A Canticle for Leibowitz
by Walter M. Miller Jr.
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Book Reviews of A Canticle for Leibowitz
Book Review: Great Story-Telling Layered with Heart, Emotion and Intelligence
Summary: 5 Stars
"A Canticle for Leibowitz" is a book that defies standard categorization. I suppose it has enough future-world, post-apocalyptic concepts that it falls in the science fiction realm, but it's not your basic laser beam and alien fare. This story goes much deeper.
"Canticle" is made up of three stories that span thousands of years. Each story focuses on a distinct time period, looking progressively further into a post-apocalyptic future. The setting is the same abby in the American West, founded to protect and preserve the learnings of the pre-apocalyptic society. Specifically, they've developed a myth around a martyered scientist named Leibowitz.
The first story revolves around Brother Francis who accidentally discovers certain original papers created by Leibowitz, including the blue prints for a technological device. The second story centers on a new technological awakening where future theorists come in contact with ancient (modern) technology. The sequence comes full circle in the third story as our future world is faced again with mutual mass destruction.
Miller wrote "Canticle" in the late '50s when World War II and the atomic bomb were still visible in the world's rearview mirror and the cold war threat was very much a reality. Much of Millers discourse is on the cyclical nature of cultures and societies, the interconnectivities between religion and science, as well as death and politics. It's clear that much of the evocative emotion stems from Miller's time in the military and a youth grown up during a World War.
The story is at times light and humourous but threaded with a very heavy and serious undertone throughout.
The root story I found very interesting - how this future-world's archaeology is our modern world's past. I felt that the first two segments of the book were strongest and was only saddened that each couldn't have more ink themselves. In reflecting upon the discoveries of their past, and their promises of hope for the future, Millers writes, "For Man was a culture-bearer as well as a soul-bearer, but his cultures were not immortal and they could die with a race or an age, and then human reflections of meaning and human portrayals of truth receded...Truth could be crucified, but soon, perhaps a resurrection."
The development of religion, while always founded in christianity, morphs over the course of the story and we see a mythology grow over time. This book is successful on many levels...as simply an intriguing story with attractive characters, and as literature built upon a foundation of religion and war. It's solid story telling at its best, with heart, emotion and intelligence layered on top of the tale from start to finish.
Book Review: Timeless SF
Summary: 5 Stars
Centuries after the Flame Deluge, a monastery in what used to be the United States of America's desert southwest awaits canonization of its beatified patron, the Blessed Martyr Leibowitz. Brother Francis, a novice enduring the solitude of his required Lenten fast, encounters a mysterious traveler who first tempts him with bread and cheese and then reveals to him a long-buried fallout shelter. The shelter contains relics of the Blessed Martyr, including a shopping list for pastrami, kraut, and bagels. Will this be the evidence that results, at last, in New Rome's acknowledgment of the Blessed Leibowitz's sainthood?
That's the premise of FIAT HOMO, the first of three novellas in this book. In the second installment, more centuries have passed. The Abbey of St. Leibowitz and its memorabilia are still there, and still playing a crucial role as Humans slowly regain the technology lost in the Flame Deluge. In the third and last installment, the Abbey is once again central as another Deluge threatens to engulf the still only partly recuperated planet. In each novella, the Roman Catholic Church - pre-Vatican II, since Miller published this work in 1959 - provides the one source of moral certainty for what's left of Humankind. Resuming its task from medieval Europe, the Church's monks gather and preserve the fragmented written records of an earlier civilization brought down by a different sort of barbarians. They copy and recopy, painstakingly and by hand, information that they no longer comprehend, with faith that one day Humanity will reclaim its meaning. The two-edged sword of knowledge provides one of the book's central themes. Another is the demanding nature of faith, as personified by Roman Catholicism, and its on-going tension against the absolutes of science. Is the conflict between the two really that of irreconcilable belief systems, or something else that we Humans can't quite grasp? Meanwhile, the predators lurk and wait to clean up the debris (including that which used to be Human) after each disaster. Vultures that "lovingly feed" their young, marginally Human mutants called "Pope's children" because only the Church's influence guarantees their right to exist, sharks that can swim deep to escape the Deluge that comes in seemingly inevitable cycles...the predators, at least, are eternal.
It's no wonder this book is still in print, almost 50 years after its first publication. It asks timeless questions, and refuses to provide easy answers. Yet for all its apparent cynicism, the Human spirit's resilience lies at its heart; and in that resilience, and in Humankind's endless drive to learn and to discover, may lie...salvation? Or at least, hope for another chance.
Book Review: Good
Summary: 3 Stars
Having grown up watching 1950s sci fi I was familiar with many of the Doomsday tropes from such films as The World, The Flesh, & The Devil, & On The Beach. Most were fairly pessimistic. So, I was a bit surprised when I picked up & read Walter Miller's A Canticle For Leibowitz, in that it both used & subverted the genre & its tropes. The book is not really a novel, but 3 linked novellas that follow the Resurrection of Mankind after a 20th Century nuclear exchange, through the prism of a secretive order of Catholic priests, in the Utah desert, that prevent the total barbarism of what was once the United States of America. The 3 novellas are set about 600, 1200, & 1800 years in the future.
The 3 sections of A Canticle for Leibowitz give, at the same time, a cyclical view of history that's pessimistic, yet hopeful. Even the long suffered for knowledge of the past the Leibowitzians preserved cannot save humanity from near-annihilation, yet it is only near-annihilation. Humanity perdures. There is also a watcher- the only character that appears in all 3 tales- a combination of the desert wandering Jew & Lazarus- a deathless figure.
