ORIGIN

Harvard Professor Robert Langdon is back and better than ever. Is the storyline different? No, but for some reason this episode seemed more exciting than his last two efforts. Origin is comparable to the Dan Brown bestsellers, The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons. Inferno (see my review of 8/29/2013) and The Lost Symbol were okay but lacked something (I’m not sure what). The plot is always the same. Langdon is either invited or summoned to an event by some haut monde type person who is summarily murdered. Langdon then jets around the world during a twenty-four hour period with a beautiful girl ultimately solving the murder by interpreting religious clues and symbols. You must remember his beguiling ladies; Sophie in The Da Vinci Code, Vittoria in Angels and Demons and Sienna in Inferno. Well get ready to meet the fiance of Prince Julian of Spain, Ambra Vidal. I’m not criticizing Dan Brown’s modus operandi. Didn’t Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot always assemble all the suspects at the novel’s end to expose the murderer? Didn’t William Powell in The Thin Man movies do the same thing? Didn’t Charlie Chan always use his Chinese wisdom (insignificant molehill sometimes more important than conspicuous mountain) to solve crimes? Didn’t one of his bungling sons always get in his way? Anyway, you get the message. So what’s this 461 page novel about?

World renowned scientist and atheist Edmond Kirsch arrives in Catalonia, Spain for a meeting with three world religious leaders in a massive stone monastery. Present are Bishop Valdespino (Catholic leader of Spain), Rabbi Yehuda Koves (prominent Jewish philosopher) and Syed al-Fadl (Islamic scholar). In the famed library of Montserrat Monastery, Edmond tells the religious leaders that they are going to preview a video that the whole world will see in a month. He needs a vow of secrecy...they agree. “I am here today,” Kirsch began, “because I have made a scientific discovery I believe you will find startling. It is something I have pursued for many years, hoping to provide answers to two of the most fundamental questions of our human experience (where do we come from?/ where are we going?). Now that I have succeeded, I have come to you specifically because I believe this information will affect the world’s faithful in a profound way, quite possibly causing a shift that can only be described as, shall we say-disruptive. At the moment, I am the only person on earth who has the information I am about to reveal to you...Kirsch glanced around the ancient repository of sacred texts. It will not shake your foundations. It will shatter them.” The three religious leaders are stunned by the video. Kirsch didn’t tell them, but he planned to show this video to the world in three days, not in a month. By the way, all of the above happened just in the prologue. Does it sound exciting?

Since Kirsch was a student of Langdon’s at Harvard, the professor was invited to the event held at a museum of modern art in northern Spain. Kirsch sent invitations to many famous people without telling them what the event was about. People flocked in from around the world. The invitation said, “Saturday night. Be there. Trust me.” The security getting in was very inflexible, yet a retired Spanish Admiral, Luis Avila, was able to get his name added to the guest list at the last moment. How? Apparently somebody called from the palace and asked Ambra Vidal (the Prince’s fiance), who was also the Museum’s director, to do a last minute favor. She was under a lot of pressure (at this late hour) to get the show starting on time...so she okayed the additional name to the list. Did the palace really call? Who is this admiral and whose orders does he follow? Are the three religious leaders trying to silence Kirsch? Each guest is given a individual headset to tour the museum. Professor Langdon’s headset is controlled by someone named Winston (is he human?). After a brief tour, Winston leads Langdon off the beaten path to a secret room where he meets Edmond Kirsch. Meanwhile, the Rabbi and the Muslim have disappeared. In the secret room, Kirsch tells Langdon, “I need your advice...I fear my life may depend on it.” Langdon says, “Edmond? What’s going on? Are you okay?...Edmond, relax. Focus on your presentation. You’re not in any danger from religious clerics.” Kirsch didn’t look convinced. “You may feel differently, Robert, when you hear what I’m about to say.”

What happens on stage during Kirsch’s presentation sets the tone for the rest of this super exciting novel. As usual, every chapter ended in a cliffhanger, leading the reader into the next chapter. I thought the unique subject matter added to the drama of this novel. I kept saying to myself, what’s the answer to Kirsch’s questions to Robert Langdon on page 53. “These two mysteries lie at the heart of the human experience. Where do we come from? Where are we going? Human creation and human destiny. They are the universal mysteries. Robert, the discovery I’ve made...it very clearly answers both of these questions.” Wow, this was one of the best novels I’ve read this year! And I read a lot of books. Did I say read or read...I love irregular verbs almost as much as I like using that that back to back.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: Generally, when you read a novel with Professor Robert Langdon as the main character, you learn something historically, or you are reminded of something you forgot. Reading this novel...I was reminded of something I forgot. I’m not a proponent of the idiots in this country who want to destroy any statue that leaves a bad taste in their mouths. Even statues of Christopher Colombus are under siege in NYC. You can’t erase history.

The great Spanish author and philosopher, Jorge (or George if you like) Santayana (12/16/1863 to 9/26/1952) once said something that is so true...especially in today’s world. He said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Enough said?   

