Book: The Night Circus

(Image from C/W Mars catalog)

 

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern is, at its heart, about a battle between chaos and control (pg.378).  That is the driving force behind the challenge that two magicians, Hector and Alexander, establish and in which they force Celia and Marco, their protégés, to participate.  It is an interesting basis for a story because it takes what would otherwise be a straightforward story about a magical circus to an almost cosmic level.  It is disappointing then that Morgenstern does not give that aspect of the story the attention and importance it deserves. 

Hector and Alexander remind me of fairy tale fathers, like in Rumpelstiltskin or Beauty and the Beast, who gamble with their daughters’ lives rather than their own.  Each man has a different approach to the use and teaching of magic but rather than battling each other to the death to see which method is stronger, they force their students to unknowingly do it for them.  There have been multiple battles over the years in different venues around the world, and the one that they start between Celia and Marco is just one more for them to add to their growing tally.  The egotism displayed by Hector and Alexander is astounding because there is no reason given as to why they feel the need to prove one method better than the other or when they will no longer feel the need to senselessly sacrifice others for their own vanity.  They are god-like in their abilities, near immortality, and lack of concern for the lives of others.  It is reminiscent of Artemis and Aphrodite in the Greek tragedy Hippolytus where a whole family gets torn apart because they get caught between the goddesses in their fight for recognition. 

That is where I think there is a particular lack of world-building in The Night Circus.  I picked up this book on the recommendation of a colleague who suggested that it might fit into the genre of magic realism, which came up when we were discussing The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey.  However, I would argue that there is too much explicit magic in the story to really let it pass as magic realism.  As a piece of fantasy fiction I think the story could have benefitted from a bit more context of exactly what magic means in  the world, and why we should care about these battles that take place.  The majority of people in the world of the story have no idea that magic is real and Morgenstern never even toys with the idea of what might happen if large numbers of people figured it out.  There is no talk of needing to keep it secret, no discussion of what makes someone able to perform magic, and no mention of magic’s role in the universe beyond its potential entertainment value.  There also is not much hinted at about why this story, this battle, is so different, other than outcome.  But the outcome does not seem to have much of an effect on anything beyond keeping the circus alive. 

Of course, I am fully aware that I am highly biased toward cosmologies and creation myths and have a tendency to find stories that do not have cosmic consequences a little pointless and dull.  This story was not dull, I could hardly put the book down, but what was driving it for me was mostly the need to find out how Celia and Marco got around the fatal rules of the game they did not know they were playing for much of time.  I had formulated a theory before even beginning the book, based on the summary on the inside cover flap, and I needed to see how my idea compared to what the author came up with.  Still, I found that it was difficult to care about the characters because I did not understand what makes their story so special.  There was so much potential for this story to be a deeply imaginative take on the world, but instead it just presented the story without much explanation of the important pieces. 

The final chapter tries to give the story more gravitas, talking about how stories and tales are their own kind of magic (pg. 381), which I agree with of course, but it feels very out of place in this particular book because that is not really how the story has been presented this whole time.  Usually in the books that I have read that talk about storytelling, it also talks about how storytelling is used to make something or someone significant (The Last Storyteller by Frank Delaney or The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd comes to mind).  But if that is what Morgenstern was trying to do with this story, I do not think it worked particularly well.  Celia and Marco’s love story was too disjointed and rushed to be of any significance and the circus itself lacks a substantial purpose beyond basic entertainment.  On the whole, while The Night Circus was an enjoyable story with the potential to be a modern fairy tale, the disjointed manner in which it was told and the hints at deeper meaning that were never more fully explored did it a disservice.

 

Morgenstern, E. (2011). The Night Circus. New York: Doubleday.

Book : The Last Storyteller

(Image from C/W Mars Catalog)

The Last Storyteller : a Novel of Ireland by Frank Delaney is a perfect example of how excellent storytelling can make terrible characters, meaning that they are not particularly nice or sympathetic people, interesting and worthy of reading about. 

