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A few years ago, Channel Four and Richard Dawkins did a documentary on religion. The ads for it were striking to say the least; an image of the New York skyline, with the World Trade Center still standing, and the words “Imagine a world without religion”.

To paraphrase Douglas Adams (a fan of Dawkins, and considering how often Dawkins quotes him in “The God Delusion” the admiration is mutual), we’re coming up on 2000 years since a guy was nailed to a piece of wood for suggesting that people should be nice to each other now and then. We’ve explored time and space, we’ve explained things that seemed beyond our comprehension even 100 years ago, we’ve built machines which to the man in the street are virtually indistinguishable from magic, and at least in the richer parts of the world we’ve turned diseases that used to wipe out entire regions into something you can cure with a shot. And religion, specifically the dogmatic kind which some might have expected to belong to the less enlightened times pre-Voltaire, pre-Darwin, pre-Einstein… is stronger than ever. We have (one or several, depending on how you count) war in the middle East where the battle lines are defined by which ancient book people believe in (or how they choose to interpret the same book), we have American politicians who believe God speaks directly to them, we have growing support (so far mainly in the US, but we all know what happens in the US spreads) who want to teach Genesis as a viable alternative to science, people use “freedom of religion” as an excuse to let them oppress women, homosexuals or their own children, etc etc.

Something could be said to be wrong with this picture. And in sweeps Richard Dawkins with a cape and the DNA gene like a superhero symbol on his chest.

In his previous books, starting with “The Selfish Gene”, Dawkins apparently focused more on presenting the scientific viewpoint, but “The God Delusion” really seems to aim at being something which may be an oxymoron: the atheist bible. Look at the cover illustration, the bestsellerishly catchy title, the simple, humorous language; he’s out to convert. The scientific, rational worldview gets a good explanation, but in addition to this, the good and bad sides of religion are looked at from every possible angle – from world creation to morality, from building block of societies to personal comfort, everything gets put through the ringer. And it’s hardly a surprise that he stamps a big red “DOES NOT COMPUTE” on every aspect of it and finds that humanity would be better off without it; we’d have the good sides of it anyway, and we’d be rid of its bad sides.

The problem isn’t that Dawkins is wrong, because I don’t really think he is; he makes a strong case and for a non-religious person there’s a lot here to agree with, learn, use... and be scared by. There’s a war between rationality and superstition, he claims, and the cost of backing down even an inch could be disastrous.

(One of many frightening examples: the court case against the Pennsylvania school that wanted to teach creationis... sorry, “intelligent design“ as an alternative to evolution, where the defense’s expert claimed that godless science will never be able to understand “irreducibly complex” things such as the human immune system. Tough luck, HIV patients, you’re screwed – and guess how many kids would come out of that school wanting to be immunologists.)

No matter how much Dawkins popularizes his arguments he’s still a scientist at heart, and his basic problem with religion as a solution to anything still goes back to this: for every “why?“ you’ll sooner or later end up in front of a black box with the words “Because God wills it so“ stamped in permanent ink on top. Rather than every answer leading to another question, an expansion of knowledge, he thinks that using god(s) as an explanation implies giving up, an acceptance that “this is the way it is, we cannot know why and we cannot do anything about it”. God wants genocide, God wants televangelists, God wants female circumcision, God wants badly designed human bodies (if we’re intelligently designed to walk on two legs, why does it ruin our backs?), God wants terrorists, God wants bans on abortion and stem cell research, God wants people who never change their opinion regardless of what the facts are, and the rest of us are expected to respect it since it’s written in an ancient, questionably translated book.

For every well-founded argument, however, it still shines through that Dawkins is after that conversion. It’s everywhere, in the language (he uses just about every negatively charged adjective and adverb in the English language in connection with religion), in the way he presents his opponents’ arguments in a way that makes them sitting ducks for him to blow out of the water (can ducks really sit on water?), in the way he has a slight tendency to paint “his” side in an extra good light (yes, Richard, atheists have blown up churches – been to the former Eastern bloc lately?), in the way he snorts with contempt at the idea of “live and let live”; there are two choices, he argues, rationality or superstition, atheism or blind faith. And (I’d like to think that this isn’t because he would probably classify me as one of those sissy “Neville Chamberlain agnostics” he dislikes so much) I can’t help but wonder whether this is really a constructive approach. If you tell people they have to make a choice between the religion they’ve grown up with for generations and things which, to a lot of people, are fairly abstract ideas no matter how important they are – astrophysics, geology, evolutionary biology, etc ... how many will choose the former? Is it possible to argue logically against something which, by its very nature, defies logic?

