A Canticle for Leibowitz

First sentence: Brother Francis Gerard of Utah might never have discovered the blessed documents, had it not been for the pilgrim with girded loins who appeared during that young novice's Lenten fast in the desert.

Premise/plot: Canticle for Leibowitz is divided into three parts: "Fiat Homo," "Fiat Lux" and "Fiat Voluntas Tua." Centuries pass between each part, I believe. Essentially what you need to know is that it's post-apocalyptic. The novel opens several centuries (at the very least) after nuclear disaster has wiped out society--at least as we know it. Knowledge is feared and simplicity embraced. A group of monks in the desert cling to what remains of book-knowledge. They memorize. They copy. They wait. They wait knowing that show more humanity may never be ready for their wisdom. Readers get to know a few monks in each part. The book is not bleak from cover to cover, however, by the end the message is that humanity is incapable of learning from their past mistakes and no matter how many centuries pass, humanity is always its own biggest threat.

My thoughts: This is the first time I ever-ever wished I'd paid more attention in Latin class. Just as Jane Eyre is sprinkled with French, this one is sprinkled with Latin. My general thoughts are that once is not enough to really get everything there is to get. I was reading for big-picture ideas, and not really savoring the details and looking for all possible meanings. My first impression is that it's good, but, depressing. Also thought-provoking.

Favorite quotes:

"How can a great and wise civilization have destroyed itself so completely?" "Perhaps," said Apollo, "by being materially great and materially wise, and nothing else." (119)
If you try to save wisdom until the world is wise, Father, the world will never have it. (208)
It never was any better, it never will be any better. It will only be richer or poorer, sadder but not wiser, until the very last day. (216)
The freedom to speculate is essential...(216)
Men must fumble awhile with error to separate it from truth, I think--as long as they don't seize the error hungrily because it has a pleasanter taste. (218)
If we're born mad, where's the hope of Heaven?" (240)
When mass murder's been answered with mass murder, rape with rape, hate with hate, there's no longer much meaning in asking whose ax is the bloodier. Evil, on evil, piled on evil.(259)
Too much hope for Earth had led men to try to make it Eden, and of that they might well despair until the time toward the consumption of the world.(264)
It is the soul's endurance in faith and hope and love in spite of bodily afflictions that pleases Heaven. (292)
The trouble with the world is me. (305) show less

a post-apocalyptic ironicial near-satire or pure satire; of course, satire and science fiction very often overlap. Miller brings in at least one supernatural element and hints at others, often placing more modern thinking at odds with liturgical thought in surprising and even nuanced ways (eg the Thon’s initial reluctance to speaking his ideas melts when the monks chuckle and then ask questions but finally finds justification when he mentions a speculation about the origins of the humans who survived the Deluge of Fire; Dom Paulo vs euthanasia from the Dom’s POV, etc.). the irony derives from the seeds of rebuilding a secular and scientifically based society residing in a remote monastery for centuries as holy relics rather than show more simple archival scientific documents. scholars rediscover them and seek them out but the monks have already crossed that threshold and applied the principles outlined therein, demonstrating a penchant for empiricism that does not usually exist alongside faith-based endeavors like monastic reliquaries that pose as libraries.

a wry humor comes to the fore in many ways with many of the characters: Benjamin’s matter-of-fact messiah-seeking, Francis’s the sincere simpleton, Dom Paulo’s scuffle with the autoscribe device, and some of the meat-eating tribe’s behavior and attitudes. this relieves the immense pressure that would have otherwise crushed the reader beneath a bleak but astute insight into humankind’s nature in a post-apocalyptic world.