     **SPOILER ALERT: reading farther may spoil the book**

This book is the conclusion to the Ben McCarthy Trilogy, following Delaney’s other books, Venetia Kelly’s Traveling Show (2010) and The Matchmaker of Kenmare (2011).  Admittedly, I almost decided to not read this book since I did not particularly like the first two.  I think that the love story of Ben McCarthy and Venetia Kelly is just a little too weird for me, what with them meeting because Ben’s father abandoned his wife and their family farm to follow Venetia and her traveling show around like a lovesick puppy, Ben and Venetia getting married when Ben was eighteen and Venetia was thirty-two, and then Venetia being kidnapped by her own father and loosing all contact with Ben for twenty-five years because they were both too stupid and immature to do anything about it for twenty-five years!  In The Last Storyteller in particular I started to get very sick of how stupid and ridiculous both characters were being, to the point where I was almost disappointed at how neatly and happily their love story ended. 

Fortunately, Delaney’s writing is so beautiful and powerful, especially during the many legends and lore that are told by various characters throughout the book, that this is still a worthwhile book to read.  The first two books are not particularly interesting beyond perhaps some commentary of the political atmosphere at the time in Ireland, but The Last Storyteller has much to offer in terms of lessons about love, life, and the importance of the art of storytelling.  This volume really chronicles the transformation of Ben McCarthy into a traditional, itinerant storyteller and as such touches upon a wide variety of tales to showcase various pieces of the Irish spirit and human nature on a broader scale.

While I would argue that Delaney’s first novel, Ireland (which I spoke of in an earlier post), does a better job of really encompassing all of Ireland’s history in its stories, this book contains a better master class in the art of storytelling with a better example of how everyone can apply storytelling to their own life.  One piece of advice that is repeated throughout the trilogy but is featured at the end of this book is the idea that “One day you have to tell the story of your own life… and perceive it as myth.  When you can do that – that’s when you’ve finally grown up” (p. 365).  Delaney’s own mastery of storytelling really shows through when he is able to finally take this character through his own story, thereby displaying how even a non-heroic person can still be the hero of their own tale and how being able to approach life through the lens of a storyteller can give a very different perspective to both wonderful and troubling events.

On the whole, this book is similar in focus to Delaney’s first novel, Ireland, with its focus being on the art of storytelling and its importance to history and culture.  However, whereas Ireland featured storytelling for its ability to capture and convey the history and spirit of an entire nation, The Last Storyteller features the ways that storytelling can heal on a much more personal level.  It is also a really great example of a story about not-so-likable characters that is told in such a way that you cannot help but like the book anyway. 

Delaney, F. (2012). The Last Storyteller : a Novel of Ireland. New York: Random House. 

Show: Curiosity episode 01 pt. 2

I apologize for taking so long to post this, but here is the second part to my discussion of the first episode of the series Curiosity, which addresses the question, did God create the universe?

Where science seeks to be a universal, measurable and quantifiable explanation of how our world works, religion steps in where science cannot reach to explain those things that cannot be measured by science. The big questions such as who/what created the universe, who/what created us, and our purpose on this earth cannot be answered with cold, hard, scientific fact. Any answer to those questions, by necessity, crosses into the realm of religion and personal belief. The big bang theory is just one more story among many others that can be used by people to explain why we are here.

Most creation myths are cosmogonies, narratives that describe the original ordering of the universe based on observable facts and contemporary ways of thinking. They describe a cultural group’s sense of its past and significant relationship with the deeper powers of the surrounding world and universe, traditionally through symbolism and metaphor (Leeming & Leeming, vii). Just because science has given us a new way of viewing ourselves in relation to the wider universe, it does not mean that there cannot be alternative perspectives on how we came to exist as we are. Science and religion are perfectly capable of existing side by side in people’s perceptions of the world, especially when they believe in an ultimate reality that can transcend science (Leeming & Leeming, vii).

