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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (62910)	10/19/2002 8:26:37 AM
From: Tom Clarke	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 82486

Nice discussion on Canticle. Interesting takes from everyone who posted on it. I read it awhile ago and was one of those who didn't get it. Maybe I was expecting too much. My curiosity in the book was aroused after reading Walker Percy's thoughts on it. "....A Canticle for Liebowitz is like a cipher, a coded message, a book in a strange language. From experience I have learned that passing the book along to a friend is like handing The New York Times to a fellow passenger on the Orient Express: either he will get it altogether or he won't. Like a cipher, the book has a secret. But, unlike a cipher, the secret can't be told. Telling it ruins it. But it is not like "giving away" a mystery by telling the outcome. The case is more difficult. A good indication of the peculiar nature of the secret is that the book cannot be reviewed. For either the reviewer doesn't get it or, if he does, he can't tell. My first inkling of this odd state of affairs occurred when I read a review of Canticle after receiving a review copy. I had read the book with the first pricklings of excitement I was to feel on successive readings. But I could not write the review. Why? Because when I tried to track down the source of the neck-pricklings, my neck stopped prickling. Then I read the review, which was written by a smart man, a critic. It dawned on me that reviewer had missed it, missed the whole book, just as one might read a commonplace sentence which contains a cipher and get the sentence but miss the cipher." He goes on to say much more, but I'm not about to tax my two finger typing skills right now. He concludes his piece with this intriguing sentence: "When he finishes Canticle, the reader can ask himself one question and the answer will tell whether he got the book or missed it. Who is Rachel? What is she?" His review of the book is included in Signposts in a Strange Land, a collection of articles and essays published shortly after his death.