The book deals with many issues- large & small. For example, there is the recurring theme that most people work for purposes they have no grasp on. In part 1 Brother Francis wastes 15 years copying a Holy Liebowitzian artifact, only to have it stolen. In Part 2 Brother Kornhoer follows ancient blueprints & builds an electric light, unaware that he was doing so. Another theme is how history is shaped as much by its recorders as its participants. Just how much we think we know of the Mayas, Phoenicians, Chinese, Minoans, or even Neandertals, etc. may be our own imposition of biases, rather than fact.
Given that the book was written in 1959, during Cold War hysteria, yet is still relevant, is a good endorsement of its timeless quality. Yes, the idea that any organized religion- in this case Roman Catholicism- represents an answer, rather than a problem, is a bit of Miller's own näive-té &/or bias leaking through. After all, he portrays the Church as an unchanging vehicle for ignorance whether it be in the Dark Ages, our time, or the 3 future periods of mankind- a highly suspect proposition in the post-9/11 world. This is but a minor quibble, though, for the overriding point is it's a good tale- whose overall narrative takes precedent over any individual.
Although most post-Apocalyptic tales tend to be either to too gloomy or too optimistic, A Canticle For Leibowitz strikes a believable balance. Would that its subjects could do the same the book would be as superfluous as the devotion to the Blessed shopping list!
Book Review: Waste of talent and time
Summary: 2 Stars
The author does have writing skills, make no mistake about that. He's intelligent and knows how to make sentences. Yet his metaphorical expressions are rather fanciful and miss the mark. "A skyherd of cumulus clouds," a fist "exploding" on a desk, a "crawling" desert, and so on, and we also had people "grunting, hissing, chuckling, croaking, and howling" words of dialogue instead of simply saying them. I could've accepted these flights of fancy with minimal annoyance, but the infernal and ever-present Latin expressions and the expositions of scientific principles had me wondering what the devil any of this had to do with advancing the story. Why did the author presume that the readers of this book would have a working knowledge of a dead language? And why the pseudo-scientific jargon in intervals? Did he just throw all of this stuff in to show the reader that "hey, I know something you probably don't"? Who the heck cares about monastic melodramas and the ritual routines of life in the cloister? You couldn't escape them in this book. I think the whole work, all three sections of it, could have been encompassed in a short story of 50 pages or less.
But what was really missing, for this reader, was the face of Eve, to speak in bible-babble like the characters in this misdirected work. She's over one-half of the human race, and yet the only female presence in this book was the sadly deformed Mrs. Grales and the Lady Reporter, both of whom made short appearances in the last section. And oh, yeah, a brief tragic episode with a scarred young woman and her daughter, dying from radiation exposure. Otherwise, nothing but men, and all speaking and thinking in churchly Latin gibberish far too often. (Was the author a defrocked priest, an ousted seminarian or a monk who left the refuge of the monastery?) Why write a SF book centered in the monastic lifestyle?
I read it because it was supposed to be some kind of SF classic, according to a few people. My conclusion was that it was a monumental waste of time for the author to write a book that delivered only a few fruitless hours for the reader. Did we really have to plow through so many pages cluttered with ecclesiastic drivel just to get the point that humans will continue to repeat the same calamitous mistakes? (That is, I presume, the theme or point of this whole effort.) Give me a break. Perhaps the reason they still sinned so greatly was because they had never outgrown the mindset that got them courting disaster in the first place, and somehow medieval monasticism doesn't strike this reader as a path to liberation for the human race.
Book Review: A cautious review
Summary: 5 Stars
There are some outstanding reviews of this book here, and I know my own limitations. I am not a scholar, religious or otherwise. I know very little about religious teachings and agendas. I cannot take informed positions about the messages of this book, or the motivations of the author. What is left?
I love to read, because every once in a while a book moves me in some profound way. It is rare. That is as it should be, because the joy is in the search. Here was very tangible fruit for me. Above all, it's a great story. Never mind the dark moments, the contemplative moments, the agonizing moments, and the religious influences. The story is entertaining first, and the rest grows from that. The book follows an order of monks hundreds of years in the future, as they struggle to study and keep the knowledge of mankind's ancestors alive in their abbeys. Nuclear war has destroyed much of civilization, and the reader follows the monks over more than a millenia as they watch the slow ascent of society again, toward an uncertain future. The powerful moments are difficult to do justice to here.
There's a bit of humor here and there. But this is a very serious book, and the questions that arise are tough. Some readers will be firm in their own positions, and will not likely be swayed by events and conversations contained here. The material is intellectually challenging, but it does not seek to convert readers into a particular path of thought. But thoughts should form for the reader at several points in the story. Whether profound, or dismissive, will depend upon the reader. But for the general reader, it is hard for me to imagine that most will not be moved at some point. "Why are we here?" is perhaps one of human kind's oldest questions. Miller made it fresh again here, with a heart-felt story of the struggle to save humanity, and to preserve what it is to be human. He achieved it with characters you can understand and believe, and with skillful writing that is modestly controlled so that it never detracts from key moments. The genius of this book is that it will satisfy many reading personalities. The impression it left for me was one of wonder. Specifically, how was it that I was swept along so firmly? I'm not sure that I know why. I just know how it made me feel. Quite thankful, that I have imagination enough to be cautiously optimistic that this scenario will never be more than fictional. God willing.