Note: While Vox Nova is meant to show Catholic commentaries on Culture, Society and Politics, for the most part the blog represents a Catholic dialogue with contemporary American society and its political concerns. However, there is room for more; my own Vox Nova at the Movies is an attempt to engage the culture at large; now I am beginning another series (and one which I hope others will also join in with me): Vox Nova at the Library. My posts in this series will be less frequent than my (almost) once a week Vox Nova at the Movies, and they will discuss books past and present. You might or might not agree with my choices or my reactions to the books themselves; but, more than movies, the books I read (fiction and non-fiction) have had a major influence on the way I think and I think it will help anyone interested in my views to read some of the many works which have influenced and continue to influence them.
For this inaugural post, I have decided to choose the recently published Pirate Freedom by Gene Wolfe (New York: TOR, 2007).
Gene Wolfe is one of the best, if not the best, science fiction authors still writing books. He is also one of the most difficult, if not the most difficult, writers to read: his works contain mysteries and riddles which the reader is intended to solve (if not in the first read, in the second or further reading of the text). Most of his novels are written in the first person with narrators who contain one or many flaws, flaws which require us to question what it is we have been told, and even consider what it is that we have not been told as a way to understand and grasp the true story. Finally, the narrators themselves tend to be people of questionable character; we get a glimpse of the way they think, and why they think what they think, but the things they do can be quite unsettling to the reader (rape, murder, and even cannibalism are common events in a Gene Wolfe story). Yet there is a point to all of it, and so however revolted the reader might be about the unfolding events in a Gene Wolfe story, they tell us something about the character, and even more, something about humanity itself (and not always, as one might imagine, all bad). Indeed, a Gene Wolfe novel is a profoundly religious work, and his Catholicism is quite apparent throughout.
Pirate Freedom is Wolfe’s newest novel. It is not his best (my favorite work is the three-volume Book of the Short Sun), but it is still a good read, with many of the characteristic riddles and twists that one expects from Wolfe. Father Christopher is a rather young priest (in his late twenties), who has already lived a full life. Once he was a young boy in modern Cuba, left in a monastery by his father, raised by the monks, and at the time when he came of age, he decided to leave the monastery instead of take vows and find out what kind of life he could make for himself. But somehow he is sent back in time (how? it is one of the many questions I have after my first reading of the novel; but I have a guess as to when), back to the time of the “golden age of piracy”, where he is forced to find work as a sailor. Through a series of adventures (characteristically written as memoirs in two or more time zones, with Fr Christopher writing out his own life story as a confession at the request of an anonymous person at the beginning of the novel), Christopher’s story is that of a young man who finds himself slowly pulled into the life of piracy. He finds love and sorrow, victory and defeat, friends and enemies, until at last, he is sent back to the future, back to the time he was a young boy in a Cuban monastery, at which time he moved to the United States and became a priest (this, of course, is not the end of the story; I do not want to give away the ending, although it is easy to find out what happens by reading the last page – but of course, as it is a Gene Wolfe story, one needs to wonder if that truly is the end or if there are clues to something further than what we are told on that last page).
Christopher’s sentiments can be rough (of course, what does one expect, with the way he was raised, closed from the world, and then thrown into the rough world of piracy?). Let us look at one example: his ideas on priestly pedophilia. His way of dealing with the crisis we face is similar to the way he learned to deal with any problem: encourage those being attacked to fight back, and not let themselves become a victim. In a meeting he had with other priests in how to deal with this issue, he said, “Isn’t it our job to tell boys they shouldn’t put up with anything like this? I don’t believe there are many priests who would keep trying if the boy he was after yelled and swung with a few punches” (210). The reaction of his suggestion was as one could expect: it was rejected. Indeed, his fellow priests claimed he was blaming the victim for doing nothing. “I was encouraging violence […] I was blamed for encouraging so much violence that I felt like I might be lynched. I never got a chance to defend myself in the meeting, so I am going to do it here. I was not blaming the kids. I was blaming us grownups for teaching them to be victims” (210). He believed the priests themselves were, in a way, victims as well. “As for encouraging violence, I have to wonder how many of those priests who molested boys thought the boys wanted it and enjoyed it, even if they would not say so. Many of them – maybe all of them – must have thought that if the boy did not like it, he would yell and fight. The boys were the victims of those priests, I am not arguing they were not. But those priests were the victims of the people who had taught the boys that even a little bit of violence is the worst thing in the world. The priests had only one victim, or that is how it seems to me. Those people had two, because the priest was another” (210-211). Is his reaction justified? Does he have a point? Has he learned something we have lost in today’s world, or has he himself become the victim of the rape he experienced when he first joined the work crew of a ship, and is he just telling us how he learned to deal with it and what he thought worked for him? (One can question whether or not it did; when he fought back, he was beat down hard and fast, and still raped).
The book is quite good, but clearly its ways of dealing with sensitive themes are not for everyone. Like many (but not all) of Wolfe’s books, there is a sense of simplicity in the storytelling which is hiding a far more complex, far more difficult story to come to terms with. While it is placed as science fiction, because Wolfe is a science fiction author, for the most part, outside of the issue of time travel, it settles in as historical fiction with an anachronistic storyteller revealing his experiences in a bygone age. I would give it a 7 or 8 out of 10 based upon my first reading of the text; it’s not Wolfe’s best, but it is a far better novel than what other writers produce.
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