Hello! I’ve been working on another novel that in part, arguably, problematically, reflects what is currently going on in Portland, Oregon, where I live. I say “reflects” but it is not a mirror.
It’s certainly not a fun thing to live in interesting times. But, as long as possible, life does go on. For example, next to my writing desk there is a window. Next to it is a tree. In that tree lived a family of crows, which made in general a delightful variety of noise in addition to the predictable “caws”. Today Stellars Jays have been visiting that tree, causing a shrieking madness of bird excitement. So life goes on, including its fun and antics.
I hope it makes as much sense to you as to me to put time into the crunch, crush, churn, caw-CAW of revision, and not blog posts. I would say I’ve finished the book, except I’ll need to make revisions for at least a few more months.
Available in Paper here, and Kindle too. In case the review screenshot above is hard to read, please see the text below.
Lamp Eyes, Look Out!
by Peter Gelman
book review by Jonah Meyer
“Ladies and gentlemen! I offer you divination! I have been haunted by uncontrollable visions . . . Ask me anything. I, your great seer, know all.”
Weaving a surreal and disarming story of one man’s journey through the varied lenses of philosophy, psychology, politics, mythology, physics, and precognition, Gelman deftly spins a tale truly cross-genre in nature. The protagonist, held by government forces seeking to utilize his precognitive abilities to secure the national security interests of the United States, is, in many ways, just an ordinary fellow caught up in all the ensuing madness. He, of course, has a love interest, Alyssa, and their accompanying group of friends, who all meet on Halloween for a dreamy costume party. What follows is a highly animated—and quite humorous— game of sorts in which the main character rattles off a listing of precisely how each of the party guests will eventually meet their deaths. Meanwhile, government scientist Dr. Karp sends the book’s narrator through “merry-go-round,” spinning centrifuge tests in an attempt to glean useful information from his dreams. But what is funny is that each recall of his spinning dreams expresses itself rather like an outlandish sitcom storyline.
Classic Greek mythology is invoked aplenty in Gelman’s work, such that readers who enjoy new narratives informed by classical mythology will surely devour this highly innovative tale of a man who, quite literally, can see into the future. A remarkable hallmark of Gelman’s engaging and multi-faceted book is that many of the passages read rather like exquisite poetry. A grand work of sci-fi and fantasy fiction, this book is written in a beautifully poetic—and indeed philosophical—manner, defying any strict categorization or label. The outlandish sitcom qualities of the central figure’s blackout dreams not only tickle the funny bone in a ludicrous manner but also serve well the larger context of the author’s eccentric take on post-modern America, making Gelman’s work something of a small masterpiece.
Here’s a preview of a review of my book. Blue Ink will soon publish it. There are some mild spoilers here, but since the book engages with Fate, I think it’s fine.
You can pick up a paper book copy here. Available for Kindle here.
Oh the Pros and Cons of living authentically! As if everything can be divided up that Pro and Con way. Well, it’s a starting point. The argument here is not a binary woodchopper devouring a tree, the sawdust to press into fuel pellets of Self. It’s a pine tree to climb on, smell and absorb the scent, and occasionally taste the bark. Many parts are edible.
Rick Roderick’s eight 1993 lectures, The Self Under Siege: Philosophy in the Twentieth Century (available on YouTube) are a treat. His winning personality and West Texas illustrations make difficult topics easier to follow. The topical references feel antique, mostly, but I remember how pertinent they felt at the time. Roderick’s foil of “conformity” in this lecture also feels antique to me. I discuss this in my sidebar in red, below.
At ~38:00, the Pro: the authentic life is one in which you don’t flee from your destiny, but one in which you shape it–as much as you can given your historical and other limitations.
At ~39:50, the Con: We don’t want a narrative of our selves that’s based merely on authenticity because we know too many authentic swine.
The lecture frames authenticity as acting with intention versus acting with conformity. This doesn’t answer all the questions about authenticity. Not directly explored in this lecture: is there an authentic self at all? Maybe one could infer that there is none, that we are only thrown from nothingness into a life with context and framing to then resist as we judge proper, as authenticity-builders, but I think this needs further examination.
Sidebar: how the standards of conformity have changed since 1993! Most everyone seems in flux, most ways of life overturned and toppled and toppled again, it seems almost quaint at first. Then if I look a little deeper, it seems that the conformity now is not the treadmill of a Stairmaster, which Rick Roderick mocks repeatedly in this lecture, but the treadmill of trying to keep up with change. Imagine a cartoon animal here running, feet a-blur.
If our feet constantly slip and stumble over the ever-moving treadmill, and with arms out awkwardly we try (whoah, click, whoah!) to keep up and maintain dignity? The slip is inevitable, the dignity is not.
