Tangentially related to my last post, rant time: I would like to talk about Unsong, and why I think it's less Jewish than I've expected it to be.
First thing first, yes, I'm aware that the author is Jewish. That doesn't really change my judgement much. I also know the author has a tumblr account, so there's a nonzero chance he will see this post. In shch a case, I hope he can understand that I'm merely frustrated with being told this was a Jewish story and finding it less so than I expected, and that this doesn't really reflect the quality of his writing. From that angle, I think Unsong is rather good. I'm not sure it's for me, though.
What lit me up here forst was the electricity-on-Shabbat part. Admittedly, in Jewish circles it is common to think of it as fire. However, the Halachic discussion over it in Orthodox circles is less certain - there were claims that it's construction, or completion, or just something too weekday like to do on the rest day. However, in this story, the main purpose of the Shabbat commandment is regarding electricity. Which is rather weird. Also, not sure I like the way the commandments are treated - but that also stems from replacing G-d with Uriel, so what can I say at this point.
Now, the above point isn't commenting that much about the Judaism of the story. After all, it is actually very much a Jewish thing to consider electricity prohibited on Shabbat and connecting it to fire. No, my problems come in other areas.
First, the worldbuilding. Specifically, the war in heaven. The whole thing about a third of the heavenly host siding with Lucifer and fighting against the larger part of the angels? That is a very Christian thing, actually. If it was ever in Jewish lore, it was taken out of the canon long ago. Fallen angels are something of a different matter, and are a bit complex. Kudos for including the "angels can't speak Aramaic" thing, but honestly, this feels more like a nice fun fact added in more than anything. The explanation is kind of original, though.
Then there's the Midrash Shem on Kissinger. Which says that we learn kissinger would be the name of a bad person because Judas Iscraiot kissed Jesus in the act of betraying him. Relatedly, Kissinger happened to be a Jewish man and comparing Jews to Judas was one somewhat common antisemitic trope.
Now, to be fair, I don't really know much about Watergate, Nixon or Kissinger - funnily enough, the most I know comes from the Unsong version, which is different from the actual event in a number of ways, I'm sure. So I can only assume that Americans have a very good reason to dislike Kissinger - he was also likely a token for Nixon, who was himself somewhat antisemitic. So I'm not going to get on anyone's case for disliking him. Also, despite what I said, I don't think mr Alexander intended in any way to be antisemitic towards Kissinger. Not just because he's Jewish - that doesn't exclude people from being antisemitic, especially considering Kissinger himself may have harbored some bigotry towards his own people - but because I don't see any sense in it. However, what he did do was use a very Christian story as part of that. Oh, and there's also the Messianic figure born from a virgin.
Now, one might argue that a story having numerous Christian elements doesn't exclude it from being Jewish. I suppose that's an interesting argument to be had, but the end point is that if I wanted stories with Christian elements I could read 101 other books. So for me, personally, seeing just all that again... the Jewish elements didn't feel enough. This is largely a me problem, I can acknowledge that, but it's frustrating.