I keep thinking of Karen Armstrong’s “The Battle for God”, where she makes a very good case for the growing role of religious fundamentalism during the 20th and 21st centuries not being a paradox but exactly the opposite; a very obvious reaction to the shrinking space left for religion to occupy when almost everything has a non-religious explanation, when the secular world becomes the norm. I suppose this book in a way is a reaction to the reaction; Dawkins speaks of religion as worshipping gaps – ie. the bits of the world, of humanity, of life that are attributed to God since we have no other explanation for them; as a scientist, it’s his job to get rid of those gaps. It’s all very Hegelian – thesis->antithesis and all that jazz – only to both sides, there seems to be no opportunity for synthesis, and I’m not sure whether Dawkins’ book will end up bridging the – heh – gap or widening it.

But on the other hand, should we demand of truth, of science, that it also be comfortable and non-confrontational? Maybe not. “The God Delusion” is a very well-written, thorough and convincing argument, I would recommend it both to fellow agnostics/atheists and to the religiously-minded who would like to be informed of what the “other side” (yeeeeesh) is actually arguing/thinking, but as with everything: read it with a critical eye.

It's certainly impressive - both in concept and in execution. I can't really say I've read anything like it; I'm reminded of Asimov's Foundation "trilogy", only with a scope much grander, or of... some book I read back in my SF days... something by Aldiss, perhaps? Something about mankind millions of years into the future, living in space stations underground... it's fuzzy. Also of Swedish sf/non-fiction astronomy writer Peter Nilson, whom I absolutely adore, but who is mostly untranslated AFAIK.

Anyway. This might be the first novel I've ever read where the foreword urged me to skip the first few chapters - and it's easy to see why, even if I wouldn't recommend it. Because even if he gets some guesses about the 20th-21st centuries VERY wrong (and bases them almost entirely on national stereotyping which I hope is supposed to be satirical) he actually gets a few things right - if not in detail. The dominance of an increasingly nationalistic and religious America, for instance, or the rise of a China which adopts capitalism but not democracy...

But it's after all that that things get really interesting. One thing that strikes me is how far we've come since 1930; Stapledon is a pessimist when it comes to humanity's (or if that should be humanities') ability to live in peace with each other or others, but when it comes to technology he's already been overrun - his mankinds need millions of years to develop things such as space flight, nuclear power or genetics, but Stapledon's own contemporaries needed less than 20 years. If I had any main problem with the story, it's exactly this; things take TOO long, as if he needed to find some way to stretch it to 2,000 million years - and so we have species-wide civilizations lasting millions of years with no great changes, we have evolution simply "taking a break" from time to time, etc.

But the main story here, of course, is the development of Man. Or Men. And even if I think it suffers from hardly having any characters whatsoever - it does get a bit same-same-but-different after a while when all numbers are counted in millions - and even if Stapledon goes on to apply the same national stereotyping he uses on The First Men to...um... species-related stereotyping later on, it's a fascinating, if rarely thrilling, read. The sheer imagination it takes to pull something like this off; the plausibility he, despite some romantic naivite both when it comes to society and biology, manages to add to his broad strokes of the brush... Plus, he's occasionally VERY funny. I'm not sure if some bits are intended as satire on the First Men or if he's writing it all as straight-faced as he can, but since they are all to some extent human - and we are all too human - it certainly works as such from time to time.

As someone who always prefers character to plot, I was surprised at how much I liked this. It has its faults, and it rarely kept me turning pages breathlessly, but... I've never read anything with the same approach, and I find myself wishing there were more books like it.

Modern society is built on the idea that everyone minds their own business and don’t interfere. If you see something horrible happen you might pick up your phone and snap a digital image of it, but actually do something? Why? It’s Somebody Else’s Problem.

So when a traffic accident on a crowded street in Edinburgh appears to be leading up to outright murder, all the witnesses just stand around watching as if it’s on TV. All except a shy mystery writer who has spent his entire life on the sidelines and has no idea why he’s interfering, but manages to save a man’s life. And all he gets for it is to be drawn, along with a bunch of other “spectators”, into a story that turns their lives upside down.

