Swords, Sorcery, and Socialism - A Canticle for Leibowitz: Part 2

Episode Date: October 25, 2021

The 2nd half of our discussion of the Walter M. Miller sci-fi classic. We talk about how this would be a perfect story for the Coen Brothers, Catholic symbology, and how governments will inevitably kill us all. Damn the writing is good though. Follow the show @SwordsNSocPod or email us at [e-mail]: @Himbo_AnarchistKetho: @StupidPuma69 patreon.com/swordsandsocialismEmail: [e-mail] The Show: @SwordsNSocPodAsha: @Herbo_AnarchistKetho: @MusicalPuma69

So one thing I want to talk about that sort of ties the overarching theme of cyclical nature to sort of the next theme of the symbolism of the book is the vultures. So vultures obviously are symbols for death because they feast on carrion and dead bodies and all that. Specifically in desert settings, you know, vultures have always sort of had this connotation. Through that, you can clearly deduce that they also sort of represent rebirth because they eat dead things to, you know, recycle it so that nature has more things. Very directly at the end of section one and the end of section two, he references vultures eating dead people. Eating dead bodies in section one, it's eating Francis, I believe.

Yes. Well, they try they try to eat Francis, but Benjamin, Benjamin buries him. But and then in section two, they eat the dead people that were fleeing like some soldiers in the poet. the people that were fleeing a land, like some soldiers in the poet. But then he has this little, almost like copy pasted section from section one to section two, where he talks about, it suddenly switches to the vultures point of view, essentially, where it says, you know, the vultures ate the flesh, the vultures fed their babies. Life was good. They lived on the wind.

Nature life was bountiful for them. It was as it should be. They had babies. Those babies ate. And so nature continues until. And now we're in the new section. And so the vultures here are clearly like a very surface symbolism of the cyclical nature of life but by repeating that section itself back like end of chapter end of chapter he's sort of building that he's building

the cycle into the narrative the only time it changes is at the end of section three after the second nuclear holocaust where where it's it's sea creatures he talks about like the shrimp and then the fish they eat the shrimp and the shark that eats the fish and eventually the shrimp and the fish get sick and the shark has to retreat to deep waters to survive and they went very and as opposed to the previous two times where it says the vultures ate well and lived well, the book ends with the shark having a very hungry season. Yeah. The very last line of the book is he was very hungry that season. Because everything's dead. And it represents the restarting of the cycle again, whereas previously the previous two sections ending was the buzzards eating well and living well, because nature was as far as they were concerned.

And God and nature were providing for them with lots of dead animals and people. And I, you know, again, it sort of does the two stage thing of being directly symbolic themselves. And by repeating that sort of passage across time he's he he's also doing it within his narrative which i thought was pretty neat also a useful transition between sections because he can just say yada yada there were generations of vultures suddenly it's 600 years later um are you like looking for that section for one of those sections oh no i i'm just i'm looking at the last passage again. And he was very hungry.

Yeah. Well, it's, it's the whole, every, everything is like the starship just took off and then it kind of quickly moves through what's effectively months of time very quickly. Yeah.

That's what he does at the end of a section is he just sort of accelerates yeah like into time it's like there were shrimp and the whiting that fed on the shrimp and the shark that munched on the whiting and found them admirable uh a white a wind came across the ocean sweeping with it a pall of fine white ash the ash fell into the sea and into the breakers the breakers washed dead shrimp ashore with the driftwood then they washed up the whiting the shark swam out to the deepest waters and brooded in the old clean currents he was very hungry that season that's it's like i i don't know such a stark way to end the book i don't know it's such a good it's such a good way to end the book yeah it really is nice it's so neat

like it just again i don't i i can't praise enough his writing style like the way he constructs his narrative and the way he writes is very good oh yeah and it's it's it's kind of like this book is actually pretty funny in a way it does have it has fun moments it does where i don't think it's i it's like a it's like a It has fun moments. It does. I don't think it's, it's like a,

it's like a, it's a weird. Yeah. Like even on the back of the book, it's like seriously funny, stunning and tragic. Blah, blah, blah.

Obviously it's selling the book, but yeah, I'd say the jokes in there aren't like, are not characters telling jokes. No, it's the novel. It's like we use like it's ironic humor. Yeah.

In that you look at the thing and you're like, oh, yeah, that sucks. Yeah. It's it's dark. It's dark. It's like it's like laughing at a Coen Brothers movie. Yeah. We're like like and not like they're direct comedies. It's like the it's like, you know, like the three times you get to laugh during No Country for Old Men.

Yeah. Like nothing in the movie like none of the characters in the movie are telling jokes but there are moments in the movie where you as the audience are like it's it's it's laughing i mean obviously even though stuff like the ballad of buster Scruggs there is like comedy in it it's like it's like the comedy is all it's all just in the presentation of this of this kind of deeply depressing thing I don't know if I made

that comparison I do I do think that's kind of an apt one between the sort of the Coen brothers more serious movies and then like and sort of the tenor with which this text is presented are fairly similar. Like, especially I'm thinking

of No Country for Old Men where like the entire theme is that the world things just happen and there's nothing you can do about it. Or like the character of anton chigurh is essentially fate happening yes not fate in like the everyone has a direct destiny or something but like fate isn't just the the way the world does not care about you and things are going to happen and your whole lot is to deal with it that's kind of the feeling you get from

chemical for lebowitz where it's like yeah things are happening all the only thing you can do is decide how to deal with it and then the humor comes from like the ironic humor of the situation as presented to us the audience nothing is humorous to the characters that are experiencing it it is humorous to us the humor actually in a way and i know this is probably kind of a bad comparison but i think is apt because it was also a writer who fought in world war ii and was deeply scarred by it like i think of some of the humor in like slaughterhouse five like i know i know it's not like slaughterhouse five is obviously much more directly trying to be funny um at points

but like this is where i show my ignorance and i've never read anything by vonnegut but but vonnegut has a similar like oh that's just just kind of telling it bluntly and but the way he tells it even though it's not a funny thing you chuckle a little bit not it's it's never a it's more of a hmm but you then remember later as being funnier than like i i i kind of call i i kind of refer to that as the haha that sucks yeah humor where stuff happens you know like and and funny enough now that i'm thinking about it i could draw plenty of comparisons i think in certain moments with like the kind of futile the futility of it. One of the most famous lines from Slaughterhouse-Five is that in like the intro, Vonnegut himself is writing as his own narrator.

