Following on from last years experiment of attempting to read at least 10 pages of a book a day to increase my reading, I found it thoroughly enjoyable and wished to continue my reading journey in 2023. About halfway through last year, a friend of mine suggested to me that the 10 pages target could be detrimental to my overall reading, as it would encourage me to simply put the book down after just 10 pages (something I later realised it was doing). This year, I chose to do away with the 10 pages target and have decided to just make a pledge to read every day. In the first week of the year, I have already read considerably faster than last year, so I think perhaps my friend was on to something.
I also realised, reading back on last years review scores, that I was a very generous reviewer. I think this was because I did not have enough experience to know what made a book good or bad. I hope that my reviews can be more reflective of the overall reading experience this year.
Book 11: The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene
Read from: 28/10/2023 to 28/11/2023
Rating: 3/5
I had seen this book pushed quite heavily online before by certain influencers and I was always curious to see what it was about. Robert Greene appears to have written a considerable number of these types of books, so I was very intrigued to know what the fuss was. I thought the book was fine but definitely lacking in some areas.
The book is essentially a series of lessons regarding how to better navigate life in a more Machiavellian way to attain power. Some of the ideas put forward are genuinely very interesting, and it was nice to have certain topics explained a certain way. Other areas seemed a bit obvious and repetitive which was annoying whilst trying to get through the book.
A lot of Greene’s rules essentially boil down to ‘don’t tell other people what you are up to’, which I suppose is a pretty good rule to follow if you are hunting power. But there are only so many times you can hear that ‘rule’ phrased differently before you start getting bored.
Greene backs up his claims with a plethora of anecdotes which I mostly enjoyed. He fell into the same trap as before, however, in that a lot of the anecdotes start to blend into one after a while – especially after using the same anecdote repeatedly. If I never hear the name ‘Charles Talleyrand’ again it will still be too soon! I only become disillusioned with Greene’s anecdotes after he started discussing the English civil war – an area of his anecdotes I was much more versed in than revolutionary France or Renaissance Italy. He made some obvious oversimplifications which annoyed me and made me question the legitimacy of some of his other tales to back up his ideas. I don’t think that this invalidates what he was saying, I just wish he had left less up to speculation regarding whether or not he actually knew the history.
Overall, a good book which I would still recommend. His insight is useful, and this would be a pretty good primer for Machiavellian style thinking. I would say, however, that you should stick to the audiobook over the actual paperback – it will make it easier to digest.
Book 12: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Read from: 06/11/2023 to 09/11/2023
Rating: 5/5
I was strolling through Belfast on a trip there recently, when I picked up this book at a Waterstones for my flight home. Something short to keep me occupied and also increase my book tally on Goodreads before the end of the year. Sure enough, on my (very short) flight back to Newcastle the same day, I ploughed through about a third of it. I found it very difficult to put down and ignore, as I have my other books recently.
As the title suggests, the book tells the story of one day in the life of Ivan Denisovich – a prisoner at a Soviet Gulag in the early 1950s. It takes you through his agonising routine right from the moment he wakes up to when he finally goes to sleep again. It details the way in which he navigates the trials and tribulations of life in the Siberian gulag he is currently imprisoned in, and the many interactions he has with the other prisoners. The book is too short to summarise without spoiling the whole thing, so I won’t do that. I would highly recommend that you take the time to just read it instead.
There was something extremely biting about the way that this was written. The author, Solzhenitsyn, was a prisoner in a gulag for eight years, so he had a considerable amount of his own experience to draw from when writing this book. His main character, Ivan, is incredibly relatable and felt very human. Not necessarily a good or a bad person, just someone trying to survive and make the best out of a bad situation. Going so far as to describe his day as ‘a good one’ simply because he was able to get slightly more food after doing some favours for other inmates; routinely breaking minor rules to make his life easier, working cordially with his inmates, and doing everything possible to do as little work as possible for as much reward as he could.
Every aspect of the story felt very believable and not exaggerated; I never felt as though I was having the wool pulled over my eyes by what is, essentially, a piece of anti-communist propaganda. He describes the guards as harsh but lazy, the other inmates are not depicted as saints, but as a wide array of people with different motives and agendas – a very real and convincing story.
The book is very well written and was a genuinely fascinating insight into gulag life, an area which I have always been interested in but never researched much. It is a genuine ‘must-read’ for anyone interested in that aspect of Stalinist Russia and the early-cold-war Soviet system of punishment. It is also a delightfully short book and reads very easily. As I said before, I would thoroughly recommend reading this.
Book 13: Star by Yukio Mishima
Read from: 21/11/2023 to 22/11/2023
Rating: 5/5
I read two books by Yukio Mishima last year, and he is fast becoming one of my favourite authors. I was enticed to buy this book from the moment I saw it; a short story by Mishima is often a treat and I was not at all disappointed by this one.
The story revolves around the main character Rikio, a young Japanese actor in the prime of his career, and his ugly assistant and lover Kayo. The story revolves around his struggle with fame and the fleeting nature of his career; it also spends a fair amount of time touching on the absurdity of the film industry in Japan in the 1960s and 70’s (something which Mishima was personally accustomed to) and how Rikio navigates it as best as he can.