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I read Unsong this week and it was incredible. The writing and humor has a strong Terry Pratchett feel, and actually the story itself is adjacent to a sci-fi Good Omens. Almost every chapter had a scene that was uproariously hilarious, and really, the whole book was mainly a vector for delivering an endless stream of incredible puns
The basic premise is that the world started to end in the 60s, when the Apollo program crashed into Heaven and cracked the firmament, allowing the divine light to get back into the world. This caused physics to start to break down and reintroduced angels and demons and magic. Jump forward to 2017, and there's a booming "applied Kabbalah" industry around computationally deriving the Hidden Names of God in lieu of other technological advancement. The A plot follows Aaron, a down-on-his-luck kabbalist who works in one of these Names factories and discovers a Name that would revolutionize discovering more Names. This kicks off a chase to gain control of it across what's left of the US
The B plot bounces around, but centers on the was between good and evil. Angels returning to the world also means the resumption of the war against the fallen angels, and also Hell is real again. The messiah was born in the 70s and led the war against the devil, but most of this half of the story is actually about his daughter training under the archangel Uriel in the 90s to keep the world running. Of course Aaron's discovering of a powerful new Name eventually grabs the attention of these powerful forces
Of course the actual minute-to-minute of the book is totally absurd. The first antagonist is the titular UNSONG, the United Nations patent office for Names of God. At one point they attract the Drug Lord and we learn about the War on Drugs: a sentient peyote cactus man took over Mexico with a drug-induced hivemind and tried to invade the US. Neil Armstrong ascended bodily to heaven, and then returned to "grant salvation to" (take over) LA. The higher level angel fights do word association with the concepts describing reality. It's all bonkers, and it all works so well
I'm leaving out so much, but I can't recommend this enough. And the overall question that keeps coming up throughout the book is the age-old question "why does God allow evil to exist anyway," and this is the first time I've seen an answer that actually makes sense. I don't think you could have gotten there from any other angle
What's interesting is that I've seen a good few people assume that Jacky and the Pyramid are the only people able to get magic to work, what with the whole spaghetti lockpick analogy, but from my reading they're...not. Oh, they probably are now, and none of the others were ever relevant, sure. But.
The timeline says that the first "small magical effects" were measured by scientists in 1945. I'm pretty sure Jacky wasn't active that early - he'd had an underground reputation for years pre 1971, but 26 years? Someone was doing magical stuff in a lab and getting it scientifically verified back in the 40's.
Plus, consider what he says about the Pyramid. How he doesn't like slamming the door on people and then stopping them from trying to find their own way, because he knows the traps they could fall into. How he hates cops but founded the magic cops, because he knows how dangerous magic can be. You don't need magic cops if magic crime is impossible, and there are only dangers to letting people outside the Pyramid (Eliza was in on it after all) try magic if some of it works.
My guess is that there were probably a fair few governments and corpos trying to build something like Jacky's Numinous Weaponry over the years, and a few would-be wizards with a functioning trick or two in the occult communities he moved in before going public. But any research that wasn't a boondoggle got nipped in the bud once Jacky found out, anyone who didn't join him (not many, since anyone who did figure out a trick would look at him and go I KNEEL) got stopped before they hurt themselves or others, and any old texts or tomes with even a crumb of half-accurate info in them are now in a Pyramid vault where Jacky would read them to the Arseholes when they needed a laugh.
So yeah. There were other wizards, but they were more 'Tonya's lightshow fingers' level with a side order of blowing themselves up as opposed to Jacky '750 Megadeaths an hour' Magus, and maybe the only impact any of them ever had was providing credibility to his 'inverted Pyramid renegades' cover story that nobody believes anyway.
(The whole thing kinda reminds me of something like Unsong, where the names of God become magic spells after Apollo 8 crashes into the crystal sphere that encloses earth and projects a false image of space. Didn't get far but I remember they started patenting the Names and punishing employees for personal use. I should really give that book another go apparently Kissinger teams up with the devil to invade the USSR or something that sounds great
(Or my pet obsession, Charles Stross' Laundry Files books, where magic was always there but didn't really amount to much because they only figured out the scientific underpinnings in the 20th Century. So yes that creepy Lovecraftian tome will kill you, not because it's cursed, but because it's about as accurate as Pliny the Elder's Natural History and if you follow the instructions you are going to explode. Most blood sacrifices aren't because the spell was evil but because it's unoptimised and needs the raw power to brute-force it into actually working, and you could do it bloodlessly with some half-decent code. The easiest spell to cast is "Induce Dementia In Self".
(of course some would argue that that one's undercut a little by the increasing number of exceptions and caveats that appeared as the books went on. Hello Seph hello Elder PHANGs hello Biopunk Fairies hello Actually Functional Necronomicon That Apparently Exists In The Spinoffs)
[This one is technically late, but I was working on it during the day. Also, this one is based on one of Unsong's last plot twists, so please don't read this unless you've finished the novel.]