And he sends, he's like, I wrote a letter to another old war buddy of mine asking, you know, explaining to him what I wanted to do. And he's like, why do you, why are you writing an anti anti-war novel might as well write an anti-glacier novel um where it's like it's so inevitable what's the point in saying in in like releasing something being anti this inevitable thing and which is literally what we were just talking about with Thontadio's outlook. And the repeated message throughout Slaughterhouse-Five is that whenever someone dies, it is always immediately succeeded by the words, so it goes. Like, every time something or someone dies throughout the book at any time, it just says, it finds a a way to fit so it goes into the next sentence i feel like there's probably something about a generation of people who had to fight in world war ii that came out with an outlook on uh death and the inevitability of

all the inevitability of said death that uh had a bit of an impact on their brains yeah because like again the more the more i'm now thinking about it i don't know how i didn't make these connections then because slaughterhouse five is literally the book i read right before i read this like how did that happen i see that we've each sort of made a connection our own way because now the more that i think about it i could see this as like a series of shorts directed by the coens yeah could you Could you see the Coens directing? I could absolutely. If anyone was going to try and do Canticle for Leibovitz on film. Put Walton

Goggins as Francis. Like in the first section. Like just this hapless apprentice who's like just trying to tell what he saw. I mean bet you read it and then everyone's taking his words wildly out of context and running with him and he's like no that's not what i said and everyone's like this miracle has occurred and he's like i didn't say it was a miracle but

nobody cares what he thinks yeah like you know and it's like it's very much people dealing with a world that happens with or without their input. And in the end, it actually doesn't matter that much if they participated or not. The things are happening anyway. I think that the Coen brothers are obviously well consumed. They've consumed a lot to be able to be in the position they're in. I would not put it past them to have read this at some point because like there's enough weird supernaturally shit in some of their movies where you're like, okay, they've definitely read outside of like,

there's like realistic fiction. Like they've read fantasy. If you're super into like that sort of movie style breakdown and a podcast that I was influenced by quite a bit and like sort of how I wanted to formulate this one. There's a podcast called lessons from the screenplay, which is also a YouTube channel. They also make movies and videos on YouTube, but they also do a podcast where they do essentially the sort of breakdowns with movies that we're trying to do here with books.

And they talk about the Coen's a couple of times. They talk about the big Lebowski. They talk about no country for old men and stuff. And when they talk about the idea that like in the Coen brothers movies, there's what they call like the filmmaking gods where like there are, can be supernatural stuff, either like explicitly or implicitly, but that's just sort of part of the world like in the big lebowski it's the narrator like the you know at the bar like he talks

directly to camera but he also talks to the dude you know in like hudsucker proxy and stuff there's like directly like magical shit right yeah and even in the ballad of buster scruggs there's directly magical shit where he's just flying off into the sky. Yeah. In No Country for Old Men, there's not any directly magical stuff, but you could. But like Anton Chigurh himself is unnatural. It's like magical realism. Yeah.

And there's like a whole. It's a tangent, but I feel like if you enjoy Coen Brothers movies, you will like this book. But I don't think that's a stretch that if you're a Coen fan. It even has the same, everything kind of happens, but nothing kind of happens.

Yeah, it literally does. Like a lot of stuff happens to the people that it live, but like whether it happened to them or not, it sort of doesn't matter. And you know what, that's actually the next point I want to make. If we're going to get directly back into the book when I was talking, there's something, I don't know, I called it symbolism and coincidences, but I don't think it's quite it. It's what I want to call a game of like intergenerational telephone,

but how things are passed down through the years. And this connects to what we were just saying about things happening and really not mattering. So section one, we've referenced that Benjamin shows up, interacts with Francis. Francis finds the shelter, right? Immediately, as soon as people hear about the story, everybody starts embellishing the story, like adding all these details that weren't there before that Francis never said. And Francis's whole, like one of his main things through the whole first section is combating all this extraneous nonsense that gets added to his story without his consent, nonsense that gets added to his story without his consent. Right. By the time you get to section two,

the story of Francis and his meeting with Benjamin is a legend in the Abbey. Like they, they know about Francis, brother Francis, like they know he was a monk and they're generally aware of the story of him meeting St. Lebowitz on the road. And so the things that he didn't want to be remembered about his story are the things that are remembered. And like his story has passed down in this altered state. So whatever his intention with the story he was trying to tell, the story that got told is a different one. And by the time you get to the third section,

they at one point referenced the idea of Francis. They refer to him as like St. Francis. They're like, I don't know if he was ever officially canonized, but like we might've been, and you just read the first section where he was just some schmuck. Yeah. He was just, he was just some idiot. Like he was just he was just some idiot like he was literally the dumbest person in the abbey and then like by the by the third by the third section they're like yeah he was a saint who who like met saint lebowitz and performed miracles and you're like as you know i i i only wish that as the best for my poor boy. Like I, I'm going to be honest just to everyone listening. He's probably my favorite character in the book just because I identify with him way too strongly, but it's like he,

he makes you feel so much a mixture of pity and just hope for this poor boy. You want him to get what he wants. You really want him to succeed. Because he doesn't want much. He really doesn't want much. He just wants to be a monk. He really just wants to be a monk. And for people to believe him when he says a thing happened.

And then like, in the end, he does get what he wants. The church believes him. They canonize Leibowitz. He spends his entire life working on this goddamn tapestry, this reimagining of these An illuminated script. People have seen like illumination scripts. Like that's what they used to do in the olden days where they'd like add gold foil and shit

to everything. He spends 15 years essentially working on this illuminated script and then on his way to New Rome, it just gets stolen from him by like a highway bandit. And then he comes back to wait for them to try and get the thing back. And he gets shot in the head with an arrow. New Rome gives him the money because they're like, we feel bad for you, my son. We'll give you the money to ransom back the thing you worked so hard on. And then while he's waiting, he just gets murdered.