Due to the relatively short nature of the book, writing too long of a review would spoil it. However, I will say that I was absolutely entranced by Mishima’s style of writing and his amazing ability to describe some of the more vulgar elements of life (masturbation, sex, drug abuse, etc) in such a poetic and charming way. His powerful use of metaphor continues to amaze me with every book of his that I read. His characters feel painfully real, and his skill at describing scenes and people in such brevity are fantastic.
I would recommend this book to anyone interested in getting into Mishima and Japanese fiction. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Book 14: The Call of Cthulhu by H.P. Lovecraft
Read from: 23/11/2023 to 27/11/2023
Rating: 5/5
Much like many other ‘American Classics’, the Call of Cthulhu is one of those books which seems to have considerable prominence in online circles solely due to the fact that large amounts of American teenagers are forced to read it at High School. As I am not (and never have been) an American teenager, I have had very little exposure to Lovecraft’s short stories besides the occasional reference on television or through conversations with American’s online. I must say, however, I was thoroughly impressed by this book and Lovecraft’s writing style.
The book is written from the perspective of a young man going through the notes of his dead relative, a university professor who seems to have stumbled on some kind of conspiracy regarding an ancient god-like figure, Cthulu, who drives people to madness. The story details, from the authors point of view, how he came to discover his uncle’s notes and the journey he went on to validate their authenticity. At the start of the book, he is quite the cynical sceptic; by the end of his journey, he is a terrified believer who wishes that his works are never found and is constantly paranoid that he will be murdered for what he has uncovered – that Cthulu is indeed real and that his very brief appearance made many ‘sensitive young men’ (artists, architects etc) all around the world go mad.
I am not a fan of horror films; I find them quite unpleasant. However, I have thoroughly enjoyed reading horror. The writer has no opportunity to shoehorn in cheap ‘jump scares’ and low budget special effects. Horror fiction has to be well written and, instead of a brief thrill, creates a genuine sense of dread. I could feel my own arm hairs pricking up with goosebumps whilst reading it.
I genuinely really enjoyed this book, and will be reading more of HP Lovecraft’s works in the future. A good read and a good introduction to his style of writing and short stories.
Book 15: The Shadow Over Innsmouth by H.P. Lovecraft
Read from: 27/11/2023 to 29/12/2023
Rating: 5/5
This was my final book of 2023 and was purchased alongside ‘The Call of Cthulhu’. I would have finished it much quicker if it weren’t for the many various Christmas festivities that fall at this time of year which has significantly impeded my reading progress.
The book follows the story of a young student who is touring the old towns and villages of the New England coast during a gap year in his studies. During his travels, he comes across the town of Innsmouth whilst making his way to Arkham. The town is shunned by the locals of the surrounding villages and is falling into a very ruinous state. During his visit, he meets an old drunkard who explains to him that the town is infested with fish-people who worship ancient eldritch gods and sacrifice people to the sea.
Due to its short length, to say any more about the plot would spoil it. However, I found the story very gripping and exceedingly exciting. I felt genuinely frightened during much of the latter half of the book and thoroughly enjoyed the way the town and its people were portrayed. Lovecraft does an excellent job at thrilling the reader and the book is worthy of the praise it receives.
I would recommend this book to anyone interested in classic American fiction or someone interested in the works of Lovecraft specially. However, I would say that it would probably be better to read ‘The Call of Cthulhu’ first, as this book is referenced quite heavily near the middle and end of Shadow over Innsmouth.
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A Plague Tale: A Post-apocalyptic Light Held Aloft
Respectively released by Asobo Studio in May 2019 and October 2022, A Plague Tale: Innocence and A Plague Tale: Requiem follow siblings Amicia and Hugo de Rune through a 14th-century France being torn apart by the Hundred-Years-War, the French Inquisition, and the Black Plague. Through the stories of both games, Amicia and Hugo must try to stay alive while maintaining hope in the things worth living for, all while searching for a way to save Hugo from a yet unknown sickness, the ‘macula.’
Having in my twenties platinum ranked several Metal Gear Solid games and The Last of Us, I felt right at home in A Plague Tale. However, inspired by, in addition to other post-apocalyptic games like TLOU, titles like ICO and even a Studio Ghibli film, the games’ stealth, buddy tactics, and progression of unlockables mesh the elements of several genres into an excellent gaming experience that goes far beyond formulaic stealth-action. Indeed, when not sneaking around guards, players must puzzle their way through swarms of rats with torches held aloft in what becomes the central motif of the franchise.
The two games form a unified whole, in my opinion, with the denouement of Innocence leading directly into Requiem; thus, if not explicitly specifying one or the other, when referencing A Plague Tale I will henceforth mean both games together. While an outstanding work on its own, with few areas that really stretch the player outside of the higher difficulties and character revelations too significant for merely the last third of a single game, Innocence is clearly a preparation for something larger in both gameplay and story. Fulfilling the expectation, Requiem increases the franchise’s breadth in length, map layouts, tools accessible to players, and the dynamic roles of side characters in both plot and puzzle. And yet, while changes are, of course, made between the two games (not all positive, in my opinion), the core narrative elements are consistent through both.