Miller explores in realpolitik tones concepts of morality in euthanasia, who deserves absolution and redemption, the very nature of humanity and its intelligence, and the power of draconian ignorance set at odds with sacred hope and devotion - which often do their own part in propagating stupidity. ironical, i said and i meant it. “Ignorance is kind. Many would not profit by his abdication,” Thon Taddeo pronounces to the monks who have kept the Memorabilia of Saint Leibowitz safe for more than a thousand years through their faith in God and devotion to the Church. amen. Miller has illustrated wonderfully the mechanics of myth and hagiographic inception. he wrote this during the heart of the cold war and era of fear of nuclear war about the sad path those institutions put humankind on. why, o why, has no one ever adapted this into a movie or miniseries? only the BBC has ventured to do the first two parts as a radio play. the delivery and storyline, the ironical and satirical tones, themes and characters, fit almost perfectly with Wes Anderson’s style. IMHO. a masterwork. show less

Walter M. Miller was a devout Catholic convert. In A Canticle for Leibowitz, Miller's depictions of Catholic monasticism, though set in the future, is really a retelling of the Church's achievements over the past 2000 years. It borders on "Catholic propaganda for secular readers", showing the role of the Church in preserving learning through the Middle Ages as a quiet incubator that led to the Renaissance and modernity. On the other hand, one could turn it around and blame the Church for allowing civilization to achieve its own (potential) self-destruction. Therein is the paradox of the novel, the Church is the seed of civilization's creation and self-destruction. I think this is what Miller was struggling with as a devout Catholic show more himself at the height of the Cold War when destruction seemed imminent.

Although Miller is writing about the future, it's really a retelling of the past in allegorical form (note Miller's reference to Dante "All Ye Who Enter..", the greatest allegory of the Middle Ages). Without some background in Catholic, European and Christian history, in particular from the Middle Ages, much of the novel is going to seem obtuse, not unlike the squiggles and lines of pre-Deluge papers the monks find in the ruins. At best the novel encourages readers to turn their gaze backwards in time, to investigate prior centuries with the same passion as reading about supposed futures. The past informs the future, by knowing the past, one knows a little better the future. Thus, it's an anti-science-fiction novel, making it one of the best science-fiction novels ever written.

--Review by Stephen Balbach, via CoolReading (c) 2011 cc-by-nd show less

Crazy complex, a meditation on humanity and civilization. Divided into three parts, the first after what seems to have been a nuclear war, the second partway into a time of political consolidation and the rise of nation-states, but also the rebirth of scholarship, and the third at a toe-to-toe arms face-off. There are threads that connect the three very disparate sections; the canticle for Leibowitz standing in for the concept of knowledge, the monastery devoted to knowledge preservation, a wild-haired wanderer, the themes of humanity. Each section revolves partly around life at the monastery and a particular issue of their time. Being largely unfamiliar with the structure of the Catholic church, I felt a little hampered at times as show more some of the concepts Miller plays with seem to do with Church structure, and faith, and certainly a number of references seem to be in Latin. It didn't hamper reading, by any means, but I can't help wonder if it affected how I read Miller's larger messages, especially as the last third seems to deal with elemental questions of conceptual sin. The characters are used to illustrate the larger issues, but many are still well crafted and interesting. Brother Francis drew me into the book in the first section. There was a well rounded and interesting cast in the second, but the third seemed to be mere props for the message. A thoughtful and classic book.

"Both he and they knew that he had only been reading the palm of a plan, had been describing a hope and not a certainty." show less

TEN stars. A book that would NEVER EVER make it through to a small-time SF magazine let alone a major publisher today, far too Catholic (and unapologetically so) and one of the greatest books I've ever read. I think it's fortunate that I waited until my middle age to read this as I'd likely not have had the depth of understanding to fully appreciate all the layers of this. Unfortunately it's the kind of book that also makes me question why I even try to write at all, it's shown me again that the art has already been mastered and to "abandon hope all ye who enter here"... !

