Engine Summer

Engine Summer by John Crowley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

One of this book’s strengths was quite how effective it was at making me sleepy. The post-apocalypse it describes is serene, slow-moving and largely free from conflict. Although the protagonist goes on a quest, most of the jeopardy he encounters is elided. The central mystery that bookends the novel (who is the story being told to and why) isn’t in itself strong enough to propel the reader forwards. You have to trust the tale is worth telling. Thankfully it is.

There are some dated elements – many of the future societies being described have gendered assumptions that a modern reader will chafe at. This was written over 40 years ago and to a degree it shows. What’s lasting about it is the protagonist’s own yearning for knowledge and love. These (male-coded) desires are implied to have been taken to extremes and have ruined the world. But there are other ways of living proposed by the novel. Psychological and genetic engineering have produced a cat-like people who have abandoned expansionist drives, and the protagonist’s own illiterate culture, where deception is impossible and everyone says what they mean, seems to be a pleasant place to grow up.

The stories that structure these groups are imperfectly understood by the protagonist, and some of the novel’s most beautiful writing is found in evoking that ambiguity. The ending suggests that the protagonist has become a story that will in turn provide a template for a different way of living, and the love he experienced is seen to inspire the person hearing the tale to emulate it. Crowley’s hope might be that the tale does the same for the reader.

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A Theory of Justice

A Theory of Justice by John Rawls
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I won’t pretend to have read this cover to cover or have been able to follow every winding turn of the argumentation, not least because it doesn’t proceed in a linear fashion in the way something like Hobbes’s Leviathan does. Rawls helpfully points out the most salient bits in his introduction, and this does feel like a treasure trove that is to be dipped into repeatedly.

There is a lot going on here. The principles themselves are more radical than Rawls’s reputation as an establishment figure would suggest, and are the most valuable and influential bit to get your head around. The justification underlying them (the famous original position and veil of ignorance) is quite mad when you get into the analytical weeds, but as a thought experiment is interesting, and shares with the utilitarian dispassionate “view of the universe” an attempt to reason from a perspective beyond personal interests and biases. It is something we should all consider at least a little in our attempts to figure out these big questions of justice, fairness and what’s right. The idea of reflective equilibrium seems to me to be an invitation to engage in circular thinking, but I fully accept that I just might not understand it.

I do know a little bit about David Hume and Adam Smith’s ideas, and have to say Rawls’s depiction of them as utilitarians is deeply strange. But he’s a philosopher, not a historian. The way prior thinkers are twisted to prefigure his theory is amusing, but ultimately endearing. At one point he says that the original position is such a basic concept that loads of other people would have thought it up before, which is laughable . In this dense book you find your entertainment where you can.

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