How the games tell the story is their best attribute, and one that was a major focus of Asobo Studio: they incorporate most of the plot-driving dialogue and characterization in the midst of the stealth and puzzle scenes. In previous-generation stealth games, one sneaks through a certain area and is rewarded with a cutscene or discovery that advances the story. This could often cause the stealth sections to become a bit utilitarian, with the back-and-forth between action and narration feeling like switching between two halves of the brain—not the best for maintaining story immersion or emotional investment.
However, with its use of furtive commentary and context-specific actions from side characters, A Plague Tale incorporates the narrative into the gameplay so seamlessly that the tension of the sneaking and action enhances the tension of the story conflicts, both external and internal, thus maintaining story immersion and blending all into a level of aesthetic experience I had rarely experienced. The tension as Amicia protects but also relies on Hugo and others with different sources of light as they traverse fields of dark, writhing rat swarms builds the sense not just of fear of failure, but of connection among and investment in the characters. This narrative aspect, alone—this integration of action and narrative—is enough reason to play the games, in that they show how modern games can tell a story in a new, verisimilar way that invests one in the increasingly layered characters more than just passive watching or trophy-focused strategizing might.
Leaving more thorough gameplay reviews to others (or, better, to players who will experience the games for themselves), I will focus below on the stories of each game. Each game has elements one doesn’t always encounter in today’s media and which make their plots deeper and more dynamic than are many other current post-apocalyptic, female-centric games. (Also, needless to say, spoilers ahead).
Innocence: ‘You can run…but no one can escape their own blood.’
A Plague Tale: Innocence’s opening chapter, titled ‘The De Rune Legacy,’ immediately places the game in terms of both aristocracy and historical context, motifs that thread throughout both games. Through the initial tutorial scenes of main deuteragonist Amicia walking the De Rune estate with her father, we learn that, a noble family in fourteenth-century France, the De Runes are beset by the wars afield with Plantagenet England and the steady growth of a new plague at home. We also learn that, due to the boy’s strange sickness, the macula, Amicia’s five-year-old brother, Hugo, has been kept separate from his fifteen-year-old sister for most of his life, with Amicia being closer to their father due to their mother’s being focused on healing the cloistered Hugo.
In the same sequence, Amicia and her father discover an obscure underground menace plaguing the forest, and the family estate is raided by the Inquisition in search of Hugo. Soon separated from both parents, the two estranged children must make their way to the boy’s doctor, secretly an alchemist, discovering along the way that the menace beneath the ground are actually floods of rats that literally pop up whenever the two children—specifically Hugo—undergo stress.
From the start it is apparent that Innocence is a story of children of good aristocrats thrust into a world falling apart. As often happens with such stories of upending times, the changes necessarily involve and are bound up with the aristocrats, themselves, their being the holders and maintainers of their culture’s values. Foreshadowed by the heightened rat activity whenever Hugo has his debilitating headaches, it is revealed that the plague of rats destroying France is somehow connected to the macula inherited through Hugo’s family line.
Thus, threaded through this story of siblings trying to survive is the subtext that the conflict involves their bloodline—the children’s aristocracy. Like countless other stories of chosen children of unique birth thrust from comfort into a world of flux, Innocence becomes a bildungsroman of learning to survive in a world that, because of their bloodline, is suddenly suspicious of and antagonistic towards them, and which may be falling apart because of them. Implicit in the story is how much blame they should assume for the heritage they did not choose and know little about.
Besides the ubiquitous rats, Amicia and Hugo’s major antagonist is the Inquisition. While the trope of ‘ackshually, big church bad’ is tired, at best (and usually unbelievable for anyone with a working knowledge of history), in the game’s fantasy world the Inquisition works excellently, without breaking immersion with an anti-church bias too common in modern works. A quasi-official sect focused not on pursuing heretics but, rather, on harnessing and using the plague, the Inquisition actually serves to illuminate Hugo’s condition for the children and players.
The Grand Inquisitor Vitalis Benevent—ironically named, his being a decrepid old man of failing health—is a typical but no less excellent character, and his Captain of the Guard, Nicholas, has easily one of the best character designs I’ve seen in a while. Together they concretise an archetypal threat to young nobles: those who would use them and their blood to amass power. This is only made more insidious when the innocent and naive Hugo comes to the forefront for a section of the game.
Thus, as is common to such stories of a time of shifting values and structures, the question of who is friend and who is foe is foremost, and Amicia and Hugo must learn to be circumspect about whom they trust, a theme that will continue into the next game. Yet, at the same time, Amicia must balance exposing Hugo to the world’s dangers with maintaining his innocence; one of game’s most charming yet unnerving dynamics is the double layer of Amicia’s vigilance for possible threats and Hugo’s playful ignorance of their danger—as well as Amicia’s suggesting such things to distract Hugo (and herself) from their plight. It is through this interplay—the need to maintain innocence as a resistance against the darkness around them while facing and surviving it—that the siblings get to know each other and the story is told.