One Good Turn is a standalone sequel to the brilliant Case Histories, and just like its predecessor it’s hard to place in a genre; it looks a bit like your typical crime novel with a humorous touch, complete with mysterious deaths, human trafficking and an anti-hero who likes sad country music and can’t get his relationships with women to work. But just like the Russian dolls that pop out throughout, there are layers here, boxes within boxes, and a good dose of serious thinking under the comedy.

Not completely unlike Baxter in McEwan’s Saturday, the bad guy here isn’t really a mystery; we know who he is, and his job isn’t as much to be caught as to act as a catalyst for the other characters. The core of the novel isn’t the solution to a crime but the characters themselves, caught in the middle of life with all the little nicks and bruises that the years bring, and really much to caught up in their own lives to have time to deal with other peoples’... but they have to. In Not The End Of The World, Atkinson tried to fuse her contemporary storytelling with various myths, from the old Greeks to Buffy, and the result was... mixed, to say the least. She’s toned that down considerably here, and when for instance Robin Hood pops up in the corner of the character’s eyes here and there it only serves to underline the central themes of the novel, all those things that we all profess to agree with but rarely find a reason to actually adress in our everyday life. Is there such a thing as an unselfish deed? Are we really supposed to look after each other? What do you mean, my actions may have consequences for other people?

Towards the end, Atkinson may try a little too hard to tie everything together; not enough to break the illusion, just bend it a little. But while it’s not quite up there with Case Histories, One Good Turn delivers enough insightful, funny and realistic storytelling to outweigh its flaws, and just enough darkness to keep it from getting too sugary. It might be autumn in Atkinson’s Edinburgh, but even if it doesn’t end well for everyone who deserves it (or, indeed, ends at all – life goes on), I get a little bit of a warm fuzzy feeling from the book. I like Kate Atkinson.

Han har inte läst böckerna innan.

På något vis känns det oerhört befriande att få veta det. Erik Andersson får i uppdrag att göra en nyöversättning av Sagan om r… förlåt, Lord of the Rings till svenska, och han vet inte ens hur boken slutar. Han översätter som man läser, sida för sida, och låter överraskningarna komma när de kommer.

Redan där tappade han säkert en del Tolkienfanatiker – de är ett petimätert gäng. Men samtidigt är det väl egentligen något sådant den här sortens bok behöver; i stället för att skriva med en gigantisk Ohlmarksk ryggsäck och barndomsminnen av hur Frodo Bagger reser till Vattnadal kan han närma sig texten på dess egna villkor. Så är tanken i alla fall; ett och ett halvt år med fast anställning och en massa tomtar och troll. Men ju mer han översätter, desto mer får han att fundera på. Som läsare kan man kosta på sig lyxen att tolka en text som man känner för det, men översättaren har ju ett ansvar gentemot författaren, som i det här fallet dessutom varit pretentiös nog att själv klaga på den gamla svenska översättningen och ge ett helt gäng anvisningar om hur boken ska översättas. Och där sitter Andersson – en ordleksglad författare i sin egen rätt – och brottas med en text som samtidigt är saga, världskrigsparallell, kristen allegori och lingvistisk lekstuga.

Ö.a. är inte bara för Tolkienfans, långt ifrån. I korta, knastertorrt humoristiska anteckningar följer Andersson sitt eget arbete när han går i närkamp inte bara med Tolkien utan med språket självt. Ja, och så fansen då.

31 mars 2004
Blir medlem av Tolkiens Arda, vilket berättigar mig till att skriva inlägg på deras diskussionsforum. Jag ger mig genast in i debatten om nyöversättningen (under pseudonym).

2 april 2004
Blir åthutad av en tolkienist, som skriver att jag inte tycks förstå de principer som Erik Andersson arbetar efter. Bestämmer mig för att hålla mig borta från Ardas diskussionsforum.

Översättaren ska inte märkas, brukar det heta; en bra översättares uppgift är att överföra författarens verk inte bara ord för ord, utan också med andemeningen intakt. Språk har inte alltid något ett-till-ett-förhållande. Det är detta många (inte minst TV3s översättare) missar; ett ord som har en betydelse i svenskan kan ha flera olika – eller rentav ingen alls – i engelskan, och vice versa. Det är den där gamla historien om att eskimåerna har hundra ord för snö och inget för badstrand medan engelskan inte har något ord för ”lagom”… eller, om ni så föredrar, att hobbitar har hundratals ord för ”mellanmål” men troligtvis inget för ”höjdhopp”.