And you're like, oh. Does the tapestry ever show up again? No. No. you work so hard on and then while he's waiting he just gets murdered and you're like oh does that does the tapestry ever show up again no no oh god that would have been so great to like pop up again for them to like find it in the abbey eventually no it never comes back again that's so i'm so so sad this is the thing about like the the dark funny things, because it is a little bit like ironic and just like, Oh, he did. He did get what he wanted. He spent his whole life as a monk. Leibowitz got canonized. Everyone believes him. He got respect for his illuminated script. Like the Pope told him it was dope.

Yeah. He just gets killed by a highwayman um and they didn't even know what it was no no no they just they didn't give a shit they're like oh this is like this looks kind of pretty they're like it looks expensive um so my point was to this intergenerational game of telephone it happens and you hear it referenced with a bunch of other things. Each section will like obliquely reference events that came before, but they're always distorted. So this in the first section, the story they're telling about the deluge is distorted because they referred all the world leaders as princes. Like nuclear weapons are just called Satan. Like it's satan a nuclear explosion is

satan falling as in like satan falling from paradise and like so like they're telling weird word for fallout like it's like a like the fire that burns within or some shit um yeah well yeah they've got like a fire the fire because they know it burns you, but you can't see it. It's radiation. So like they know what happened, but they can't describe it accurately. So they reference things kind of weird. By section two quite describe what happened with the pilgrim direct, you know what I mean? Correctly like, you know what I mean? Like details are hazy and they've started to fill them in with their own inventions,

which also happens in the miniscule when Francis first meets the pilgrim. By the time he gets back to the Abbey, people are filling in details that weren't there. By the time he gets a part three, they referenced stuff that happened in part two, but they do it wrong. I think one of the more fun little jabs the author puts in there, and I don't know if you picked up on this. So in section two, the main scholar is Thantatio. He's the guy, and he references a bunch of the other scholars he works with

in part three when they're talking about who gave the poet's eye to Hannigan they don't mention Thaddeo at all they name other scholars as the preeminent scholars that came to the abbey and studied the manuscripts in part in part in part three, they say, I don't know which one it was scholar X or scholar Y who were coworkers of, of Thaddeo, but were lesser than Thaddeo at the time, but 600 years in the future, they're the ones people remember.

Nobody remembers Thon Thaddeo. That's sad. It's a harsh, it's a harsh little dig he puts in there because you're supposed to disagree with Thaddeo, Taddeo that's sad it's a harsh little dig he puts in there because you're supposed to disagree with Thaddeo whatever so like if you find it in part Thon Thon Thaddeo

Thon Thon I think is a title because that's what he calls all the scholars but in part three when Abbott Xerchi is having a conversation about the glass eye that the Hannigans have, which was the poet's eye, which again, they get the details of that all wrong. They say a scholar brought it back from the Abbey to the Hannigans. They say the wrong scholars.

They say the wrong scholars. And I think that's another another representation of the fact that once you get to the future, you have no control over what how how your story is passed on, like how events are remembered is completely different. Yes. Whether you like it or not. And it's sort of that inevitable progression of time that it doesn't matter how much you struggle to keep your story straight. That it doesn't matter how much you struggle to keep your story straight. It progresses without you. And people aren't going to remember it the way you wanted them to. There's a lot of the direct symbolism. Like if you know all your Christian stuff, there's all sorts of direct Christian references and symbols and metaphors sprinkled throughout the book. I can't go through them all.

I don't even remember them all. The strongest, the strongest ones are in the third part. Symbols and metaphors sprinkled throughout the book. I can't go through them all. I don't even remember them all. The strongest ones are in the third part. The third part has a lot. Because the third part is honestly of the three, the third part is almost the most religious of the three sections. Yeah, because at the very end, at the very end especially, it's like the literally and I do want to point this out this is actually I think a really strong image in my head is when the bombs hit whatever

the woman's name is I'm forgetting her name right now Mrs. Grails slash Rachel and Xerchi are in the confessional yeah they're in confessional during the nuclear when the nuclear bombs and and there's a there's i think i honestly think the image is great it's kind of terrifying

but it's great where the light inside the box is like daylight and and he's just like that's that's like i don't know that's such a great image is is in confessional. But that also means that the entire last portion of the book has a lot of Catholic references to sacrament, to things like that, that are just for those of us who are not particularly religious. Have you kind of got a partial story? Even those of us that are religious and just aren't Christian. And the aren't yet aren't like Catholics. But like, again, the third section is the most religiously heavy because, I mean, to be fair, it's revelation, right? Yeah, he literally gets baptized by the second day of a woman.

By Rachel. Yeah. The miraculous conception. So I will say he sets this up beautifully throughout the book in section one. He taught, they talk about mutants. There are, which again, fallout fans, there are genetic mutants in the world. They're just, they're a thing that everyone is aware that exists in the first, in the first book, they're sort of like they hide away from society because people think they're gross and weird.

By section two, there's less of them. By section three, they still have them, but they're just like an accepted part of society. They're like, yeah, some people are born with mutations because all the radiation from the last time this happened. It's just a thing. So it's set up throughout the story that there are people with mutations. It's set up throughout the story that there are people with mutations. So you're not that put on edge in section three when you meet Mrs. Mrs.

Grails, who is an old woman who has a second head growing on her shoulder. That is like a baby's head, like a child's head. But it's never spoken or opened its eyes or anything. So like it's weird. But like within the story, you know it's not weird because there have been mutants the whole time. But then what he does with that is, after the nuclear holocaust happens, when

Abbott Xerchi is, like, laying with his body pinned under rubble, holding a little jar full of communion wafers, Mrs. Grail appears, despite the fact that she should probably be dead, even though her old lady, Mrs. Grailhead, is now sort of like unconscious and withering, the Rachelhead is alive and conscious and in this state of like pure innocence.