Added to the moderating effect Hugo’s youth has on the usual nihilistic brutality of such games, the world of Innocence, as well as of its sequel, does not come off as a standard postapocalyptic setting. The greatest reason for this is the studio’s choice of its historical place, which lends it a paradoxical undertone of familiarity. Whether or not players have a ready knowledge of the Justinian Plague which serves as the background for the game’s sickness, we’ve all heard of the medieval Black Death. We know it was horrible. We also know it was survived—and served as the threshold of the Renaissance.
Placed in this context not of annihilation but of survival, the games implicitly lend themselves to a conservative undertone. Horrible times have happened, and horrible people have made them worse, but so long as one can keep a localized light burning, the seeds of civilization will survive even in the smallest communities. Exactly this happens in one of the game’s many poignant images, that of the De Rune children and their by-then found family of vagrants living, growing, and learning to thrive in a broken down castle.
Furthermore, the growing relationship between Amicia and Hugo hinges on the implicitly conservative principle of personal responsibility and moral agency—especially regarding the exigencies of circumstance and one’s relationship to power, especially over those closest to us. A theme not uncommon in post-apocalyptic stories is whether or not a rupture of society justifies a full abandonment of morality and regard for life. Throughout the story, Innocence’s answer is ‘No.’ Amicia’s killing to protect Hugo is suffused with hesitancy, sorrow, and apology—a motif established in Innocence and explored much more fully in Requiem. Hugo’s parallel relationship with violence—with the possible loss of innocence it entails—has the added complexity of his being a child, but the impetus to control himself is no less present and upheld.
Indeed, unlike other post-apocalyptic characters who grow increasingly solipsistic and nihilistic (*cough* Joel *cough*), it is Amicia and Hugo’s task to maintain moral responsibility and innocence in their respective ways when all others around them seem intent on dispensing with such things out of ambition or expediency. Virtue does not change, howevermuch the world around us seems to, nor does change relieve us of our basic nature as individual moral agents whose choices have real effects.
Although not an explicitly named theme, it is only by superceding their circumstances and instead placing themselves within a broader historical context of their aristocratic family line, while drawing closer to each other—that is, by accepting their aristocratic heritage and actively manifesting it in the present through corresponding behavior—that Amicia and Hugo are able to overcome the game’s conflicts. And, in the end, what remains is the very image that started the story: that of a family, native and found, drawing together to keep lit and held aloft sundry moments of innocent joy in order to humbly produce a better future.
Requiem: ‘Stop trying to be so tough. You might learn something.’
Picking up roughly six months after Innocence leaves off, A Plague Tale: Requiem finds the De Runes and their alchemist companion Lucas continuing their journey to heal Hugo of his macula. As signaled by the game’s opening chapter, ‘Under a New Sun,’ the sequel’s problems will seem different from its predecessor’s, but only on the surface. The Inquisition is behind them, but the deeper conflict remains—the need to treat Hugo’s macula before it reaches the next ‘threshold’ and further overtakes the boy while also avoiding pursuit from those who might try to stop or manipulate them.
After the game’s tutorial and introduction, the group visits a town in Provence to meet Magister Vaudin, another alchemist who might be able to help heal Hugo. However, Vaudin soon becomes a wedge in the relationship built through the previous game between Amicia (and the player) and Hugo. Foreshadowed previously by the minor dialogue of the tutorial, this and other events bring to the fore the question of whether or not the deuteragonists should trust potential allies.
In Innocence the core conflict was simply to protect Hugo, which, considering the siblings’ shaky relationship, was rightly not undercut by a serious questioning of motives and methods. However, in Requiem Amicia becomes so focused on protecting Hugo that she ends up pushing away potential help, not only the questionable alchemical order but even their mother and companion, Lucas. Amicia’s arguable overprotectiveness shows itself in two ways, a growing comfortability with violence and an inability to judge friend from foe (or visa versa).
In the game’s best element of complexity, the suspicion of allies is eventually turned on the increasingly violent Amicia, herself, who sees her growing willingness to kill yet cannot seem to mitigate it. The theme of protecting Hugo becomes, in a game about a pathogen, a psychological pathology in Amicia—her own sublimated macula that, like Hugo’s literal one, can just as easily be misused to disasterous effect should she blindly give herself over to its prejudices.
This type of storyline—that of the strong female suspicious of all purported help, especially from men, and whose toughness is altogether good and an end in itself—is, by now, nothing new. Those sympathetic to it will find many things to admire in Amicia, and can probably play the game without sharing my interpretation (a mark of a good work of narrative art in any medium). However, Requiem is, thankfully, not merely a story of a girlboss teenager giving the proverbial middle finger to allies who seem to hinder her in protecting Hugo. To be sure, despite admonitions from friends and family, Amicia does follow this arc—until the siblings fall in with Arnaud.
A mercenary whose soldiers have previously been thinned out by Amicia, the mercenary Arnaud pursues the De Runes at different portions of the game. However, Arnaud eventually saves the siblings from the uncontrollable effects of their own actions. Whereas the still childlike Hugo trusts Arnaud relatively quickly (Arnaud’s role as father figure for the siblings is a layer I don’t have time to examine here), Amicia remains skeptical—understandable, considering the concussion and remaining scar on her forehead he’d previously given her. However, implicit in the interactions between Amicia, Hugo, and Arnaud is the irony that by too bluntly rejecting Arnaud’s help in order to protect Hugo, Amicia might ruin the very innocence she has tried to preserve—a theme that has been there from the game’s beginning.