A sampling: “The closer men came to perfecting for themselves a paradise, the more impatient they became with it, and with themselves as well. They made a garden of show more pleasure, and became progressively more miserable with it as it grew in richness and power and beauty; for then, perhaps, it was easier to see something was missing in the garden, some tree or shrub that would not grow. When the world was in darkness and wretchedness, it could believe in perfection and yearn for it. But when the world became bright with reason and riches, it began to sense the narrowness of the needle's eye, and that rankled for a world no longer willing to believe or yearn.” show less

A Canticle for Leibowitz is, I think, similar to Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. Both books deal with the aftermath of a society that has taken conscious steps to reject knowledge and learning, and both deal with the value of books and those who would protect knowledge in an anti-intellectual and anti-learning environment.

The story is organized in Triptych format, and opens up in a "new dark age of man", after a nuclear apocalypse has caused massive devastation and led to a culture of willful ignorance and anti-intellectualism (since it was the smart people who led to the nuclear disaster being possible in the first place--smart people and the inevitable desire for power). A few pockets of learning have survived, though, one of them show more being the monks of St. Leibowitz, who was a 20th century (pre-apocalypse) engineer. The good monks have preserved, sometimes at the costs of their own lives, a few scattered writings and diagrams, which they lack the knowledge to understand anymore, but which they faithfully copy and preserve. Not unlike what actually has happened with monasteries in the past, which preserved and translated scientific and cultural texts with great effort and labor and oftentimes without full understanding of the meaning of the texts.

From there, we move to a Renaissance 2.0, where humanity is still stuck in a feudal state, but there seems to be less of a backlash toward intellectualism, and there are a few dedicated scientific and cultural researchers starting to emerge.

And from there we move back into a new modern era, where, unfortunately, humanity has not learned from its mistakes, and again becomes embroiled in nuclear war, leading to a number of medical and ethical conundrums. This section is especially valuable to me because of the ethical questions that arise. The book ends on a depressing note, as I would have expected, but maybe a note that hides some hope for humanity as well.

While "A Canticle" is very well written, I can't help but feel it's a depressing read. It seems like Miller is of the opinion that humanity will never overcome our innate brutish nature, no matter the consequences and we're stuck in the cycle of destruction --> backlash --> rebirth --> advancement -- destruction. While this may indeed be true (as a casual glance at the news shows), I am slightly more optimistic that we are not headed for a breakdown in anti-intellectualism, and hopefully not for a nuclear apocalypse. With the current political discourse in America, though, my flicker of optimism may in fact be poorly placed.

It's very interesting seeing the parallels between the monastic orders post-apocalypse, and the monastic orders that existed in the middle ages. Much the same seems to have happened--(relatively) advanced texts in arabic or greek were translated, and the translations were laboriously and artfully copied by monks with little understanding given to them. It took a few great minds and access to these translations to kick-start the renaissance and scientific learning and development again. And the same happens after the apocalypse, with the Monks of St. Leibowitz.

An exceedingly well written book, and one that needs to be read by everybody. show less

A Canticle for Leibowitz follows the inhabitants of a monastery in the Utah desert over a period of 900 years from the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust in which vast swathes of humanity died and much of the earth irradiated through the dawning of a new renaissance as humanity rediscovers the science and knowledge the monks painstakingly guarded through centuries of anti-intellectualism and violence to a new future in which with star ships and nuclear weapons, humanity makes the same mistakes as before. The Church meanwhile, as guardians now of all knowledge, take that knowledge to the colonies in space to carry on where they left off.

Miller's tale is an epic spanning nearly a millennium of future history and at its heart is the deep show more faith of a convert along with the central theme of recurrence and the cyclical nature of technological progression and regression. The three parts allegorically represent three periods of Western history: the Dark Ages after the fall of Rome, the Renaissance, and contemporary civilisation.

This is a deep but also dark meditation on the short-sighted nature of humanity, suffering, church and state relations, and fittingly (owing to its genesis during the Cold War) deeply pessimistic about the trends in humanity's development. All of these are infused with Miller's Catholicism. Owing to its setting at a monastery, there are many Latin phrases that are not translated but these add a living element to the monks' faith. This book stands rightly as a classic of Cold-War era sci-fi and indeed sci-fi in general for its dark and pessimistic but ultimately thought-provoking discussions it raises on reading. show less