And it's heavily implied that this is essentially analogous to a miraculous conception in that this new head rachel is born without sin and then he tries to baptize her and rachel's like oh hell no i don't need that i'll baptize you well no then she doesn't baptize him but she she gives him communion yeah she she serves in a communion way for before he dies which if you think about it is even more meaningful to a catholic than to most because it's it's the literal consumption it's not it's it's literal transubstantiation like that literally is his body so right it's like the immaculate is this is this what benjamin was looking for holy shit am i like is it like clicking that like benjamin is gonna find her and be like she's the one so that you talked about francis is your favorite character

let's talk about my favorite character benjamin eliezer bar joshua well that's about as it's his full name that is about as like as jewish as you can possibly be about as anglicized hebrew as you can get yes so they only give his full name in the second part in part two is the only time he's given his full name uh because he's actually friends with uh uh abbott don paulo um and don paulo goes to hang out with him so let's's talk about Benjamin Eleazar Bar-Joshua. So let's just, first I want to list his, I'm going to talk about him just because I love him. So first off, his first appearance in the novel,

probably, is the pilgrim that our poor boy Francis meets because Francis helps this old man who's described in detail. The old man is a, is a very efficient traveler, despite being very old. And when he leaves a mark on a stone for Francis to find, he writes in Hebrew. He makes a reference to the fact that they still quote right back, right words backwards,

which is a reference to the fact that Hebrews is read from right to left as opposed to left to right. So it's heavily implied. And he also writes in Hebrew. So it's heavily implied that the pilgrim is Jewish or could be because he writes in Hebrew and he writes the direction that someone writing in Hebrew would would write. He's also kind of magical. He sort of like disappears

and no one ever knows what happened to him. Everyone thinks he was Leibowitz though. And so they think that's what Leibowitz looks like. Let's get on to part two. Part two, we meet him again. He's no longer, also at the end of part one, he shows up and buries Francis. End of part two, or end of part two.

End of part two, he's no longer wandering. He lives on top of a mesa near the abbey. And he throws rocks at people to keep them away because he's a crotchety old man, which is partly why I love him so much. In spirit, I feel him. He stays up at his mesa and whenever the

novices get too close, he throws rocks at them. Here the abbot goes and hangs out with him. At this point, you find out that he claims to be like thousands of years old. He claims to be thousands and thousands of years old, variously claims different ages. He claims to be thousands of years old. And it's through his conversations here with the abbot that you, it's kind of explained that like, there aren't very many jewish people left number one and number two uh benjamin essentially carries the weight of the entire jewish people on his shoulders yeah essentially like he is like the diaspora

effectively like he is a a representation in it is a personification of the jew the diaspora effectively. Like he is a representation in, it is a personification of the Jewish diaspora. He carries the weight of Israel with him. And in Israel, obviously I mean the Jewish people, not the current nation state. Yes. There's lots of other hints.

He writes in Hebrew. He does a lot of things talk about, of course, he's like a tent mender, a bunch of other things. Again, for this book, if we really wanted to analyze it properly, we would have needed a devout Catholic and a devout Jew on this podcast to help us explain these things.

You also find out that he considers himself to be thousands of years old. He himself references meeting Francis. Like he says, one of your apprentices a long time ago mistook me for Leibowitz. So like he claims to be the pilgrim that Francis ran into, which the abbot, of course, doesn't believe really, supposedly, because that would be improbable. But then Leibowitz also claims, oh, sorry, Benjamin claims that Leibowitz was a distant relation of his. He claims that the St. Leibowitz was a distant relation of his. He claims that the St. Leibowitz was a distant relation of his, which is why they look similar and that you hang out with him.

So I mean, you learn about him a little bit and the fact that he's been wandering or living for thousands of years at this point, they also refer to him a lot as just the old Jew because he's like the one Jew everybody knows. Cause he's the only one around and he's very old in part three. You only see him once. Oh very old. In part three, you only see him once. Oh, sorry.

In part two, he also shows up and like looks at Thantatio and goes, that's not it's not him. Yeah, he does. He does this to a number of people. He literally grabs him and is like, nope, not him. Looks him in the eye, looks him in the eye and goes, nope, you're not him. And then just leaves. He does this to a number of people. Part three, you only see him once.

He like they call him Lazarus and he wanders into town and like stops in the Abbey to get some food. So I thought he was just supposed to be the sort of interesting, weird, supernatural character because I fully believe the author intends this to be the same person in every section. I don't think this is supposed to be some, there's numerous people that look just like him. I think it's supposed to be him. I don't know if you disagree, Ketho.

I do not. Um, I, I think Benjamin is the same guy in all three sections. I, I agree. I just, uh,

it's just, he's just kept very intentionally muddled. He's very muddled. He's also incredibly obtuse. Like when the spoken to he's just kept very intentionally muddled he's very muddled he's also incredibly obtuse like when spoken to he's intentionally unclear about himself that's like his whole thing he's sort of got that like crazy old man vibe who acts real crazy but if you talk to him long enough figure out he actually knows way more than everybody else like he's got that going on yeah he's like he's like crazy he's like crazy, but brilliant. Yeah.

And so, but what this got for me is he was just a cool character that I liked. Then I started doing, believe it or not, doing a little research before the episode. And I find out that the character of Benjamin, not by name, but that character has been around

since like the 13th century in a character that is known was known in the Middle Ages as the Wandering Jew. This is a character that's attested again, I think as early as in the 1200s at some point, who is in this is obviously all in Christian literature. So it's a Christian. It's a Catholic mythos they've come up with to reference Jewish people. So, you know, with whatever baggage that connotates, just keep that in mind. But so the idea of the wandering Jew was a personification of the Jewish diaspora, but they connected it to this story from the Bible where supposedly when Jesus was carrying the cross to his crucifixion, a pastor by some Jewish pastor by like taunted him or something like, I don't know, was talking shit to Jesus on his way to get crucified.