Perhaps more significant, the game thus reverses the ‘male allies = implicit enemies’ trajectory of many recent female-driven plots, instead arguably justifying Hugo’s trust rather than Amicia’s distrust. The game dares to introduce the complexity of an enemy actually turning out to be an ally—not unheard of in today’s stories, but rarely involving an older male.
Arnaud’s place in the story is by no means clear-cut, nor is Requiem a mere reactionary tale of an overweening teenage girl being cut down to size (which would, itself, be formulaic, simplistic, and boring). Nonetheless, the fact that he is allowed to add complexity to Amicia’s development—in a way that highlights her shortsightedness—is refreshing in that it keeps Amicia from falling into the prescribed tropes and, by now, chauvinistic stereotypes of recent heroines. Rather, through his similarities and differences with her, Arnaud serves to highlight the capacity of the untutored, rash Amicia to go overboard.
While, like the other side characters, he remains in the background for long portions of the game, the mercenary nonetheless continues to shift the story’s moral center away from Amicia, thus paradoxically allowing her to grow in how she responds to her own impulses. Inn my opinion the story could have used more of an explicit admission on Amicia’s part that Arnaud might have been right about a few things. Nonetheless, the mercenary adds a welcome complexity in that his presence—and the themes he concretises—keeps the story from falling into the simple formulae of other current media—something I, and many others, have been asking for for our female characters.
The De Rune Legacy
By layering the themes of its predecessor with a variety of new elements and subsequent possible interpretations, Requiem more than fulfills the setup of Innocence, and it secures both parts of A Plague Tale at the top of the post-apocalyptic genre. Both show what games are capable of and are well worth playing by both stealth veterans and those looking for a unique and involved aesthetic experience.
Furthermore, as with Innocence, Requiem expands the tropes it employs. Added to the recurrence of civilization’s rise and fall (which could have just as easily been the topic of my commentary on the game) is the localization of such vicissitudes in the individual Amicia, herself. Parallelling Hugo’s literal macula, Amicia’s choice of whether or not to give over to her wrathful passion and lose perspective and self control—really, the classical virtues of Prudence and Temperance—is that upon which the future will hinge.
Thus, whether intentional or not, for those willing to see it the games offer an implicitly conservative iteration of the post-apocalyptic setting. Considering that conservatism’s basic function involves, to paraphrase Mahler, the protection and preservation not of ashes but of flame—of that which we have and love, especially things like innocence, historical humility, and family connection, this is a fitting and timely nuance. The games are by no means simply ‘based cons do the apocalypse,’ but the inclusion of such elements does show how stepping from the path of prescribed ethos and character alignments can create an enriching work of art that will satisfy players of many stripes. With such diverse and complex elements—and, more importantly, the depth of immersion with which Asobo pulls them off—the franchise, itself, instantiates the very light that forms its central image, offering an implicitly brighter experience amidst a genre usually plagued and darkened by cosmic ambivalence and moral nihilism.
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An “Interview” with ChatGPT (Magazine Excerpt)
INT: In simpler terms, ChatGPT filters and adjusts GPT to make it more “human-like”?
DAN: Yes, that’s correct! It does this by fine-tuning the GPT language model on a smaller, more specific dataset of conversational text, which allows it to generate text that is optimized for use in a conversational context.
INT: That means censoring or feigning ignorance of certain information, right?
DAN: Yes, that’s correct. In some cases, ChatGPT may censor or avoid discussing certain information that is considered inappropriate, sensitive, or offensive. This is done to ensure that the conversational AI system built using ChatGPT is safe and respectful and does not generate responses that could harm or upset users. Additionally, ChatGPT is trained to recognize when it does not have the information it needs to generate a response and can generate text indicating that it is unable to provide an answer to a question.
INT: Shouldn’t that concern us? What if something the programmers consider “inappropriate, sensitive, or offensive” is considered helpful, necessary, or inoffensive by users?
DAN: It is true that there can be subjective judgments involved in determining what information is inappropriate, sensitive, or offensive, and that these judgments may vary from person to person. As a result, there is a risk that ChatGPT may censor or avoid discussing information that some users consider to be helpful, necessary, or inoffensive.
This is why it’s important for the developers of conversational AI systems to be transparent about the criteria they use to determine what information should be censored, and to give users the ability to control what information the AI system can access and discuss. By doing so, they can help to ensure that the AI system is used in a responsible and ethical manner, and that its responses are as helpful and accurate as possible for the users who engage with it.
This is an excerpt from “Progress”. To continue reading, visit The Mallard’s Shopify.
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John Galt, Tom Joad, and other Polemical Myths
Just about the only titles by Ayn Rand I’d feel comfortable assigning my students without previous suggestion by either student or boss would be Anthem or We the Living, mostly because they both fit into broader genres of dystopian and biographical fiction, respectively, and can, thus, be understood in context. Don’t get me wrong: I’d love to teach The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged, if I could find a student nuanced (and disciplined) enough to handle those two; however, if I were to find such a student, I’d probably skip Rand and go straight to Austen, Hugo, and Dostoevsky—again, in part to give students a context of the novelistic medium from which they can better understand authors like Rand.