I händerna på en höjdarskribent som Andersson blir detta ren och skär underhållning, samtidigt som det är en fascinerande inblick i hur översättare arbetar (trodde ni att de sitter ensamma på sin kammare? Vänta tills ni ser fellistorna han får från de sakkunniga…) Men det blir mer än så. Det här med hur språk fungerar, till exempel. Tolkiens värld är gammal, och det enda sättet han kan översätta ett redan i ringens värld ålderdomligt namn som Baggins till svenska är att gå tillbaka till dess rötter, översätta dem och sedan låta det åldras även i svenskan. Svårigheten i att översätta ett så enkelt uttryck som ”the one ring” – den ”enda” ringen är det ju bevisligen inte, men vad säger man i stället? – eller dubbeltydigheten i ordet ”pity” (synd om/medlidande), som är ett grundtema hos Tolkien men inte existerar i svenskan.

Men också hur fiktionen byggs upp, hur en författare skapar en värld med inget annat än ord och hur lätt det kan vara för en slarvig översättare att riva den. Till exempel: Tolkiens värld – speciellt då hobbitarnas – är ju uppenbarligen inspirerad av England. Engelskheten genomsyrar alltihop från små pubar med fryntliga bönder i polisonger till det eviga godsavethekingandet. Så det måste han bevara – samtidigt som han måste översätta namnen till svenska. Var drar man gränsen? Om hobbitarnas lantliga engelska plötsligt låter som svenska dialekter blir det ju fel.

Som en lek översatte jag en gång ett kapitel ur dialektromanen Trainspotting av Irvine Welsh till västgötska. Det gick över all förväntan. Hele schlätta mella Måggra å Fallköping ble fuller av heroinister.

Sådär funderar och grubblar han på medan Frodo och de andra vandrar mot berget och mot alla odds klarar av sitt till synes omöjliga uppdrag… precis som deras översättare till slut gör. Och ärligt talat vete katten om det idag inte är roligare att läsa Ö.a. än att ta sig igenom Tolkiens jättebibba en gång till.

Well, that was a disappointing couple of hours.

Not wasted, not infuriating, not boring, just... disappointing. I mean, I really liked Hamid's debut, Mothsmoke. And with the Booker nomination and all, I really thought I was in for a treat here.

But... nah. The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a pretty decent novel; in Changez (Genghis), it adopts the by now not exactly unique "reverse Heart of Darkness" approach (see, for instance, Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss or Tayeb Salih's Season of Migration to the North); young 3rd-world student goes West to learn, yet can't quite make it fit with his own background and his own country's needs. And it's done reasonably well; sure, his shift towards what the title implies seems sudden, and the Erica/America allegory is a bit overworked, but it's... OK. He occasionally makes some rather harsh comments on American policies and culture that fit, though arguably they might have fit better in an essay.

Then there's the whole framework, which I have more problems with. As good a writer as Hamid is, he tramples all over "show, don't tell" and it's simply not credible. There are far too many references to set the scene, to tell us what the narrator is seeing even though the one he's talking to would see the same thing, too many passages that sound more like carefully worded writing rather than spontaneous sharing of experiences over dinner.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a nice book. It makes interesting points, even if it's simply by having the narrator tell us them. It has an interesting story, even if it's somewhat shallowly told. It has some interesting visuals and parallels - the janissaries bit is truly inspired, as is the dig at the American sort of fundamentalism - even if...

...you get the idea. Nice work. Hardly essential.

This is a book that's hard to pin down, despite its shortness (181 pages). Centered around what seems like a rather prosaic tale of a young couple on their wedding night, it throws out tendrils backwards and sideways in history - it takes place in 1962, right before the world turned upside down, the dying days of the British Empire with damp tweed and "No sex, please, we're British." Edward and Florence are products of their past, both in terms of culture and family (and both have family secrets), two completely different individuals who, in a slightly Nabokovian way, gaze deeply and lovingly into each others' eyes and only see what they want to see in each other. Right up until the point where it all becomes nakedly apparent that they want very different things.

This is only the second McEwan I've read, but I do believe it whetted my appetite a lot more than Saturday did. It's a brief concerto in five movements for violin and electric guitar, both intro and outro, played right at the point where everything hangs in the balance and could go either way and nobody knows exactly which note will turn out to break the harmony. McEwan's off-key once or twice (how, exactly, would Edward manage to play Florence a Beatles tune in 1961?) and the ending is a bit rushed, but on a whole, it's a beautifully written and, on closer reading, somewhat disturbing book.