And given our fragility and inevitable series of micro-failures, of course we humanly aspire to enjoy and thrive from the changes! But it takes time for our primate resistance to understand that every pro of change comes with a con (the easier the communication, the more shrill the silence). SO… what then does that mean for the quest of authenticity?
How sad for us that Rick Roderick died in 2002. I’d like to know what he thought about today.
See the notes section for The Partially Examined Life’s excellent outline that summarizes the lecture.
A book’s panorama, half a circle, or one hundred eighty degrees of angles in 7 pages–that’s an uncompromising 25.7 degrees each page from editor Ficus Trangularis! Here are the page pictures of the new Introduction to my novel LAMP EYES, LOOK OUT! At a later time I may be able to post the text as text.
As my baseball board game advances toward market readiness, I created a new blog for it… RallyBirdBaseball.com . I’m tweeting about it at @RallyBirdBasbal . Thank you.
After coming back to lead in the top of the 9th, I lost the game session pictured below in the bottom of the 9th. Blue had a walk-off rally. And it hurt! But I had a moment there.
If you click the link below, you can listen to a recording of the broadcast interview. We talk about Dangerous Bicycle Mystery Quest and related topics. I was the second guest, so I start about halfway through the recording.
I would like to make a point here is that when we measure the pros and cons of our methods of urban growth, we should measure it against alternative growth methods, not a frozen moment of perpetual no-growth, not magical thinking, and not a reactionary “when I was young” statement of natural human nostalgia. In other words, for Portland, it’s not Infill vs Yesteryear, it’s Infill vs. Sprawl.
You can’t tell me sprawl doesn’t also increase costs, cause problems and inflict pain. I am interested in your ideas about how to have a decent, modern civilization without growth, but I haven’t heard a single one. (Here’s a good point to read some Schopenhauer about the remorseless striving of the Blind Will of nature.) This problem, the problem of growth, is what my novel tries to explore. I don’t know if there is a solution. Until then, I vote for conscious, intentional humane growth that seeks economies of scale that make urban resources work best. As far as I can tell, this leads to a fun place to live.
Impatient with Hawthorne’s House of the Seven Gables, I read two books on Cicero. Anthony Everett’s Cirero: The Life and Times of Rome’s Greatest Politician (2003) flowed pretty well, and so did Anthony Trollope’s Life of Cicero (1880). Everett moves his prose lens back and around to give context of that turbulent time, and also covers some details aside of Cicero such as the horrors of the Colosseum. This means if you are familiar with Roman history, you’re going to have to read through repeat material before the book returns to Cicero. Both Trollope and Everett go through Cicero’s court cases, the famous Verra, the rhetoric of which made him famous (as Cicero wanted). His words are indeed effective.
Fame opens the gates to power. Court rhetoric lead naturally to politics. So this part of the life of Cicero becomes the story of a politician. A remarkable strength of Cicero the political leader was his resistance to corruption. This was at a time when the state acquired funds through tax farming, leasing out to governors the power to tax. You can imagine the thievery this system encouraged. Cicero, however, was honest.
In a time of successive civil wars, in part Haves vs Have Nots ( optimates vs populares ), Cicero had a role. Class war was only a part cause. The deeper problem was the failure of the Roman Republic to have a means of growth in size without growth in instability. I did not detect any sign that Cicero sensed this. Rhetoric is strong at finding advantageous arguments, and has little role for vision or understanding that does not support the immediate goal. While he he held hopes of going back to the old ways, his comprehension of the situation seems to me limited to power, personalities and political parties. This tempers my appreciation of his prose… but maybe that’s not fair; I should just his words by what they do offer, if I can.
My main problem with Cicero was that as Consul, ruling under martial law, he captured conspirators against the Republic. What to do with them? Hold them for trial, or execute them.
Imagine the accomplishment of the Roman Republic, its hatred of the tyranny of kings, the revered assertion the right to trial of its citizens. Now imagine the Republic is under threat from within and without (the Catiline Conspiracy). You want to save the Republic. Yes, under martial law, you have the power to execute your prisoners without trial. It’s expedient, sets an example, and prevents them from doing future harm. It’s even popular, for now. But how can you not foresee that by doing so, you’re doing harm to the Republic yourself? How can you not see that this is a different kind of corruption? Julius Caesar, for one, warned against the executions. I think here again Cicero missed a chance to shore up the cracking Republic, instead putting a wedge in one of the cracks. Since some of his contemporaries understood this, I think this critique stands.
Much later, after the next wave of Roman civil wars, Cicero the politician suffered exile, adjusted his alliances to changing fortunes, and sat down to write his treatises that helped build the fame for which he’s revered today. I am still willing to try to learn and appreciate from this tradition. But I won’t forget that when tested, he chose extrajudicial execution. (I append one of Professor Sandler’s lectures on Cicero below.)
Danger Quest Mysteries 
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