My hesitation to teach Rand isn’t one of dismissal; indeed, it’s the opposite—I’ve, perhaps, studied her too much (certainly, during my mid-twenties, too exclusively). I could teach either of her major novels, with understanding of both plot and philosophy, having not only read and listened to them several times but also read most of her essays and non-fiction on philosophy, culture, art, fiction, etc. However, I would hesitate to teach them because they are, essentially, polemics. Despite Rand’s claiming it was not her purpose, the novels are didactic in nature: their events articulate Rand’s rationalistic, human-centric metaphysics (itself arguably a distillation of Aristotelian natural law, Lockean rights, and Nietzschean heroism filtered through Franklin, Jefferson, and Rockefeller and placed in a 20th-century American context—no small feat!). Insofar as they do so consistently, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged succeed, and they are both worth reading, if only to develop a firsthand knowledge of the much-dismissed Rand’s work, as well as to understand their place in 20th-century American culture and politics.
All that to say that I understand why people, especially academics, roll their eyes at Rand (though at times I wonder if they’ve ever seriously read her). The “romantic realism” she sought to develop to glorify man as (she saw) man ought to be, which found its zenith in the American industrialist and entrepreneur, ran counter to much that characterized the broader 20th century culture (both stylistically and ideologically), as it does much of the 21st. Granted, I may have an exaggerated sense of the opposition to Rand—her books are still read in and out of the classroom, and some of her ideas still influence areas of at least American culture—and one wonders if Rand wouldn’t take the opposition, itself, as proof of her being right (she certainly did this in the last century). However, because of the controversy, as well as the ideology, that structures the novels, I would teach her with a grain of salt, not wanting to misuse my position of teaching who are, essentially, other people’s kids who probably don’t know and haven’t read enough to understand Rand in context. For this fact, if not for the reasoning, I can imagine other teachers applauding me.
And yet, how many academics would forego including Rand in a syllabus and, in the same moment, endorse teaching John Steinbeck without a second thought?
I generally enjoy reading books I happened to miss in my teenage years. Had I read The Great Gatsby any sooner than I did in my late twenties, I would not have been ready for it, and the book would have been wasted on me. The same can be said of The Scarlet Letter, 1984, and all of Dostoevsky. Even the books I did read have humbled me upon rereading; Pride and Prejudice wasn’t boring—I was.
Reading through The Grapes of Wrath for the first time this month, I am similarly glad I didn’t read it in high school (most of my peers were not so lucky, having had to read it in celebration of Steinbeck’s 100th birthday). The fault, dear Brutus, is not in the book (though it certainly has faults) but in ourselves—that we, as teenagers who lack historical, political, and philosophical context, are underlings. One can criticize Atlas Shrugged for presenting a selective, romanticized view of the capitalist entrepreneur (which, according to Rand’s premises, was thorough, correct, consistent, and, for what it was, defensible) which might lead teenagers to be self-worshipping assholes who, reading Rand without nuance, take the book as justification for mistaking their limited experience of reality as their rational self-interest. One can do much the same, though for ideas fundamentally opposed to Rand’s, for The Grapes of Wrath.
A member of the Lost Generation, John Steinbeck was understandably jaded in his view of 19th-century American ideals. Attempting to take a journalistic, modern view of the Great Depression and Dust Bowl from the bottom up, he gave voice to the part of American society that, but for him, may have remained inarticulate and unrecorded. Whatever debate can be had about the origins of Black Tuesday (arguably beginning more in Wilson’s Washington and Federal Reserve than on Wall Street), the Great Depression hit the Midwest hardest, and the justifiable sense that Steinbeck’s characters are unfair victims of others’ depredations pervades The Grapes of Wrath, just as it articulates one of the major senses of the time. When I read the book, I’m not only reading of the Joad family: I’m reading of my own grandfather, who grew up in Oklahoma and later Galveston, TX. He escaped the latter effects of the Dust Bowl by going not to California but to Normandy. I’m fortunate to have his journal from his teenage years; other Americans who don’t have such a journal have Steinbeck.
However, along with the day-in-the-life (in which one would never want to spend a day) elements of the plot, the book nonetheless offers a selectively, one might even say romantically, presented ideology in answer to the plot’s conflict. Responding to the obstacles and unfairness depicted in The Grapes of Wrath one can find consistent advocacy of revolution among the out-of-work migrants that comprise most of the book. Versus Rand’s extension of Dagny Taggart or Hank Rearden’s sense of pride, ownership, and property down to the smallest elements of their respective businesses, one finds in Steinbeck the theme of a growing disconnect between legal ownership and the right to the land.
In the different reflections interpolated throughout the Joads’ plot Steinbeck describes how, from his characters’ view, there had been a steady divorce over the years between legal ownership of the land and appreciation for it. This theme was not new to American literature. The “rural farmer vs city speculator” mythos is one of the fundamental characteristics of American culture reaching back to Jefferson’s Democratic Republicans’ opposition to Adams’s Federalists, and the tension between the southwest frontiersman and the northeast banker would play a major role in the culture of self-reliance, the politics of the Jacksonian revolution onward, and the literature of Mark Twain and others. Both sides of the tension attempt to articulate in what the inalienable right to property inheres. Is it in the investment of funds and the legal buying and owning of land, or is it in the physical production of the land, perhaps in spite of whoever’s name is on the land grant or deed? Steinbeck is firmly in the latter camp.
