More on The Mountain in the Sea

[asakiyume]

The characters are so alone in this book. There's no community and no model for/of community--at all! Just people groping toward (or away from) one another on an individual basis. Evrim, the sole android ever created, Ha, the solo octopus researcher at the research site, Rustem the solo hacker, Altantsetseg the solo security agent, Arnkatla Minervudóttir-Chan (LOL, Minerva's daughter), the solo designer of the android. Eiko, the enslaved guy on the fishing ship, strives not to be solo: he actively tries to see people and build unity with them, but his efforts are mainly fruitless.

I thought this was going to be contrasted with something not-solo about the octopuses, but no. There is no octopus perspective, and the way the octopuses are "read" by the humans (and Evrim) presses them into a human mold rather than seeing them on their own terms. For example, the autonomy of octopuses' legs from their executive function gets talked about, but it never figures at all. Instead, we see the legs used for walking on (on land, even!), like human legs, and for holding weapons or gifts, like human hands. Octopuses as like us rather than different from us.

In the sense that they're living creatures, that's true. Organic life is having a hard time in this future world, whether it's octopuses or humans or sea turtles. The octopuses can kill one or two intruders in their garden, just as Altantsetseg can kill intruders in the cordoned-off zone where research is going on, but in the end, the nonhuman systems that people have built but no longer control are more powerful and not given to compromise.

So what does the future hold? Evrim is seen as better than human because they're incapable of forgetting things. And yet even within the story, perfect recall is shown as problematic. Characters talk about trauma being etched in the body and the memory. So it seems strange to celebrate perfect recall as an improvement. A solo being, able to brood over each and every thing that's ever happened to them ... brrrr, seems cold, very cold.

Huh, well that turned out more negative than I thought it would when I began writing this entry. My Goodreads review was more positive. I guess I have lots of very mixed feelings about the book. It sure has been food for thought, though.

Comments

[kore]

.... I thought for sure there were octopus POV characters in this book for some reason

[asakiyume]

Alas, no. But maybe it's better that way, since the narrative seems firmly embedded in outmoded hierarchies, e.g., “Yes, they have writing… which is an enormous leap in cultural evolution” (p. 417), uhhh, whut. Way to diss all the oral *human* societies that are or ever were. Or this piece of Sapir-Whorfism: "We give words only to the things that matter to us as a society. The things that make no difference to us are erased from our world by never becoming a part of language in the first place." (p 205) Or maybe that's the inverse of Sapir-Whorf, but in any case: as I understand it, people no longer believe that having a word for a thing = that thing is important and not having a word = that thing is not important. "Word" is just such a limiting notion, for one thing. Take fun words like schadenfreude in German or aware in Japanese: we don't have single-word equivalents for those in English, but I'd say the concepts are plenty important to us.

I say all this, critically, but at the same time, there were things I did appreciate a whole lot about the book. (I feel compelled to add that. This isn't a case where I hurled the book across the room--I just eyerolled at these particular parts. But other parts I held in my mind really carefully, and at two points I even teared up.)

[kore]

It's good, I appreciate a nuanced viewpoint! I get impatient with treasure-or-trash style reviews. (I have really grown sick of trashing. Except I'll always trash Franzen lol.)

[asakiyume]

You can trash Franzen allllll you want. (I'm so unfair. I say that based on one experience of not liking one book. But also the guy seems like a jerk.)

[kore]

HE WROTE AN ENTIRE NYORKER ARTICLE ON HOW EDITH WHARTON WASN'T PRETTY I will LOATHE him til I die

It was like he was channeling Updike but at least Updike had a brain and some patronizing charm

[lokifan]

Writing as a leap forward is just... grrrrrr I hate it so much. Even moreso as an ESOL teacher who's taught literacy to adults for the first time because their first language(s) were oral-only.

[asakiyume]

It's such a CLEAR case of ethnocentricity, let alone species centricity. I'm reminded of Douglas Adams writing in one of the Hitchhiker's Guide books, how humans thought they were better than dolphins because they had wars and jobs and skyscrapers and stuff, whereas all dolphins did was play around in the water--and dolphins thought they were better for the exact same reason. His joke recognizes the fallacy in that way of thinking! But this book, in contrast, is basically making the human part of the statement, but for serious.

I hear you so hard on the ESOL. Although I do ESOL tutoring, I've never had someone whose first language was oral only as a student. But Tikuna, the Amazonian language I'm learning, is an oral language that only had writing imposed upon it in the past century. The notion that Tikuna culture is somehow less-than fills me with fury.

[light_of_summer]

That book does sound disappointing, at least in parts. I'm glad there were better parts, too!

BTW, I owe you an email update. I'll try to do that shortly. I just need to see where one of those group email threads left things, and what the next step is, and who needs to do that step...

Onwards!

[asakiyume]

No worries; take as much time as you need! I'll be away from my desk and not doing much emailing, etc., through Saturday, in any case.

[sartorias]

I've seen a lot of negativity about this book. It seems to ahve stirred up many thoughts in its readers!

[asakiyume]

Really? I should look at more reviews! I've seen mainly positive things--or maybe it's just the positive things I've seen on the back of the book, LOL.

For me, I really appreciate that he tries to show people trapped in systems--there's no one supervillain you can point to. And I like some of his ideas (like about point fives, that I talked about last time). But his overall vision in the book seems so BLEAK. And his ranking of cultures, putting literate cultures about oral ones, is embarrassing in a person who's trying to talk about, or show, approaches to thinking in different ways. It's just wrong! And yet the guy himself seems widely traveled, and I can tell he cares about places, people, cultures... so I don't know.

But now I'm morbidly curious. I'll have to find those other reviews.

[sartorias]

You can find them at Goodreads, which is where I saw most of them go by. Also, it seemed that there was a gender divide; more guys thought it as awesome book. More women noped right out.

[amaebi]

It sounds strange and chilly. Do you know/feel whether the writer is so acculturated in individualist libertarianism that this set-up isn’t a choice but a default?

After reading other comments, ETA: About a decade ago I was auditing a class on process theology in which for some reason the instructor and my colleagues all simply stated that humans have richer lives than chipmunks. And I said I didn’t know, I didn’t know how I’d feel about it if I were a chipmunk. And they all told me I *did* know, and got mad at me.

[asakiyume]

And I said I didn’t know, I didn’t know how I’d feel about it if I were a chipmunk. And they all told me I *did* know, and got mad at me. --Ahahaha, this really made me laugh. AMAEBI YOU'RE NOT PLAYING THE GAME RIGHT!! THE WAY WE PLAY IS WE ALL TALK ABOUT HOW MUCH RICHER OUR LIVES ARE THAN CHIPMUNK LIVES, GOSH!!

Ranking and rating things can be a fun game, but it's not a necessity! Like, you can enjoy buttercups, apple blossoms, peonies, and forget-me-nots without needing to rank them!

Regarding the author, I don't know at all. Within the story, the models for successful union and communitarianism, at least for humans, all seem to involved union with machines as well. I have nothing against that as a plot element, but philosophically, I find it odd, since there's plenty of communitarianism among humans today. But it may be that he wanted to imagine something good about human-machine relations. From his bio, it seems he's lived and worked in many places around the world (e.g., Vietnam, Turkey).

[queenoftheskies]

I read it last year, I think, and I had some of the same observations. It was a unique book.

[asakiyume]

When you call it to mind now, what's the feeling or thought that jumps to your mind first?