What lies ahead for Mother Earth

The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning - James Lovelock (Basic Books, 2009)

Sounds like a cheery topic, no? But books that make their way onto my shelves must eventually be read, and now was this book's time. Lovelock is a major scientist and the man behind Gaia theory, which postulates that the Earth and everything on it together comprise a single, self-regulating, complex system. This is the kind of idea that strikes me as completely intuitive, yet another area in which the ideas I was taught in my childhood turn out not to be as pervasive and widely-held as I realized. Apparently over the years Lovelock has taken a lock of shit for the theory, and in some ways this book is one giant - slightly, but just barely, premature - "I told you so." The idea is that human, through man-made climate change and other activities, have stressed Gaia's self-regulating ability to the max. And in order to survive, Gaia is going to react in ways that won't be so good for us.

But "green" living isn't enough, per Lovelock. And trying to revert to some earlier time, to live with a smaller footprint? Insufficient. This book made waves when it was released because of his full-throated endorsement of nuclear power as both the safest and most effective form of energy. I'm not wholly persuaded, but I also admit that I have no idea what should be done. I often feel that we're very much the dance band on the Titanic, and I'm not actually sure that there are better options that being precisely that.

But before I go too far afield, back to Lovelock, who discusses both potential last ditch efforts to moderate global warming and strategies that will allow mankind to adapt to a future hot state. But what I took away is his exhortation that we not try to be something that we are not:

Even if we had time, and we do not, to change out genes to make us act with love and live lightly on the Earth, it would not work. We are what we are because natural selection has made us the toughest predator the world has ever seen. ... It is as absurd to expect us to change ourselves as it would be to expect crocodiles or sharks to become through some great act of will, vegetarian. We cannot alter our natures, and as we shall see the bred-in tribalism and nationalism that we pretend to deplore is the amplifier that makes us powerful. All that we can do is to try to temper our strength with decency.

Is this true? I'm not sure. Nor do I know that this will chance what I do in any significant way. But is it food for thought? Certainly.

Entanglements

Not many authors could combine a murder mystery, a treatise on the history of science, and a ghost story. Such was the ambition of Rebecca Stott in Ghostwalk. The murders - a spate from the 1660s, plus that of the woman researching them. The history - about Isaac Newton and his flirtation with alchemy, plus what alchemy meant to the scientists of the late 17th century. And the ghosts - well, they are everywhere. The novel is also one of obsession, obsessions that kill, although the word may never be stated.

I don't mind ghosts, but I think they may have been the weakest part of the novel. Because Lydia Brooke, brought in by her former lover to finish the murdered woman's book, is too sensible to believe in such things. And Stott never convinces me why she should. She convinces me why I should, but then I am gullible.

These weaknesses - and it is Stott's first novel, so I can forgive them - fortunately don't diminish too much from what is a lovely and haunting tale. Lydia is intriguing and thoughtful, and the decision to frame the novel as a letter to her lover was a wise one.

Stott's got a lovely voice, and I hope she continues to write fiction. Consider the quiet power of passages like these:

It's called entanglement, Mr. Brydon; the word describes the snares of love as well as a mystery in quantum physics. It's not just particles of light or energy that can become entangled; it's time too. Yes, moments of time can become entangled. The seventeenth century and the present have become entangled; they have become connected across time and space.

and love...

I saw that I no longer knew anything. Anything was possible. If someone had told me that you had issued an order for me to be attacked to frighten me into leaving Cambridge so that I would no longer be your Achilles' heel [Erin's note: and how much did this line make me want to be someone Achilles' heel?], if they had said that you wanted me out of the way at any price, I might have believed them. And then if someone had said that you would protect me above all else, sacrifice everything for me, that you loved me above all else, yes, I would have believed that too.

Not the most uplifting of reading...

I finished Disgrace (J.M. Coetzee) sometime in the last week or so. I haven't written about it mainly because I wasn't sure what to say. Sometime, with the book club selections, it seems to work best to blog my review after the meeting, and incorporate others' views into my own coalesced opinion.

But I got bored of waiting. This novel is filled with disturbing events and internal reveries. In this respect, it reflects - sometimes overtly, sometimes implicitly - the confusion and readjustment of whites (even liberal ones) to the post-apartheid world. Sex is potent as a symbol of asserting manliness and power - as a weapon, a reassurance of attraction, etc. It reminded me a lot of Philip Roth in this respect. (I'm not very convinced that male authors like women very much. Are they representative of the average man's secret fears? I'd prefer to think not.) But there is also a generational dispute between the male pro(?)tagonist and his daughter. Like in Fathers and Sons (thanks to Michael and a review he found for the comparison), in a time of change and confusion, the eternal struggle between parents and children is freighted with extra meaning.

But attempts of erudition aside, what was most striking about Disgrace was how much of it I spent wanting to cover my eyes, urging the main character "What are you thinking?! - Stop." It's not that much fun, and I'm not totally convinced that it deserved the Booker.

For all my ambivalence, however, Disgrace is a far more accomplished novel than the one I just finished: Intuition, by Allegra Goodman. It made it onto my reading list after a promising review earlier this year. Set in a research lab in the mid-80s, Intuition addresses the ups and downs of scientific research and the intuitions (hence the title) that lead people to monomaniacal obsession with proving their instincts correct. In the end, intuition can ruin relationships.

Intuition is a fascinating topic for a book on scientific inquiry, a field that is supposedly ruled by reason and empirical evidence. And Goodman starts out with a fast pace, drawing interesting characters and setting up several intriguing story arcs. But around half-way through, it fizzles out, and the last hundred or more pages was just a slog to the finish. I also wondered why Goodman set the novel in Boston of 1986 rather than today - it was never clear to me why an era two decades past was crucial to her story.

So both books are pretty much downers, and while I wouldn't go so far as to say I disliked either, neither managed to capture my imagination for very long.