And so Jesus says, I go on, but you must wait until I come back. And so this ancient Jewish man was then cursed with immortality to never die until the second coming of Jesus. And this is a character who then pops up in Christian literature after the 1200s over and over again in Europe. He is referenced through multitudes of works in European literature. The character of the wandering Jew who's often used a lot of the same way that Miller does as this like sort of comic, but sort of knowledgeable character who pops up in Christian morality stories because he is a personification of the Jewish people. For Christians, it also represents like, you know, sort of the non-believer because he didn't believe in Christ. And he's like sort of punished to hang out until Christ comes back. And he's like, oh shit, right. Okay. You're back. Good. I can die now or whatever. But you can also take it for the Jewish side and the fact saying that he's sort of cursed to wait for the Jewish

Messiah, which of course has not come. And so in this way, he represents Israel in the fact that the Jewish people are sort of cursed to wander and to continue on in perpetuity, waiting for their savior. I could be sort of wrong about a lot of this. Again, I'm no expert. Yeah, this, I mean, but you feel very, this feels very correct to me. Like, especially as like, when you consider the fact that by miller yeah as presented by miller especially because when like every time he pops up you're right like um the only thing he freaking says to tatio where he's just like he grabs him he stares

in his eyes and he's like it's still not him and then he walks out and it's like he's he's waiting for that either the second coming or the first coming depending on whether depending on your interpretation and so he starts off as a wanderer because he's wondering i'm trying to find you know the one he settles down for a while and then eventually goes back to wandering but a lot of times you see him yeah he goes up to people and goes are you the one no all right then never mind and he's portrayed as being crazy but having moments of sort of clarity he's a very interesting character because again i just thought he was a cool guy like i just thought he was some weird mystical dude and then i figured out that there's like 700 years of backstory to this character who has appeared throughout christian literature in various. Now we're going to put a disclaimer that that caricature of the wandering Jew

was of course appropriated by the Nazis for antisemitic purposes. Cause of course it fucking was right. Like why wouldn't it be the fucking Nazis? There's no inclination that Miller means it in any similar capacity whatsoever. Like Benjamin is clearly like a good guy. As much as you can call anyone in this book a good guy or a bad guy, he's good, right? Like he's not an antagonist by any stretch.

He's just sort of there. But it's interesting because every section, the people of that time relate to him differently. In part one, he's just a pilgrim, just some random old guy they see one time. In part two, he's like, oh, that's the village hermit. He lives up on the mesa. Everyone knows him.

The abbot's friends with him. In part three, again, he's just some random wanderer that people don't really know who he is. He's just some random old guy. And so every era relates to him differently, which I think then a lot can be said like don't really know people don't really know who he is just some random old guy and so like every era relates to him differently which i think then a lot can be said then about like different eras you're relating to the struggle that benjamin represents specifically literally the conversation pages with him i put i don't know if you can see it. I put a star on like every page that he's, because I, I like,

I have a tendency to go through and star some like lines or like underline some passages, but like, I just couldn't, I couldn't underline the whole page. He has great, he's got great dialogue. He really does. His, the whole section where he and, um, he and Don Paolo hang out is great. It's wonderful. It's super illustrative.

It's a wonderful section. And again, it's just two guys hanging out. Yeah. And you feel and yet you feel so much like there's like there's like a real sense of pity there, too. Yeah, there's pity. You're supposed to feel empathy for him. Yeah. Like you were directly supposed to feel empathy for him. Yeah. Like you were directly supposed to feel empathy for Benjamin.

Yeah. And so again, is that empathy born of us feeling like as Miller means it, like, is that empathy supposed to be for a guy who was sort of punished to walk the earth until Jesus comes again? Or is it supposed to be empathy for sort of a plight of the Jewish people waiting for their savior to come the first time? That's unclear. and i think you can sort of take that how you will i sort of lean towards the second one because i you know just personally not a big fan of like eternal punishments yeah myself so the i'd see it more as he benjamin has put on himself has sort of sort of tuck everlasting himself into.

He drank from the magic spring. Yeah, like into living until his own savior appears. And what that savior is, you know, we'll never know. But how we got into this is there are open ended questions about the end of the book. So when Rachel takes over Mrs. Grail's body, Rachel is heavily implied to be an immaculate conception who is free of sin, who is this new person. Of course, Rachel is also a very biblical name. So it's a, you know, this is a very, like an ancient Hebrew name, Rachel, or an anglicized version of it, I'm sure. And so it's sort of open-ended. I personally choose to believe that benjamin survived the

nuclear blast because if rachel survived i think benjamin could survive he lived through everything else he lived through the other one probably he probably yeah he probably lived through the first one and so then the open-ended question is like is he going to meet rachel and see that his savior has finally come or will he see rachel and go that's great for Christians, but it's not who I need, and continue on his endless wandering? Who knows? Obviously, it's not even explained. It's not even told to us that Benjamin survives. That's just my personal belief that he does.

Because up to this point, it's been shown that he lives through everything. So I just assume he makes it. Also, I like him and I want him to make it. So I'm keen to make it. Yeah, I don't think there's any reason to believe he wouldn't. If anyone can survive a nuclear holocaust, it's Benjamin. Some of these lines are so good. He's great.

He's a great character. He's a great side character. Just this description of him. Perhaps in his loneliness, he had acquired the silent conviction that he was the last, the one, the only. And being the last, he ceased to be Benjamin, becoming Israel. And upon his heart had settled the history of 5,000 years, no longer remote, but become as the history of his own lifetime. His eye was the converse of the imperial lead. What the fuck? This is so good.

It's so good. Like, again, Miller's writing is fantastic i've this is the first time in a long time where i've read like an author i'd never read before and been like damn i really like the way you write you know what i mean like it's very it's very like unique it's very unique like and for the i mean large part of the reason i start with i like tried to start this podcast at all was to force me to read more books that I'd never read before. And like reading this book has been like justified all the effort we went

into starting this, like just reading this book to like read it and see how he describes things. I guess I don't, do you have anything more to say about Benjamin? Cause not about, not about Benjamin. I kind of know what direction I want to take.

Okay. Where do you want to go? Take it away. Well, I wanted to find a way to talk about this. I don't know if this fits into the last thing and I just kind of missed it. But there's the section at the end. I guess we could probably talk about it. The abbot in the last section of the book.