Apparently it took him 9 years to write it, and I don't doubt it for a second - is considered Perec's masterpiece. And while it's not so much FUN as A Void, it's certainly impressive. This novel - if indeed it can be called a novel - is basically a literary jigsaw puzzle. The setting is a Paris apartment building with 99 rooms; the framework of the story is one single afternoon in 1975, and each of the 99 chapters describes what is happening - or not happening - in each room in this precise moment in time. In a way, the novel is sort of a mimeogram or whatever you want to call it; each chapter lists the objects found in each room - something which does, unfortunately, make the book a bit repetitive - as well as the people. One of Perec's most common themes, it seems, is memory; not just one person's memories, but the collective memories of a people (one of his novels, Je Me Souviens, is apparently made up entirely of sentences like "I remember [insert object/person/song/whatever]"). And the building in Life contains the flotsam and jetsam of the entire 19th and 20th centuries; people from all over Europe and all walks of life, the young and the old, the keepsakes of their ancestors, and of course the stories. Because each chapter also contains a short story - sometimes VERY short, sometimes tens of pages - describing how they got here, what other people they ran in to, the wars, the technology, the literature, the... well, all the facets of history, both personal and international.

Part of the framework is the story of one of the tenants, Bartlebooth, who as a bored young wealthy man sets himself what looks like a completely pointless task: he will spend 10 years learning how to paint, 20 years travelling around the world painting, then have his paintings sawed into jigsaw puzzles and spend the next 20 years laying those puzzles. After he's done, the paintings will be restored, shipped back to the places they were painted, and destroyed again so that nothing remains. And the entire novel IS a puzzle, one which takes much more than one read-through to complete; there are tons of interconnected storylines, objects that show up in several places, people that meet and influence each other's lives and then split apart again, circumstances ranging from the hilarious to the utterly tragic, and just... life. Someone said it was a book one could live in.

In a way, I suppose it's a story of how we see the world. Any three things, one of the character points out, can be seen as part of a pattern; any two jigsaw puzzle pieces can turn out to fit together. It's all about how we connect the dots. One read-through isn't nearly enough to connect them all, but I'm not sure if that's the point either; so many of the pieces - the stories - are beautiful/funny/fascinating in their own right, and I'm perfectly happy for now to have picked each one up, turned it around a couple of times, and put it in a pile next to some others that I think it might fit with.

This is a re-read. I first read it about 15 years ago, and it still holds up. On the one hand, this is a hilarious satire on the cold war and the atom bomb; the weapon everyone wants, but whose use can only mean everybody loses. It certainly has Dr Strangelove Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb - the idea of a doomsday weapon that can't NOT be set off - for a cousin. The Cuba crisis looms large.

At the same time, it's a bit more than that. Despite the fact that it's obviously more than 40 years old, Cat's Cradle still feels quite relevant; both in its discussions on American foreign policy

The highest possible form of treason (...) is to say that Americans aren't loved wherever they go, whatever they do.

and on the whole debate of rationality vs irrationality, science vs religion. People on both sides could do well to read this. As dismissive as Vonnegut is of the idea that science will always make the world perfect - the main target of the satire - his wish isn't a return to superstitoin but an advance to humanism. A large part of the narrative is carried by the fictional religion of Bokononism, a calypso-based religion that claims as its first gospel that all religions are lies, especially Bokononism, and that the only thing holy is man. Of course it's a crackpot religion, but then again, it's a crackpot mankind.

It wouldn't be Vonnegut if this rational rant against the completely rational wasn't delivered as an absolute farce, where everything goes to hell and nothing's as bleakly funny as the end of the world. The image that has always stuck with me is the one for which the book is named:

Newt remained curled in the chair. He held out his painty hands as though a cat's cradle were strung between them.

"No wonder kids grow up crazy. A cat's cradle is nothing but a bunch of X's between somebody's hands, and little kids look and look and look at all those X's . . ."

"And?"

"No damn cat, and no damn cradle."

In a world where the alternatives seem to be either blind faith or blind progress, Cat's Cradle is a pratfall of a novel saying HEY! It's just a piece of string! LOOK at it! Look at how the world is made up of people, and we've in our infinite wisdom arrived at a point where we need to recognize each other for the fuck-ups we are or we'll be laughing ourselves into an early grave. 44 years on, I see no reason to pronounce him wrong.