[Yesterday was the seventeenth day of the Omer]
Endurance/Victory within Beauty
The Comet King was not one for propaganda.
He certainly desired loyalty from his subjects, but he wanted it to grow from a rational view of his actions. He wanted to be judged by the fruits of his labor.
He knew how to speak inspirationally to his citizenry and soldiery. He knew how to speak powerful words of Torah. Those were frequently one and the same. But he would never embellish the truth. He would tell his people exactly how everything really was. If he didn’t like how something was, he would fight to change it. He could very well have fixed it all himself, but he made sure all could contribute to the cause so they could be empowered and their souls elevated. They could join in the salvation as Jews who observe Shabbat are said to join the Creator in the act of Creation. This is Tikkun Olam.
The Comet King, despite being born of the Heavens, did not wish to be worshiped. He viewed this as a flaw in the religion founded by a previous messianic claimant. It was humanity that needed saving, so it was humanity that would save it, even if that was only half his ancestry. He would work with God, not as Him. Worship would be idolatry, and the Comet King needed his Kingdom not to possess such a spiritual issue.
He could have gone without propaganda and praise altogether, and he could maybe even utilize his authority to prevent it. Nevertheless, he was proud to be an American. While he personally preferred monarchism over democracy, he absolutely supported Free Speech, which he made sure to include in the Constitution of the Untied States of America. If anything, the rights of states to now have their own unique systems of government was its own form of Free Speech, among other localized liberties. Therefore, if his people wanted to praise him, he would not stop them.
The subjects of the Comet Kingdom of Royal Colorado sang many songs of praise, and a recurring motif was his Beauty. He shone brilliantly. He shone as the stars that conceived him, or that guide lost sailors home. His flowing hair and beard waved like the waters that were separated into Heaven and Earth, or like the wind that the Almighty One breathed into Adam Kadmon. The flap of his wings was like the thunder that crashed above Mount Sinai, but his words of comfort were a still, small voice. The shadow of his wings was like the strongest sukkah. More Beautiful than anything that he appeared as or spoke of was his endless and effective heroism. It was a Beauty that made the subjects of the Comet King want to survive, want to fight for a better world, and have faith that Victory was possible.
As Beauty became the Comet King’s propaganda, Ugliness became the signature trait of his enemies. It does not take great Kabalistic study to deduce that demons are repulsive, in both appearance and metaphysical implications. However, there was some doubt about the Other King. He certainly must have been ugly. You don’t spend all your time raising ghouls, dybbukim, and lilitot without the impurity of the grave rubbing off on you. Torah is clear enough in its opposition to necromancy and its wariness around graveyards. In addition, there is a midrash (Bereshit Rabbah 11:5) in which necromancers are unable to raise the dead on Shabbat, as it is the one day a week when they can rest from their punishments. Therefore, necromancy is doing Hell’s job for them, bringing the punishment and all its evil and darkness onto Earth. This is as far from Tikkun Olam as one could go. It is evil, and it is Ugly.
Yet, the Other King (who was sometimes, in whispered tones, referred to as Gogmagog, Armilus, al-Dajjal, or Nyaralathotep, the Crawling Chaos) wore a mask. It was of Osiris, the Egyptian Lord of the Dead. It was a handsome mask. Made from reflective emerald, it was what ancient pharaonic mummies would wear, or what was said to be worn by Aleister Crowley during the apocryphal Battle of Blythe Road. It was easy enough to assume that he wore a mask to hide his ugliness, as the Phantom of the Opera did in his tale. Some said that the mask had a hinged jaw so it could open, and that the mouth it would reveal had razor-sharp fangs and rotting flesh. More rumors held that he did not have the feet of Man, but the claws of owls. It was a very well-formulated hypothesis that he was Ugly, but it was yet to be objectively proven. If he were to be judged by the fruits of his labor, then he was certainly Ugly, not only for his necromancy or the atrocities he committed in his wars and against his own subjects (such as dissident crucifixion, giving free reign to mafias, or mowing down civilians and enslaving them after death), but especially for slaying the Comet King himself and snuffing out the hopes of millions.