Summa Metaphysica Book 2

The author sent me a copy of his book to read and review:

I’m not Jewish. And even if I was, I probably would not understand what I just read. If you have a large brain like the scholarly author David Birnbaum must have...you have a 25% chance of understanding his second book in the Summa Metaphysica series. For an average Joe like me, it was inevitable that I would not comprehend this book. I did my best to try to unravel what he was trying to tell the reader. Okay, so I broke down some of his words in order for me to fathom his complex thoughts. I figure that summa means summarizing a subject. All right, then cosmos must mean the universe as an orderly system. The hardest thing to grasp was potentialism. I assumed that that (I love using that back to back) word meant: a new way of understanding and interpreting the world we live in. The author states that the temperature of the universe is a constant 2.73 degrees above absolute zero. And what does that have to do with the cosmic womb of potential (his words, not mine)? On page 82, the author ask some questions that I thought I would learn the answers to...not. “Where did it all come from?”, “What are the origins of the cosmos?”, “What triggered the Big Bang?”, “If there is a classic God, why is there gross evil?”, and the big question is: “What is the purpose of man?” If he answered these questions in this book, they went way over my head. Look, maybe it’s me, but if so, why did Mr. Birnbaum have D. N. Khalil, a teacher of Jewish Philosophy at Long Island University, translate his complex mumbo jumbo (as it seemed to me) throughout the book? Mr. Khalil says, “Birnbaum employs a linguistic ensemble that at times resembles the water-tight, nitty-gritty reasoning of God and Evil, while at other times feels like terse jolts to the psyche.” What? Sometimes I couldn’t even understand the interpreter.

To prove my point, on page 84, Mr. Birnbaum says, “Don’t get stuck on any one sentence or paragraph or page. If stuck on a sentence, re-read it once, perhaps, then roll forward regardless. No one sentence or paragraph makes-or-breaks book #2. The concepts are all attaching to the core ‘spinal column’ of POTENTIAL...Extraordinariation (his word, not mine). Your subconscious will connect-the-various dots. Matters will crystallize further.” Mr. Khalil says on page 90, “Birnbaum is positing throughout Summa Metaphysica that the original ‘leveraged buyout’ concept was cosmic. The cosmos was created, he hypothesizes, out of the cosmos’ own potential. Birnbaum’s paradigm, on the other hand, is ‘bootstrap’, i.e. the potential of A ignites A retroactively. The Torah itself has a one-phrase all-encompassing treatise on Jewish philosophy: Eheyeh Asher Eheyeh. This is Potential within Potential, which Birnbaum seizes upon as the crux of Summa Metaphysica.” My contention is that this book (and the rest of the series) should be studied at Yeshiva University if you are going for your doctorate. It’s not for the hoi polloi. Later in the book, the author says, “We do not know what existed pre-Big Bang. Let us call it ‘0’. We can make assumptions about ‘voids’ of various flavors, but we certainly do not know (of course we don’t!!). Best to just call it ’0’. Now moving forward...at CREATION, ‘0’ is presumably divided in multiple ways, many beyond our capability of even beginning to fathom at this point...counter-balancing Negatives and Positives...0 divides into +1,-1……+2, -2 etc., Positives and Negatives; Polar and anti-Polar, Male and Female; (see book #1).”  Are you getting this are am I a tad stunod?

So as I struggled to page 103, I splashed water on my face and said to myself, I can make sense of this. But the page starts off with, “To our readers - By now you ‘have-the-drift’ regarding the core concept of Quest for Potential (but I didn’t have the drift), but ‘having-the-drift’ is not sufficient for a major metaphysics presentation,-so we will proceed forward in more formal fashion...Quest for Potential is an overarching and all-encompassing Near-Infinite Entity/Dynamis transcending TIME and SPACE seeking to evolve fully into Infinite Divine Extraordinariation.” “Viruach Elohim mirachefet al p’nei hamayim*, Everything-past, present and future-is integral to this ONE entity/dynamic, of which we are an organic part.” *Khalil tries to explain the above Jewish phrase by saying, “Torah use A: There are two ways to quote a biblical passage. One might either reference a detail from the Torah and use it merely to introduce a concept that is otherwise unrelated to biblical principles. Or, one might take a hold of-and embrace-central biblical principles, and use them as a foundation for developing a thought.” Thanks, Khalil, but I still don’t understand anything that I’ve read. I must say that this was one of the most difficult books I’ve ever read. There is no question that Mr. Birnbaum is a bigtime intellectual, but he must learn to write using mostly elementary terminology. I eagerly wanted the answers to the questions in paragraph one, but I didn’t get them. I do recommend this book but, mainly to Mensa society members (just kidding).

RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

Comment: At the end of the book, Birnbaum has a discussion with Professor Stephen Hawking of Great Britain. Hawking: “For millions of years, mankind lived like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. Mankind learned to talk and we learned to listen.” Birnbaum: “To reach its potential, mankind was thrust into a greater level of complexity/sophistication than the animals around him. The form of that advanced complexity included higher-level reason, language, emotion, and consciousness. Per Potentialism Theory, the notion that ‘advancement’ would happen was a given; it was only a question of when, where and what form it would take.”

Hawking: “I don’t believe that the ultimate theory will come by steady work along existing lines. We need something new. We can’t predict what that will be or when we will find it because if we knew that, we would have found it already!” Birnbaum: “Right again, Professor Hawking. Exactly.” (the possible ‘ultimate theory’ is Birnbaum’s Potentialism Theory).

I still don’t understand and will soon put this book to rest for forever. 

the FATNESS

The author sent me an autographed copy of his novel to read and review:

Mark A. Rayner wrote this spoof about socialized medicine in Canada with the intention of providing comic relief. I, for one, found far too little haha’s. It was a fair to middling story, bereft of any real comedy. I saw that some reviewers compared this novel to Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, (see my review of 2/17/2013). Are you kidding? Did you really read Catch-22, or are you shooting from the hip? Mr. Raynor even attempted one or two pregnant pauses...please leave those to Jack Benny and George Burns. I do agree that socialized medicine is a joke, since doctor’s offices in Canada are filled with people suffering from Munchausen syndrome, since their visit to a doctor’s office is perceived to be free. If someone has to pay for a doctor’s appointment (with real money), chances are that that someone is really sick. (I love being able to use that that). I’m not saying that the author’s novel is extraneous...it’s just not that funny. So what’s the story about?

The idea that Canada would send people to a kinda prison for being overweight is one thing that did make me laugh. If your BMI (body mass index) was over 30, you went to what the inmates called The Fatness (the overweight prison). You didn’t have to go if you were willing to get your own health insurance...not many chose that option. Your job was protected for two years while you tried to get under 30 BMIs, if you failed...say so long to your job. Since the fat prison was expensive to run, the law only applied to ages between 18 and 45. Our protagonist in prison, Keelan Cavanaugh, who is a web designer for Hellmuth University, briefly thought about having his leg cut off to save 23 pounds, but changed his mind. Keelan’s two buddies in the Fatness are Greg and Max. “There were many many nicknames for the Calorie Reduction Centres: The Girth Gulag, Chubby Choky. Plump Prison. The Fatness. They all gave the impression, but not the facts: the CRCs were concentration camps for the generous of flesh. Sure, cushy, non-death-dealing camps with running water, full free Wi-Fi, and on-staff exercise coaches, but the facilities were designed to keep an unwanted population sequestered and out of sight of polite company.”

Keelan meets Jacinda Williams, an activist Lawyer, who works as an advisor for the Subcommittee on Obesity. They appear to fall in love. Keelan’s new calorie supervisor (his third), Brittany, thinks Jacinda’s butt might be a tad too large (needs some treadmill work). How can Keelan lose the weight to get out of prison and take Jacinda on a real date? Brittany gives Keelan a ridiculous two week diet: “For the first four days, all you eat is apples, then one day of cheese, followed by four days of chicken, and you finish off with a nice celery cleanse.” Keelan did the math. “So I’m going to eat nothing but celery for five days?” Brittany says, “Isn’t it wonderful?” Meanwhile, inmates can cheat on their diets thanks to the illegal activities of prisoner Colin Taggart and his Heavy Hitters. He has the approval of the prison doctor and seems to have the tacit consent of the prison director for importing drugs, alcohol, sex toys and more importantly...Big Macs, French fries, ice cream, chocolate bars, and soda pop! There seems to be a lot of sidebar stories going on in this novel (at the same time) with no firm direction of the plot. It reminds me of a TV weatherman showing the viewer all the possible spaghetti noodle paths a hurricane can take. I do recommend this novel, largely for it’s unusual topic and the author’s adequate prose.

RATING: 3 out of 5 stars

Comment: Other than Mark A. Rayner, the only Canadian writer that I’m aware of is Alistair MacLeod (7/20/1936-4/20/2014). His 1999 novel, No Great Mischief is considered by many to be Canada’s greatest book of all time. What did Amazon say about Alistair’s novel?

“Alistair MacLeod musters all of the skill and grace that have won him an international following to give us No Great Mischief, the story of a fiercely loyal family and the tradition that drives it. Generations after their forebears went into exile, the MacDonalds still face seemingly unmitigated hardships and cruelties of life. Alexander, orphaned as a child by a horrific tragedy, has nevertheless gained some success in the world. Even his older brother, Calum, a nearly destitute alcoholic living on Toronto’s skid row, has been scarred by another tragedy. But, like all his clansman, Alexander is sustained by a family history that seems to run through his veins. And through these lovingly recounted stories-wildly comic or heartbreakingly tragic-we discover the hope against hope upon which every family must sometimes rely.”

That sounds like a novel that I should read in the near future.