves step through it.

Something Wicked this way Comes, Ray Bradbury. Terror 8 edition

Some mild spoilers, particularily for the character of Charles Halloway.

Review: Something Wicked This Way Comes, Ray Bradbury. Fantasy Masterwork edition

In Green Town, Illinois, it is the week before Halloween, where Jim Nightshade and Will Halloway meet a travelling salesman, selling arcane lighting rods and making wild claims of a terrible coming storm. Will's Father, the introspective Charles Halloway, catches a glimpse of a man posting flyers in town advertising for 'Cooger and Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show' while through the streets familiar scents drift on the wind evoking memories of a better time.

The boys, aged 14, born minutes apart with only midnight dividing them, are nonetheless as far apart as two boys can be. Despite this, they are inseperable and a haunting melody will draw them both from their beds to witness the arrival of a dark carnival. The unnatural events that they will behold there, with glimpses of terrible power and the promise of an answer to childhood wishes, will set the boys off on a dangerous and desperate adventure that will test their friendship to its limit. 

Because the October people have come again, and with the carnival comes terror and darkness and a tempting ride on the carousel.

Title and origins

The title derives its origins from Shakespeare's Macbeth. The three witches at the start of the play are brewing whatever witches brew in their cottages on lonely nights and lonely heaths when one of them states;

"By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes."

It points to that whatever comes next is of its innermost nature wicked. Of course then Macbeth shows up and as the 3 witches then prophecy that he'll be king of Scotland, they in fact then serve as the primary impetus for the developing plot and the downward spiral of Macbeth himself. They really are one of the prime examples of why time-travelling stuff or prophecying doesn't work with foreknowledge that has an actual hand in the narrative itself as nothing might have happened had they kept their mouths shut, self-fullfilling prophecies and... eh, was I going anywhere with this? Anyway...

In Macbeth it points to the coming of the darkest and bloodiest of Shakespeare's tragedies but also to the character of Macbeth itself, who over the course of the narrative loses his nobility, doing generally wicked deeds of murder and bloodshed to eventually dwell in paranoia and madness.

In Something Wicked this Way Comes it points as well to the coming of a dark tale (for its time), in themes if not in execution. It also points to the coming of the October people to the small-american town of Illinois and how their natures are irredeemably and irreversably wicked.

Inspired, in part, by the magnificent The Circus of Doctor Lao and Bradbury's own meeting with a coterie of travelling circus performers as a child, which honestly is a tale interesting enough of itself, Something Wicked is a blend of fantasy, horror and the loss of childhood innocence story;
a story that usually depicts, or tries to depict boyhood's self-righteous claim to hope and the promise for the future and the magic that goes along with it, along with the joys of untested and thus seemingly unbreakable friendship.

I suppose the 'loss of innocence' story is so popular and revered because it is an easily identifiable parable of growing up, but with every traumatic mishap and formative event on the way to adulthood condensed into a single cohesive narrative, usually even compressed into a single calamitous act in the story's climax or at the start as the tale's driving force. It's so popular because everyone can find that child somewhere inside of them, to have that moment of transcendence, from child to adult, reappear provides an opportunity for melancholy reminiscing.

Of course the novel has an extra interesting aspect where it asks certain characters that if given the choice, if they would go back to that time.
But certain things can not be undone, and the wisdom gathered over a lifetime still has a certain weight, and we can never truly go back to the time of our youth, not in our mind and not to our place in that bygone world. Innocence once lost is gone forever and life will have moved irrevocably on.

Problems

There were some problems for me with this book. I'll talk about them first so can talk about the good stuff later.

The main problem for me is the incredibly corny ending. Originally written as a screenplay for a movie, in a time when movies were not as they have become since, it's very obvious that it was conceived as such. The magic that would be present in seeing it depicted on screen isn't present here and only serves as a harsh contrast with the seriousness of the novel present up until that point.

I won't give spoilers and only say that it really annoyed me and that I've already given some of my thoughts on it here; Something Wicked This Way Comes, thoughts on the ending.

Looking back at when I did that post I'm amazed it took me this long to actually write the novel's review. Also, that interpretation manages to give back some of the good feeling that the novel originally gave me, though I sincerely doubt that the meta-explanation was Bradbury's original intention, but damn me if that wouldn't be smart.

There's another problem, and it's one you'll find in most every other review on this novel. either as a centerpiece or as a begrudgingly given afterthought.

Ray Bradbury's writing style.

His style is a prime example of why the english language is so beloved. A language where a bunch of words can just be thrown together to create layers of meaning, or simply to convey and inspire the summoning up of moods and images by pasting words unto one another.

But on the other hand; this is flowery prose that even Tolkien would think was too much.

It is overly prosaic, overly crafted and moulded with desperate meaning. It's good in short bursts but as someone who is not a native english speaker Bradbury's prose can be at times, simply put, aggravating. I'm assuming that a native reader would be easily swept up in the flow of his writing patterns but this really doesn't and presumably can't happen with me. Time and again I had to stop, go back, and re-read whole paragraphs because of how of the mark his style sometimes was.

There seems to be an inability to choose and select what is best and getting rid of the less than perfect phrases. The continuous use of more, if less would be better.
I've said it before in different contexts and different writers but, it's like he's throwing everything at the wall, seeing what sticks and what plops on the ground and then he ends up using it all anyway. The effort, good in small doses, because it's used in its entirety, turns on itself and diminishes the whole by its sheer extravagance.

That's mostly my response when it's bad.

But, you know, at times it does manage to hit the good spot. when the prose, progressing steadily into poetry, glides along naturally and manages to draw me in. When the intention, restrained in words, is looking at its sentences with poetry as the end goal, and then in turn, it will find in me a welcoming resting place.