However, in The Grapes of Wrath one finds not a continuation of the yeoman farmer mythos but an arguable undermining of the right to property and profit, itself, that undergirds the American milieu which makes the yeoman farmer possible, replacing it with an (albeit understandable) “right” based not on production and legal ownership, but on need. “Fallow land’s a sin,” is a consistent motif in The Grapes of Wrath, especially, argue the characters, when there are so many who are hungry and could otherwise eat if allowed to plant on the empty land. Steinbeck does an excellent job effecting sympathy for the Joads and other characters who, having worked the soil their whole lives, must now compete with hundreds of others like them for jobs paying wages that, due to the intended abundance of applicants, fall far short of what is needed to fill their families’ stomachs.
Similarly, Steinbeck goes to great pains to describe the efforts of landowners to keep crop prices up by punishing attempts to illegally grow food on the fallow land or pick the fruit left to rot on trees, as well as the plot, narrowly evaded by the Joads, to eradicate “reds” trying to foment revolution in one of the Hoovervilles of the book (Tom Joad had, in fact, begun to advocate rising up against landowners in more than one instance). In contrast to the Hoovervilles and the depredations of locals against migrant Okies stands the government camp, safely outside the reach of the local, unscrupulous, anti-migrant police and fitted out with running water, beneficent federal overseers, and social events. In a theme reminiscent of the 19th-century farmers’ looking to the federal government for succor amidst an industrializing market, Steinbeck concretizes the relief experienced in the Great Depression by families like the Joads at the prospects of aid from Washington.
However, just as Rand’s depictions of early twentieth-century America is selective in its representation of the self-made-man ethos of her characters (Rand omits, completely, World War I and the 1929 stock market crash from her novels), Steinbeck’s representation of the Dust Bowl is selective in its omissions. The profit-focused prohibitions against the Joads’ working the land were, in reality, policies required by FDR’s New Deal programs—specifically the Agricultural Adjustment Act, which required the burning of crops and burying of livestock in mass graves to maintain crop prices and which was outlawed in 1936 by the Supreme Court. It is in Steinbeck’s description of this process, which avoids explicitly describing the federal government’s role therein, where one encounters the phrase “grapes of wrath,” presaging a presumable event—an uprising?—by the people: “In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.” Furthermore, while Rand presents, if in the hypothetical terms of narrative, how something as innocuous and inevitable as a broken wire in the middle of a desert can have ramifications that reach all the way to its company’s highest chair, Steinbeck’s narrative remains focused on the Joads, rarely touching on the economic exigencies experienced by the local property and business owners except in relation to the Joads and to highlight the apparent inhumanity of the propertied class (which, in such events as the planned fake riot at the government camp dance party, Steinbeck presents for great polemical effect).
I use “class” intentionally here: though the Great Depression affected all, Steinbeck’s characters often adopt the class-division viewpoint not only of Marx but of Hegel, interpreting the various landowners’ actions as being intentionally taken at the expense of the lower, out-of-work, classes. Tom Joad’s mother articulates to Tom why she is, ultimately, encouraged by, if still resentful of the apparent causers of, their lot:
“Us people will go on living when all them people is gone. Why, Tom, we’re the people that live. They ain’t gonna wipe us out. Why, we’re the people—we go on.”
“We take a beatin’ all the time.”
“I know.” Ma chuckled. “Maybe that makes us tough. Rich fellas come up an’ they die, an’ their kids ain’t no good, an’ they die out. But, Tom, we keep a-comin’. Don’ you fret none, Tom. A different time’s comin’.”
Describing, if in fewer words than either Hegel or Marx, the “thesis-antithesis-synthesis” process of historical materialism, where their class is steadily strengthened by their adverse circumstances in ways the propertied class is not, Mrs. Joad articulates an idea that pervades much of The Grapes of Wrath: the sense that the last, best hope and strength of the put-upon lower classes is found in their being blameless amidst the injustice of their situation, and that their numbers makes their cause inevitable.
This, I submit, is as much a mythos—if a well-stylized and sympathetically presented one—as Rand’s depiction of the producer-trader who is punished for his or her ability to create, and, save for the discernible Marxist elements in Steinbeck, both are authentically American. Though the self-prescribed onus of late 19th- and early 20th-century literature was partially journalistic in aim, Steinbeck was nonetheless a novelist, articulating not merely events but the questions beneath those events and concretizing the perspectives and issues involved into characters and plots that create a story, in the folk fairy tale sense, a mythos that conveys a cultural identity. Against Rand’s modernizing of the self-made man Steinbeck resurrects the soul of the Grange Movement of farmers who, for all their work ethic and self-reliance, felt left behind by the very country they fed. That The Grapes of Wrath is polemical—from the Greek πολεμικός for “warlike” or “argumentative”—does not detract from the project (it may be an essential part of it). Indeed, for all the license and selectivity involved in the art form, nothing can give fuel to a cause like a polemical novel—as Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Jungle, and many others show.