Over the years, science has not actually been able to contribute much more than religion in terms of understanding the ultimate origins of the universe. Leeming & Leeming (1994) credit Philip Freund and other cosmologists with pointing out that “many creation theories of modern science are marked by the myth of a ‘beginningless beginning’… a pre-creation universe in which something existed as a basis for the form eventually taken by the cosmos” (“Creation in Science”, p. 61). In Hawking’s story, this is the singularity that is created from nothing and spontaneously explodes to create the universe.

While the “beginningless beginning” may not sound like much of an explanation for the creation, it can have a profound effect on beliefs about why humans exist. The clearest evidence that Hawking’s program is at its heart just another creation myth comes from his own concluding statement, where he extrapolates the effect of not having a creator god.

We are each free to believe what we want. It is my view that the simplest explanation is, there is no god. No one created the universe and no one directs our fate. This leads me to a profound realization; there is probably no heaven and no afterlife either. We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe and for that I am extremely grateful.

For Hawking, his belief in science as the ultimate guide for the way the universe works means that humans have no explicit purpose, but were instead an accident, a natural consequence of the progression of matter over time. The laws of nature are an impersonal, unconscious creator that cannot care about or interfere with what it has created.

The assertion that there was no god that created the universe, however, does not necessarily exclude the possibility of a god that created humans, as Hawking claims. There are many creation stories in which the gods that create humans come along after the world is created. Take the Greek creation myth the Theogony for example, which says that Gaia, the earth, was spontaneously born from chaos, but went on to create the Titans who yielded the Olympians, of whom Zeus was instrumental in the creation of woman (man had been spontaneously generated somewhere in the midst of the story). Other stories have the creation of the universe and the creation of man as having little if anything to do with each other, because the earth is often a given before the creation of people, such as in many native American stories.

If Hawking had truly set out to explain the Big Bang Theory as scientific fact, then he could have easily left his concluding statement out and still had an engaging explanation of a scientific concept that is sometimes difficult to understand. However, since the purpose of his program was in fact to answer the question, “Did God create the universe?” Hawking needed to tell a story, not present scientific fact.

For more information on creation myths from around the world and their commonalities, please refer to:

Leeming, D. and Leeming, M. (1994). A Dictionary of Creation Myths. New York; Oxford University Press.

Show: Curiosity episode 01 pt. 1

Also known as The Benefits of a Liberal Arts Education pt. 1

Discovery channel’s new show Curiosity explores some fundamental questions about human life. In the first episode, aired Sunday August 7^th at 8 pm, Stephen Hawking set out to answer the question, Did God Create the Universe? As a cosmologist who has been investigating the origins of the universe for the majority of his life, Hawking is certainly the right person to explain the current scientific theories about how the universe began. Over the course of the 48 minute long program, he gives an excellent, easy to understand explanation of his perspective on how the universe works. He begins by making the argument that the universe is governed by the laws of nature, such as gravity and other laws that dictate motion and force which are exerted on all matter universally. After explaining some of these fundamental laws of nature he then goes on to explain the big bang theory, and the idea of the singularity, from which the universe began. The singularity, infinitesimally small and infinitesimally dense, a primordial black hole, spontaneously generated (the way protons can according to quantum mechanics) and spontaneously exploded to create the universe. Hawking argues that according to the laws of nature, there did not need to be a creator because the laws of nature allow for the spontaneous generation of matter and that all of the matter (positive energy) and space (negative energy) in the universe adds up to zero, and thus cancels itself out to a perfect balance. Furthermore, Hawking argues that time, which stops in a black hole, was simultaneously created along with space and matter, and thus there could be no time before the singularity. If there was no time before the singularity, then there was no time within which a creator god could have created the universe.

Having watched the episode again, listening much more carefully, I can find no fault with any of Hawking’s logic. I grew up in a household with two organic chemists and have maintained a passion for science ever since, so I am able to understand what Hawking is saying and follow him to the appropriate conclusions. The big bang theory makes a lot of sense as an explanation of how the universe began. However, I do have a problem with Hawking’s assertion that his explanation of how the universe began is scientific fact.

