Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman

I ended up with the audiobook for this before a roadtrip with my wife, and we loved it. I listened to the opening parts of it, read the rest, and all around enjoyed my time with this book. Gaiman here retells some Norse Myths, claiming that these are stories he means to read to his children before they are advanced enough in reading to get to the Eddas and Sagas. But, unlike retellings that shift the time period, Gaiman keeps everything in the mythical past. Where the BBC ShakespeaRe-Told: The Taming of the Shrew makes the titular character into a British Member of Parliament in contemporary times, Gaiman simply leaves Thor and Loki in the past. I appreciate this decision of his, not because the context of the myths prove overly important to them, but because the objects and natures of the characters are important—Thor’s hammer, Fenrir the wolf, the snake that drips venom onto Loki. Gaiman chooses to leave the stories in their original context to keep these aspects true, and retells the stories so that modern audiences can understand their importance through his explaining their powers and natures.

“Because,” said Thor, “when something goes wrong, the first thing I always think is, it is Loki’s fault. It saves a lot of time.”

Gaiman tells these stories well, with sensibilities helped by his comic book past. He uses episodic presentation to pace his book. Each chapter stands alone as a short story. But by the time the reader reaches the second half, these stories start to meld together into a larger whole—earlier stories start to affect later tales as characters come up again and are still angry over what happened before, political dealings between characters play out, objects of importance arrive and depart in the narrative. This reads like a comic book without the art—and it does so wonderfully. This episodic structure benefits the narrative through strong pacing. Gaiman knows how to write a comic book, and by approaching these myths with similar sensibilities, he tells the story well.

He is tolerated by the gods, perhaps because his stratagems and plans save them as often as they get them into trouble. Loki makes the world more interesting but less safe. He is the father of monsters, the author of woes, the sly god.

Where Gaiman chooses to linger with his language helps pace these stories. It effectively billboards important moments and effectively communicates emotions. For instance, when Loki is bound below the snake, the extended focus on that scene helps get across horror, pity, and the importance of that event. The result is brother fighting against brother in the future, and the rational is already apparent to the reader when that scene is reached.

He said nothing: seldom do those who are silent make mistakes.

But also, where Gaiman chooses to use sparse language helps foster a sense of wonder. When describing the mythological places, he often uses a couple of opposed general descriptors, and fewer specific ones, then moves back to the actions and the characters quickly. This not explaining, not exploring the physical scene, helps keep the physical scene mysterious and my mind loves that, adores the unknown. By pairing effective descriptions of characters and motivations with sketchy and paradoxical descriptions of place, Gaiman allows the reader both a solid base to stand on, and enough mystery to engage the mind.

The Norse myths are the myths of a chilly place, with long, long winter nights and endless summer days, myths of a people who did not entirely trust or even like their gods, although they respected and feared them.

Though these stories are intended for a younger audience, I personally find them engaging. Their conclusions about motives and human nature apply to everyday life, and constitute the theme of this book. In the Aesir’s relationships, the ever-present debate between the optimism of future hope and the pessimism of history come to the fore. Loki is a trickster, but by hoping that he has changed, by believing that he will change, the other Aesir fall into their traps. Yet their beliefs that he is a trickster blinds them when he does things for good motives, causes suspicion and resentment where gratefulness should be present. People change, and people do not change. Perception and discernment help determine the right course of action.

That was the thing about Loki. You resented him even when you were at your most grateful, and you were grateful to him even when you hated him the most.

This is one of three Gaiman books that I have read that I enjoy. It makes me interested in rereading the Sagas and Eddas again. This retelling does not supplant them, but through rephrasing, helps explain them. It’s a sibling piece to those original sources, and one that I recommend reading to a wide variety of people. Where I initially thought the title was a bit full of itself, after reading the book I understand why the title is so simple, and agree with titling it this way. I end up hoping to find similarly engaging treatments of other mythological traditions. One last reflection: Loki comes off looking a lot like Lucifer in Paradise Lost—the sympathetic anti-hero.

The Meme Machine by Susan Blackmore

For Jay.

1. There are some interesting, very engaging ideas in here, but at the same time, I’m really disappointed with the logic used throughout. Early on, she starts explaining her biases—and this is an incredible positive. It’s refreshing to read an academic text that has such a clear outline and explanation of the biases. For instance, in Chapter 2 she explains, “The problem is that this beautifully simple idea is often misunderstood.” I have three main problems with this statement as a logical statement.
—First, this assumption that understanding necessitates agreement is a fallacy. I understand both many ideas I disagree with and many I agree with. I also don’t fully understand many I agree with—like gravity or vacuums—and many I don’t agree with. Whatever the matrix looks like between agree-disagree-understand-notunderstand, I think this assumption of Blackmore’s is a fallacy.
—Her calling this idea beautiful twice in three sentences before explaining the idea forces the reader to accept her conclusion on faith, or go into the explanation already disagreeing with her. In other words, her writing forces polarization in the readers before they’re given enough information to make up their own minds. This doesn’t set the reader an easy task of interfacing with the logic.
—By saying the beautiful idea is “often misunderstood”, she implies that this idea is not universally accepted, but does nothing more then set out the sketchiest straw-man argument for her opponents—they misunderstand—that is disingenuous to her own arguments: it steals her potential thunder by not engaging points her adversaries actually make. She had a wonderful opportunity to engage and teach, yet she dismisses her opponents this brusquely.
—This one sentence outlines my main problems with this book, and makes me question who the audience is: people who disagree are alienated, those who agree will be bored by the explanation to come, and those who are unsure are being forced to take a side before being given any information.

2. These problems are emblematic of the whole. Blackmore’s structure and method of explanation is simply ineffective. She waffles back and forth between off-the-cuff judgments—the idea being beautiful—and confusion over what she is saying, how she is saying it, who she is saying it to, and why she is saying it. These issues continue throughout the book, and keep the reader pushed to the outskirts the entire time.

3. My last major problem is that the logic is poor. Again, an early example that showed me what to expect coming down the pipe: “Where do new memes come from? They come about through variation and combination of old ones.” (15) I couldn’t think of a less interesting, less informative, less obvious question and answer about this subject. She ignores the potential interest and importance of meme origins and blazes ahead with confused and off-put readers, building arguments on assumptions and name-drops, then dropping the argument before actually beginning to argue anything from logic. She doesn’t even examine her biases to a level that satisfies me—their references come off more like name drops than premises. I could not stay interested throughout this book.

4. At the end, there are some engaging ideas that roll around in your head for days and weeks, but this is pop science. It’s some sort of proto-theory, a skeleton hypothesis, a starting point rather than a discussion. I understand that. But this means that the book never goes any deeper than the two quotations listed above. I went in looking to understand some interesting ideas, and ended up understanding nothing new, being confused by undefined terms inundating the work, and wondering if she actually gets around to arguing something and I missed it.

5. The theme here is pretty clear to me: it’s proselytistically pro-active nihilism. It argues that nothing has any meaning except what you put into it, and that’s that. A lot of metal music has trod this path for the last twenty years, and so I wasn’t surprised to see it here, or confused.

6. Philosophy has been dealing with this issue for thousands of years. It takes different names—nature and nurture, mitsein and dasein, featherless biped with soft nails, the herd and the individual, nesting venn diagram worlds—and Blackmore is simply attempting to drag this discussion closer to quantifiable science. But in so doing, she’s just created another set of made-up words referring to similar concepts.