Once he's trapped under the rubble. Well, no. Um, or are we talking about how much of an asshole? Well, it's, it's kind of attached to that.

I want to, first of all, I want to find a way to get the quote that I want in here, because I think there's a lot to talk about specifically with that. That is, that is important to us. I mean, we can,

you can, if you want to just read the quote. So I'll give a little bit of context first. What do you think this is, a podcast with smooth transitions? Yeah, whatever. So essentially, in the last part, there are two, you know, this is Cold War fiction. There are two what are effectively global superpowers

in in classic fallout fans will also recognize this um it's not a u.s analog versus a ussr analog it's a u.s ish vague north american analog versus a eastern asian analog it's an asian alliance yes so you know take that as you will um there's a there's a couple lines in here i i want to bring up one that's i think pretty funny but one that is pretty poignant especially for us as anarchists or as in general to anyone who's familiar with either anarchist or marxist critiques of the state which is funny coming from a guy who was living in america in the 1950s like uh but during this situation a texarkana gets nuked um the capital gets blown and yeah so there's a couple nukes that go off before the final nuclear holocaust this is after the first one and there's an act that was put in place years ago called the radiation disaster act

which authorized eutanasia like state-sponsored euthanasia in case of individuals who experience severe trauma from the fallout well i think it's it's literally state not even state sanctuaries literally like the state does it like they they set up trauma centers. And if you've if you've received a lethal dose of radiation, they'll just they'll just the state doctors will just euthanize you if you want. So you don't have to go through the suffering because you're already dead effectively. And there's an argument had between a member of the Green Star Relief, like the Mercy, the Exposure Survey Team. The totally not Red Cross. Yeah, who goes around, the Exposure Survey Team essentially goes around

and tells people, hey, you have a lethal dose of radiation. Here's a card. You can go get euthanized if you want. So they're the ones who do that. Yeah, they do treatment for people who can be treated and give you the permission slip to get killed yeah um and he comes in to ask the abbey if they'll let them set up close to the town nearby and first of all the

uh abbott is furious with this idea but yeah the context if you don't know if you're not catholic and you're not aware catholics consider suicide to be a sin but um he makes a very pointed criticism of the radiation disaster act as a concept um that i think would be very important for us to to hear the very existence of the radiation disaster act and like laws in other countries is the plainest possible evidence that governments were fully aware of the consequences of another war, but instead of trying to make the crime impossible, they tried to provide in advance for the consequences of the crime. And that's kind of huge. Like that's, um, that's classic critique of the state. It's the idea of creating the problem

and then kind of preemptively creating a bandaid for the problem instead of creating the problem and then kind of preemptively creating a band-aid for the problem instead of solving the problem initially because it is in fact the origin of that problem yeah the state could the the government could just get rid of all their nukes yeah it's like if you think about it like this might be the most pedantic version of uh or like thing to get up in arms about but i think about say copyright law or whatever it's like i'm just using this as an example but you have a situation where copyright law is invented for xyz to give people intellectual property rights so they can make money off of their intellectual property or whatever and then exclusive rights

to that yada yada and then they have a bunch of band-aids that they slap on the system when it fails so like the system fails in the case of the internet popping up so they slap dmca in there and dmca has a bunch of its own problems so then they try and find solutions to the dmca problem and it's like actually what if the problem is intellectual property itself, the thing you created that doesn't need to exist at all. And it's like, it's this perpetual cycle of the thing creating a solution to a problem that didn't exist. And then the next stage being that solution causes problems.

So they slap new solutions onto those problems without ever actually realizing that they could just stop creating the problem in the first place. Or perpetuating the problem in the first place, whatever that might be, which in the case of something like copyright law would be the profit motive in and of itself, the existence of commodities and or money. It's a similar thing here where it's like the states are creating the conditions for their own self-destruction but instead of preventing that from happening in the first place they slap a law in there that says if you get nuked we'll slap a band-aid on this and let you get euthanized we have a contingency plan for the fallout of the nuclear war that we know is going to happen at some point and he even mentions it a little bit early on uh right before this so the visitor says it's certainly better than letting them die horribly by degrees he says is it better for whom the street cleaners better

to have your living corpses walk to a central disposal station but they can still walk less public spectacle less horror lying around a few million corpses lying around might start a rebellion against those responsible. That's what you and the government mean by better, isn't it? It's this. Now I will say, this is probably the only major point of response he has to the, the euthanasia tents. Otherwise, which I, I have no real moral qualms with.

Yeah. Like I might, I personally, as a person have no moral compulsion against like fully personal choice of euthanasia. Like, especially if you're suffering from some sort of terminal illness, like radiation poisoning. Yeah. But the critique we can pull from that.

And I think you're right to point this out is the sort of systemic critique he's making. Like, I'm not going to critique the program in and of itself, but it's his systemic critique he's making in that the existence of these governments and their policies necessarily create issues that they then have to solve. Where you could just prevent that altogether by just not that letting the state do that now of course the so like like yeah well now of course the big question is you know how do you do that and he's providing his answer the the abbot is providing an answer i personally disagree with but the abbot provides the answer of you know god you know it's effectively that but my solution would be don't have a state it's like but yeah

like this this is a a deeply systemic criticism and i think the most pointed in the book like as far as just outright saying it i do think it's interesting because i do believe he was coming at it from a the battle of religion versus secularism and so he is talking about that we've given the state unnecessary power that should be reserved for god where we can take the same critique he's making you to say i'm just critiquing state power well yeah i don't think we should be putting god in this place but it is still a good critique whether he intended it that way or not yeah like this i mean this is the point of interpreting fiction you know it fits into all sorts of different narratives if you look at it a certain way and i just found this particular section to be uh apparently i like i didn't remember it afterwards but apparently i did

the first time because i underlined it the first time I read it what do you know I'm glad I did because I probably wouldn't have been able to find it otherwise I would have had to reread everything in the book to find this page if I hadn't underlined it but I just and that makes more and more sense to me now