In my understanding, science is supposed to be the quantifiable, measurable study of something. There are the soft sciences, such as anthropology and sociology, which struggle with the ability to meet scientific standards of quantifying and measuring human behavior, and then there are the hard sciences such as chemistry, biology, and physics, which are almost entirely numerically based. In order to be considered a true scientist by today’s standards, there are many procedures that must be followed and carefully detailed records written that chronicle all observations of any scientific study. The whole point behind such careful record keeping is that all scientific experiments are supposed to be repeatable by other scientists, and it is only when they have been repeated enough times that the conclusions drawn from the data can be considered fact, or scientific truth.

When it comes to explaining the origins of the universe, there has to come a point when the science stops being science. By its very nature, the origin of the universe is not something that can be observed or repeated; thus, it cannot be quantified in terms of science. I will not argue that by observing the laws of nature and through careful calculations, conjectures can be made about how matter behaved long before the earth was formed. But even if all of the scientists repeat the same calculations based on the same data, it still remains that the big bang theory is just that, a theory. Until the spontaneous generation of a universe can be observed today, there is simply not enough data to conclusively prove how our universe started.

This raises the question then, can science study god? My answer, which I think many spiritual people will agree with, is that no, science cannot study god because god is not measurable and quantifiable. Hawking’s assertion that there is no god because there was no time for god to exist within prior to the big bang, rests on the assumption that god is subject to the laws of nature. However, for most people that I know who believe in some kind of higher power, the whole point of believing in god is believing in an entity that exists outside of the laws of nature. If god is not subject to the laws of nature, then god does not have to work in ways that can be measured according to our current understanding of nature and science.

If what Hawking describes within the program is thus not considered to be science, because it is not observable and quantifiable, then what is? The entire episode is, in my opinion, a prime example of storytelling. It is the creation myth for the scientific age, beautifully explained and endlessly engaging. It is amazing to listen to the language that Hawking uses to explain his theory, because it sounds remarkably similar to the language that is often used to describe religious beliefs and other creation myths from around the world. In place of “god,” the “laws of nature” is repeated often enough as the ultimate explanation. For Hawking, science has become his religion and nature is his god.

To be continued.

Book: The Secret Life of Bees

(Image from C/W Mars Catalog)

The Secret Life of Bees By Sue Monk Kidd may seem like an odd book for me to be mentioning in a blog about mythology and folklore and to be honest, it is. Set in 1964 South Carolina it is a novel about a young white girl, Lily, who escapes her abusive father and leaves town with her black “stand-in mother”. They are taken in by three black, bee-keeping sisters who have an elusive connection to Lily’s dead mother. Even though the three sisters introduce Lily and Rosaleen to the religion of the Black Madonna, the story is not overtly religious in nature, but chronicles Lily’s coming of age.

I am mentioning it here, however, because I think it makes an excellent example of something I hope to be talking about again later this week: the importance of stories in the construction of identities. The religion of the Black Madonna is not particularly well defined or all that strict, but it plays an important part in building the community of the Daughters of Mary, who become Lily’s adoptive family of sorts. At the heart of the religion lies the story of how a particular statue that fell off the bow of a ship washed up on shore and got taken in by a group of slaves as a symbol of the virgin Mary, and their hope for salvation.

The story’s importance is highlighted by the introduction that August, eldest of the three sisters, gives the tale at the first meeting of the Daughters that Lily and Rosaleen attend. August astutely observes, “Really, it’s good for all of us to hear it again… Stories have to be told, or they die, and when they die, we can’t remember who we are or why we’re here” (p. 107). This is an idea that is especially apparent when talking about mythology and folklore, but here it also highlights the importance of everyday happenings. All experiences can be recorded and mythologized over time, since every experience plays a part in building history and identity.