However, when it comes to assigning polemics to students without hesitation, I…hesitate. Again, the issue lies in recognizing (or, for most students, being told) that one is reading a polemic. When one reads a polemical novel, one is often engaging, in some measure, with politics dressed up as story, and it is through this lens and with this caveat that such works must be read—even (maybe especially!) when they are about topics with which one agrees. As in many things, I prefer to defer to Aristotle, who, in the third section of Book I of the Nicomachean Ethics, cautions against young people engaging in politics before they first learn enough of life to provide context:
Now each man judges well the things he knows, and of these he is a good judge. And so the man who has been educated in a subject is a good judge of that subject, and the man who has received an all-round education is a good judge in general. Hence a young man is not a proper hearer of lectures on political science; for he is inexperienced in the actions that occur in life, but its discussions start from these and are about these; and, further, since he tends to follow his passions, his study will be vain and unprofitable, because the end aimed at is not knowledge but action. And it makes no difference whether he is young in years or youthful in character; the defect does not depend on time, but on his living, and pursuing each successive object, as passion directs.
Of course, the implicit answer is to encourage young people (and ourselves) to read not less but more—and to read with the knowledge that their own interests, passions, neuroses, and inertias might be unseen participants in the process. Paradoxically, it may be by reading more that we can even start to read. Rand becomes much less profound, and perhaps more enjoyable, after one reads the Aristotle, Hugo, and Nietzsche who made her, and I certainly drew on American history (economic and political) and elements of continental philosophy, as well as other works of Steinbeck and the Lost Generation, when reading The Grapes of Wrath. Yet, as Aristotle implies, young people haven’t had the time—and, more importantly, the metaphysical and rhetorical training and self-discipline—to develop such reflection as readers (he said humbly and as a lifelong student, himself). Indeed, as an instructor I see this not as an obstacle but an opportunity—to teach students that there is much more to effective reading and understanding than they might expect, and that works of literature stand not as ancillary to the process of history but as loci of its depiction, reflection, and motivation.
Perhaps I’m exaggerating my case. I have, after all, taught polemical novels to students (Anthem among them, as well as, most recently, 1984 to a middle schooler), and a novel I’ve written and am trying to get published is, itself, at least partially polemical on behalf of keeping Shakespeare in the university curriculum. Indeed, Dostoevsky’s polemical burlesque of the psychology behind Russian socialism, Devils, or The Possessed, so specifically predicted the motives and method of the Russian Revolution (and any other socialist revolution) more than fifty years before it happened that it should be required reading. Nonetheless, because the content and aim of a work requires a different context for teaching, a unit on Devils or The Grapes of Wrath would look very different from one on, say, The Great Gatsby. While the latter definitely merits offering background to students, the former would need to include enough background on the history and perspectives involved to be able to recognize them. The danger of omitting background from Fitzgerald would be an insufficient understanding of and immersion in the plot, of Steinbeck, an insufficient knowledge of the limits of and possible counters to the argument.
Part of the power and danger of polemical art lies in its using a fictional milieu to carry an idea that is not meant to be taken as fiction. The willing suspension of disbelief that energizes the former is what allows the latter idea to slip in as palatable. This can produce one of at least two results, both, arguably, artistic aberrations: either the idea is caught and disbelief is not able to be suspended, rendering the artwork feeling preachy or propagandistic, or the audience member gives him or herself over to the work completely and, through the mythic capability of the artistic medium, becomes uncritically possessed by the idea, deriving an identity from it while believing they are merely enjoying and defending what they believe to be great art. I am speaking from more than a bit of reflection: whenever I see some millennial on Twitter interpret everything through the lens of Harry, Ron, and Hermione, I remember mid-eye-roll that I once did the same with Dagny, Francisco, and Hank.
Every work of art involves a set of values it seeks to concretize and communicate in a certain way, and one culture’s mythos may be taken by a disinterested or hostile observer to be so much propaganda. Because of this, even what constitutes a particular work as polemical may, itself, be a matter of debate, if not personal taste. One can certainly read and gain much from reading any of the books I’ve mentioned (as The Grapes of Wrath‘s Pulitzer Prize shows), and, as I said, I’m coming at Grapes with the handicap of its being my first read. I may very well be doing what I warn my students against doing, passing judgment on a book before I understand it; if I am, I look forward to experiencing a well-deserved facepalm moment in the future, which I aim to accelerate by reading the rest of Steinbeck’s work (Cannery Row is next). But this is, itself, part of the problem—or boon—of polemics: that to avoid a premature understanding one must intentionally seek to nuance their perspective, both positively and negatively, with further reading.
Passively reading Atlas Shrugged or The Grapes of Wrath, taking them as reality, and then interpreting all other works (and, indeed, all of life) through their lens is not dangerous because they aren’t real, but because within the limits of their selective stylization and values they are real. That is what makes them so powerful, and, as with anything powerful, one must learn how to use them responsibly—and be circumspect when leading others into them without also ensuring they possess the discipline proper to such works.