because the funny thing is I was on my political radicalization journey when i read this book like i was deep into it um when i when i finally read this book so it makes sense that that's the line i would particularly underline after having after having just you know read a shit ton of malatesta and being like oh this connects with what I've been reading. That makes sense. So, yeah, I just wanted to make sure we found a way to squeeze that in there

because I found that. Yeah, no, it definitely is. It's his most sort of pointed sort of governmental critique. And when you combine that with his openly professed thing that the government would necessarily blob out to control larger territory to make technology territory to make technology to end up nuking everyone there's like he's definitely very directly critical of like centralized states yeah there's a there's there's also like a a line of um and i haven't

underlined as well in a section very close to it it's this last section is so jam-packed full of stuff like yeah it's the shortest section and yet it is so full of shit like it is a section where like the most happens kind of um and he says the most like a lot of his ideas that he was like building up to he says his conclusions in this section and it's just like you he uses uh abbott zurchi who is by far the most like sort of he's zealous yeah he's the most the most assertive and most zealous of all the abbots we've come across um he uses him as the mouthpiece to sort of directly state the points he's been building up to with all of his previous characters yeah he's essentially going nuts by the end yeah i think zurchi is also supposed to be i i think his personality is supposed to be matching with the growing intensity

of the world around him where in like section one that first abbot really doesn't have to do much. Like his job is just to hang out and survive. Right. So the first Abbott is very chill, more or less. I mean, aside from like whipping poor Francis, beating him and like the Abbott in the second section, Don Paolo,

like, you know, you see him get terse and you see him get frustrated, but like, he's still a reasonable man for the most part until the very end when he actually gets upset with Thontadio. And then by the time you get to section three with Xerchi, you get the full like sort of,

you know, blood and vinegar of like, like of the final points that Miller wants to make before the story ends. Which again, I just want to, sorry, no, no, no, go ahead. Oh, no. Yeah, like some of the sections in the back here just contain some of the most overtly political moments

as far as messaging is concerned, like the most blunt in what they're saying. There is a scene earlier on, just a couple of pages before people get nuked, funny enough. And when I first had read the book, I noted it as well because I wrote in here, anti-utopian? Question mark.

But lines like... He definitely doesn't believe utopia is possible. Oh, no. No, not without a doubt. Too much hope for Earth has led men to try to make it Eden, and of that they might well despair until the time toward the consumption of the world. And then lines like, the closer men came to perfecting for themselves a paradise, the more impatient they seemed to become with it and with themselves as well. These lines are, these are essentially back to back. It's like a couple pages full of this stuff.

There's a line in here I kind of want to end the episode on because I think it's a positive note. So I'll leave that. Yeah, you leave that. But I, I think we're, we're, we're about wrapping up here.

I think you're right though. It's an important sort of governmental or sort of philosophy there that he does not believe utopia is possible. And he believes that striving towards it is sort of, is in the human condition, but also necessarily is part of the cyclical downfall we must face. And to me, that sounds like a very sort of Catholic Christian worldview, because since we are all tainted with original sin, which is referenced numerous times, but especially in the second section, when he's talking to Thantatio, talking about being in the Garden of Eden, being tempted by the snake of knowledge to eat the fruit of knowledge. In this third section, he's very much saying we cannot have utopia. We lost that when we gained wisdom and it's folly we are bound to repeat, is to try and achieve utopia and fail at it,

and to nearly destroy ourselves in the process every time. One last thing I wanted to mention, and then we can end on your quote there, is again talking about the sort of Christian symbolism sprinkled throughout the book. People do certain things that are evocative of scenes from the bible like the most direct one if you're looking for it is at the very right near the very end before uh joshua the the priest who with the crew is blasting off in a spaceship to go take the catholic church into space because they realize they they have like a contingency plan for the next nuclear war. And it's a bunch of priests and nuns and some children rocketing off into

space to go preach Catholicism to the human colonies and like Alpha Centauri or whatever. At the end, right after the Abbott dies, we briefly get to see Joshua and the, um, uh, quote,

para granata or crew, which I'm sure means something in Latin. I'm not looking it up. Um, they're preparing to launch, like literally they're getting into the spaceship when they see the nuke go off in the distance. And Joshua, the last crew member to board the ship as he gets on stops to knock the dirt off of his shoes, off of his sandals, which is a direct reference to Matthew 10, 14, which the quote is, if anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet, which is literally directly what they're

doing at the end of the book. They have realized the world does not want to hear their message of Catholicism and like submitting to God as opposed to sort of temporal, like secular authority. And so Joshua is directly following the advice of Matthew, knocking the dirt of the world off of his shoes in order to go clean into a new one that may be more accepting of their message. And it's just like, literally like this is a Bible passage I am recreating for you if you know to look for it. And then also as he gets on, Joshua mutters, sick transit mundus, which is thus passes the world, which is sort of a riff on the phrase to transit Gloria Moody,

which thus passes the glory of the world. He's literally just saying, Oh, so the, so goes the world. And then he gets on a spaceship and fucks off. That was, that was something I got nervous about.

Like I was like, Oh please dear Lord, let them get out. Mostly because there's a bunch of children in there. Well, yeah, but what was his name again? Joshua.

Yeah. Joshua. Oh, by the ways. Well, yeah, but what was his name again? Joshua. Yeah. Joshua. Oh, by the way, Joshua, Yeshua. That's Jesus. But yeah, he literally is. His name is literally Jesus. But, but it's funny that you mentioned that. Cause the thing I kind of want to leave off on is a quote that is coming to

him while he's in the garden um and it's oh my god sorry the more i think about it it's like his name is literally joshua it couldn't be more blunt like it's christian allegory we told you we told you that symbolism and themes are on the surface yeah like this is literally jesus who sits in the garden of Gethsemane to make his decision to become the savior and then knocks the dirt of the old wood off his shoes to save the flock. Yeah.