But, overall, for me the bad mostly outweighs the good, because there are a hundred novels that do this better, and very few that can be as of the mark as this book.

As of this time I've read Fahrenheit 451 and now, Something Wicked This Way Comes. Both have, because of their style, not hit me in any meaningful way. Though the themes connected very well, particularily in these times for myself in the case of Something Wicked This Way Comes and for the world in general for Fahrenheit, It's just the style that will keep me from going back for a possible re-read.

I've also read in a Penguin Horror collection; The Fog Horn. Which I thought was excellent but at the time was dissappointed with because it was not even close to being horror. So then, for various reasons dissappointed in his full length work, But very satisfied with the one short story that've read of his.

Themes and Characters

But despite the few problems there's also alot of good stuff to be found.

This is a novel with themes of fear. On the one hand the mundane and worldy fear of change and growing up and growing old and every regret that goes hand in hand with that, on the other; the fear that arises from the dark and of the things that might dwell in it.

There's longing and there's regret. Of an old man's fearful heart and the cost and weight of living. Of children's uncertainty in the face of growing up and the things they can't control, the ways of dealing with that and how that is represented in the differing viewpoints of Will and Jim.

Of death and loneliness and an ever present sense of melancholy in the face of those things.

But there are also themes of friendship, love, humanity, the power of laughter and joy for life's simple things.

As you can guess at this point I found myself very much in synch with the character of Charles Halloway; his musings (though not his ramblings), his fears, his worries, (though not his regrets, but the possibility of their eventual coming is there,) his desire to do good and recognition of his own fallibility and his mounting despair at the seeming insurmountibility of it all; all these things I imagine can be found in most of us. Specifically in the people given to thought and introspection.
All in all, a character that provoked a specific introspective response from someone who is already very introspective.
I recognized alot of myself in him and it somehow feels like a warning.
And also maybe an admonishment; go and live a little.

And the concept of the October People is an interesting one, though not as well developed as I would like there are nonetheless enough moments in the novel that invite speculation and interpretation involving origins, nature and a place for these beings in the grand scheme.
Their nature reminded me very much of Dan Simmons psychic vampire novel Carrion Comfort, which is way more bad-ass than that sounds, I assure you.
It also reminded me of another true vampire novel; Fevre Dream by George Martin. But the background of the bad beasties was way more developed in there and managed to have an actual tangible weight to them.

Stray Thoughts: White hat, Black hat

Charles Halloway asks the boys early on in the book what type of book they prefer.

P 14

'You need a white hat or a black hat book?'

'A long time ago I had to decide myself, which color I'd wear'

'Which did you pick?'

It's an important question and it doesn't just point to your tastes in literature. It also tells you of your nature, your leanings and your world-view. It's a question that is interesting to ask of oneself. But really shouldn't be so difficult if you know what the implications are.

Annoying Michael Dirda and a Lead-in to the Terror 8 edition after the jump.

Run-up to Something Wicked This Way Comes(Or how the ending can just ruin your reading experience despite the enjoyable road to get there, or maybe not.)

I just finished Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes.

What an utterly silly ending.

And that silliness, the juvenile antics, the desperate laughter against the coming dark, is, of course, the point. "...We can't take them seriously...".

But when a scene doesn't connect with the reader that scene can only come off as bad. Badly and deeply silly. foolish and corny and ill-advised. There's a complete disconnect between the emotional investment in the various understandable and quite likeable characters, the various chapters of really well paced build-up of tension (which is a really hard thing to get right and yet there were several memorable tense scenes throughout the book). But then suddenly at the resolution its hoped for catharsis is then made a mockery of.

I feel let down.

By the end we're meant to laugh or cry in joy, in relief at the passing of danger and the end to mounting tension.
A heartbreaking moment in which we and the characters choose to give over to joy rather than fear. A hopeful message and a good one too. Like many lessons in the book, it is one to live your life by. The problem is that they, in what is a fraught and hopeless moment, the characters, deliberately make the choice to become happy in order to change the ending.

In a desperate and dark situation you can not just choose to be happy. To genuinely laugh, joyfully, in the face of your own despair is almost ludicrous, to laugh in such a situation is to tempt madness. And I'm not talking about wry laughter in recognition of some irony.. I'm talking about genuine Happy Joy, in full knowledge that that joy will change the outcome of whatever happens next. Knowing that without your positivity you get a bad ending. We're treading close to a paradox here. Belief as a tool powerful only in proportion to the power of your believing. And you, a rational being, knowing it.

But there's more.
At that point, in that scene, the writing is just as strained as the decision of the characters to be joyful.

Bradbury's writing and in particular his dialogue, already overly crafted, gets to be even more so. Dialogue in general is a hard thing to get right, but he seems to go an extra mile here; stunted sentences induced by despair and near-panic, juvenile expository exclamations. accompanied to the singing of several corny songs.

For other people this might very well be perfect. It just didn't connect how it should have with me.

And yet, it was close.
I know it was. I could almost feel it.


So this ending at first glance seemed like it just ruined my good reading experience up until this point.
But then, maybe I found something else in this scene.

The scene isn't genuinely touching, it isn't happy, it doesn't easily give rise to joy. And maybe it's not supposed to.

Just like the characters, we actually have to work for it. Deliberately create that emotional response. You have to strain for it to achieve it, strain to accept it. And then like our heroes, suddenly you deserve the happy ending.

In the end,
maybe that is the genius of this scene.

A perfect parallell of intent between reader and characters.



Or maybe I'm just emotionally dead.