The Other King’s skin did indeed rot, boil, and break under his mask. That much was true. He could not have prevented the tzaraat of necromancy if he tried, which he didn’t. He did not want to forget how abhorrent everything he did was. He did not wear a mask because he wanted to hide his disfigurements, as he wanted all to know his great evil too, and to fear it. He wore a mask for two reasons. First, it was intentionally hearkening to the idolatry and oppression of Mitzraim, to crush and demean the spirits of the people, pushing their souls downwards. Secondly, he hid his face, as the Almighty was said to have done, to hide his identity. This gambit could not succeed if it were known who he really was. Anything could have happened if he was recognized. Coloradans might surrender outright, assuming submission would aid their long-lost King (it wouldn’t). They might surrender instead due to the depression of betrayal. Their anger could be enough to push the war in their favor, overtaking him and founding a Golden Age with Hell still underneath and inevitable. None of this would do. He needed them to fight back, and more than that, he needed them to see him as Other.
No matter what despicable sins he committed, no matter how they blotted upon him, he could not entirely suppress the Beauty that still lay within him, born not only from Heaven but from all of the great good he had done before and was now trying to make up for with evil. Even as he descended on his children as the Angel of Death, they recognized him in their last breaths. So did the Kabbalist who had wanted his Comet throne. Yosef and Moshe terrified their Israelite bretheren when they were among the royal houses of Mitzraim, but their holiness was not undone, and Bnei Yisrael would recognize them when it came time for shepherding. Yosef and Moshe in Mitzraim and Jalateku West donning the mask of Osiris and entombed in an obsidian sarcophagus deep below the Luxor Pyramid were like the nitzotzot suffocated by the Klipot. The light, the Beauty, still shined through.
“There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”
Jalateku still had his Love. Once it was for humanity, or even just his own family, but he had to burn that bridge. Now it was only for Robin. So Beautiful, so Wise, so Fallen. This was as she brilliantly intended. This was the Providence in a Bird Falling.
Jalateku had his Love. No matter how Ugly he became, his Love would ensure that, below the surface, his Beauty would Endure. No matter how much death he caused, exploited, or polluted him, his Life, too, would Endure.
Better still, his Love, Life, Beauty, and Endurance would finally lead him, no matter how painful it was, to Victory.
L’Chaim!
[Today is the eighteenth (חי) day of the Omer, which is two weeks and four days in the Omer]
Maybe from a professional writer's perspective, editing is a straightforward journey from worse to better, but from a fan's perspective, each draft of a work has its own virtues. Thinking here about Scott Alexander's UNSONG, which fits its own schema for dividing up the universe in the online draft while genderbending a character to score an additional pun in the paperback draft, and Daniel Lavery's Children's Stories Made Horrific/The Merry Spinster, which are more catering to me on a visceral level in the online draft but more aesthetically coherent—achieving the highest possible level of blackpilled doomer misandry—in the published draft.
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Somehow, after thousands of years, the seventy-two nations came together again. Like streams joining into a mighty river, they all flowed together into the same spot. “Come, let us build us a city, and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven.” And when the LORD came to confound their speech a second time, He found that it was already confounded, English-speakers and Yiddish-speakers and Spanish-speakers and Mohawk-speakers, and people who were bilingual in English and Gaelic, and people who only knew Haitian Creole, and people who spoke weird degenerate versions of Portuguese intermixed with extinct aboriginal tongues, and God-only-knows-what else, and all of them were working to build the towers together, communicating through a combination of yelling and frantic hand-gestures. And the LORD said “Whatever,” and He let it pass. Thus rose New York.