It's like he's becoming a shepherd. He's deciding whether he gets to be, whether he wants the responsibility of being the shepherd. And they talk about it, they literally say that he has to decide to bear this cross, which, and that cross being leading the Catholic Church in its new intergalactic

form. So what I want to leave with is a more hopeful thing. Before you say that, I want to say I looked it up. The name they give for their secret program to launch, like, priests into space to save the Catholic Church, the Quo Peregrin Tur, whatever it is, is the first part of it essentially means wherever the flock goes. It's short for a fuller phrase, which is like Quo Peregrin Tur Grex Pastor Secum, which is wherever the flock wanders, so does the shepherd.

Okay. which is wherever the flock wanders so does the shepherd okay so literally the name of the program is essentially being like yeah the flock is going to wander off into fucking space and you need to go with them and i looked it up on the internet and it literally puts us as being uh from miller's uh canticle for lebowitz so so just to um so in the garden here, he's essentially trying to decide whether or not he wants to go. Like I said before, eventually he kind of asked for an omen and the omen kind of comes and then he throws a rock at it and he says the ask for an omen and stone it when it comes. Dea sentia hominem, which I think is a great moment.

But aside from that, a little bit earlier in the scene, when thinking about sending the ship, it says, Hope and not futility is sending the ship, thou foul seductor. It is a wary and dog-tired hope, maybe, a hope that says, shake the dust off your sandals

and go preach Sodom to Gomorrah. But it is hope, or it wouldn't say go at all, which I just think is, like, it's a good bit for the underlying there is a tiny tiny bit of underlying perseverance and hope in it um despite the incredibly bleak outlook yeah i think and that's that's an interesting outlook in that, which in one that I actually find myself agreeing with a lot. And I've said it before that, like,

I believe things can be better, but I don't think they're going to get better. Does that make sense? Well, like as, as, you know, as an anarchist,

I believe a better world is possible, but I also plagued by the belief that it's not going to be. And so obviously there's remedies to that. This anarchist, Catholic's hands shaking. There is hope for a better world, but the world right now sucks. And it's probably not going to happen. It's probably not going to end happily. But so I kind of, I felt that, you know,

I felt that pretty strongly when he was like, it's not a useless hope. It's not strong. It's not strong. It's not a huge hope. But it is a good one, which if we, because we haven't referenced it yet, we have to reference, we have an obligatory reference here to my one and only like permanent reference point which is the the good professor jerk jolkin rolkin rolkin tolkien oh he's gonna get at least a name drop at least once an episode at least once that's a central thesis of the lord of the rings and of his

world outlook again also a very ardent catholic that, and we'll get into it eventually when we do those episodes, but that like the, one of the main themes of his, of his books is hope, but he clearly distinguishes between a fool's hope and a purposeful hope. And that the most important thing of the world is a, is a, a, even if it's beyond a reason, believing that there is hope and there is a reason to continue, even if you cannot see the positive in your life or in the world currently. Whether everything seems terrible, you must maintain a deep and purposeful hope for a better world. That is deep within Tolkien's work. And the reason I brought it up is because, again's another very ardent Catholic so that seems to be a running theme here

the world isn't great and bad things are going to happen but you need to be helpful for the future because it can be better I think that's a good place to end you can breathe out again I want everyone to I want everyone to know

I'll say it again this book is wonderful you should take the time to read it it's not terribly long it is a little if you're again if you're trying to like look up all the latin they use it may be a little dense at times i personally just sort of let the latin wash over yeah you can just let it go there's there's passages they're not really that important usually they sort of translate it you can get it through context clues but it's a wonderful book that i'd never heard of it's a classic sci-fi novel. If you're a Fallout fan, you'll see where a lot of ideas

came from. If you're a fan of other sci-fi, you'll see a lot of the hallmarks of the early genre in here. It's a fantastic novel. Thank you everyone again for coming to By Looking at the Time probably another two-part series. This one, I can't

for Leibowitz give a hint as to I think we should I think we should just say what the next one's going to be because then if we start saying them in advance people who haven't read it will have time to read it before our episode comes that's true that's probably if we have anyone that might be bothered to follow along

so I think going forward now at the end of every like series, we're going to go ahead and say the next one is going to be. So our next series that comes out after these ones, which are going to start, hopefully start coming in more rapid succession, less gaps between episodes going forward to keep everything moving a little faster.

Our next episode or episodes is going to be on the sort of fantasy kind of sci-fi i don't definitely know what you want to call it science fantasy science fantasy novel a wrinkle in time by madeline langel which is a favorite of mine from my childhood but i believe kethel has never read not my sisters have so i i knew it existed so lebowitz was a new one for me as you notice we kind of tried to do an alternating thing where it's depending on which one of us hasn't read it before. So I had never read Leibowitz, and now I'm going to make Heather read A Wrinkle in Time,

which I think is wonderful. And I don't remember. It's been a long time since I read it, but I bet there's a lot in there that's going to be cool. We're going to be probably talking about religion again if I remember anything my sister said about Madeline Lange. There's a wrinkle in time. Doesn't have as much.

I mean, it's not many waters, but they literally like go back and meet Noah and have sex with angels or shit. That's in the second book. We'll get there. These books about children. Yes.

Anyway, thanks everyone for joining. Well, that's's a that'll give you a hint i guess if you want to follow us on social media you can follow the podcast at swords n sock pod s w o r d s capital n s o c p o d um you can follow me you can follow me, Darius, at himbo underscore anarchist. You can follow Ketho at stupidpuma69. Again, the best handle on the show. All of this on Twitter is a great way to contact us. If you have any questions or whatever, just DM the show.

Or if you feel up to it, you can email us at swords and socialism pod at protonmail.com uh please do the podcast stuff for you go tell apple that we're cool yeah tell everybody give it a like um yeah whatever i don't know what happens on apple do you like it i just i i just know apple you can give reviews where you like you give it stars and give a review and it's because it's an algorithm where like you give reviews and if you have, you give it stars and give a review. And it is cause it's an algorithm where like you give reviews. And if you have enough good reviews, it starts showing up in people's feeds because of algorithm reasons. Yay.

Tech companies rule our lives. Yeah. Hooray. The liberatory power of technology. so if you feel like it, do that. Thank you all so much for joining us and we will see you in like a week. Yeah. Probably after this is part two. So we'll see you in a week for a wrinkle in time thanks so much bye