Another way this is illustrated is through a short instance later in the book when Lily’s friend Zach gets arrested. Since Lily wants to become a writer and English professor, she keeps a notebook of stories where she fictionalizes many of her experiences since she’s come to live with the sisters. When she visits Zach in jail she says, “ ‘I’ll write this all down for you… I’ll put it in a story.’ I don’t know if that’s what he wanted to ask me, but it’s something everybody wants – for someone to see the hurt done to them and set it down like it matters” (p. 185). Again, this highlights the idea that all experiences, especially trials of opposition, play an important role in shaping identity, especially when written down and shared in the form of a story. It is through the sharing of stories that experiences are shared and common ground can be found.

Although these pieces do not play major parts in the overall story and message being told in The Secret Life of Bees, I thought it was important to highlight that sometimes themes can be found in stories even when we least expect them. I suppose that storytelling is naturally going to be a theme that is part of all books on some level, but I honestly was not expecting to find much about storytelling and identity when I picked up this book. The idea that all experiences can feed into stories that shape identity is an important one to consider carefully before I jump into my next subject, which might come as even more of a shock (but you will have to wait to find out what it is).

Kidd, Sue Monk. (2002). The Secret Life of Bees. New York: Penguin Books.

Book: Ireland

(Image from C/W Mars Catalog)

Ireland: A Novel by Frank Delaney (2005) is one of the best novels I have read in a while. I will admit that I am usually not that interested in historical fiction but I picked up this book on the recommendation of a family friend who said it was a tale about the last traveling storyteller in Ireland. On the most superficial level, that is what the story is about, but it also has so much more to say about the art of storytelling and the history of Ireland itself.

The book follows a young boy, Ronan, growing up in Southern Ireland in the 1950’s, after a travelling storyteller visits his home and changes his life forever. The storyteller’s vibrant tales of the history of Ireland inspire the boy to learn all he can from the mysterious man, sparking a life-long journey of discovery of both his own history and that of his country. Through a mastery of the art of storytelling, the book switches back and forth between Ronan’s journey and the stories that he hears and tells along the way.

Almost every character Ronan encounters has their own story to add, demonstrating the pervasiveness of storytelling across all walks of life. Everyone has their own piece of history to share and their own style of storytelling. Those humanistic elements are part of what help weave the history of Ireland together into one narrative that is meaningful to the characters as their own story progresses.

What I love most about this book is the way that it makes history fun and accessible. As I said before, historical novels are generally not my favorites, but hearing history through the voices of storytellers who are able to give life to the events and bring a distinct perspective makes it all much more interesting. The use of a storyteller’s voice gives the history a bit more depth, connecting the vast past to the present in a way that cannot be conveyed through a single narrative the way most novels are written.

The history of Ireland is itself a very interesting subject, considering the number of times it has been invaded. As the boy’s history professor in college explains,

… all history is a matter of interpretation, mostly by the victors. In the case of our little island it has been rather different, because the history of Ireland was also written by the vanquished – the repeatedly defeated, the hung, drawn, and quartered, the kicked and beaten. And haven’t we made the most of our victimhood?

p. 231

It is this perspective of the vanquished yet proud and vivacious Irish that is given throughout the book, especially in the stories that are told. These tales run the gamut from stories of mythical events, romance, and heroism to religious and political battles that all helped shape the country. They tug at your heartstrings while making you laugh and truly demonstrate the ability of storytelling to transport you into another culture and lifetime.

On the whole, Ireland is a must read book for anyone interested in the history of Ireland or the traditions of storytelling that have survived there. Although I cannot speak to the veracity of the stories that are told, it is not really something I care to research because it is much more about the meanings and artistry behind the stories that matter. It is easy to get swept away by this enchanting book, just as easy as it is to get swept away by Ireland itself.

I had the wonderful opportunity to spend a week in Ireland in October 2008 and experience the land and the culture for myself. It was the kind of experience that is difficult to describe to others because it is nearly impossible to find the words to describe the majesty of the land and the warmth of the culture. However, Delaney’s book comes pretty close to conveying just some of what makes Ireland so special.

Delaney, F. (2005). Ireland: A novel. New York: Harper.