Kim, breaking bad

You heard it here first. To be specific, on March 3, 2020, here’s what I wrote:

A brief comment on Better Call Saul, prompted by Alan Jacobs' post this morning:

I think the show rightly understands that Kim is, or has become, the covert protagonist of the show, and by the end, we (with the writers) will similarly come to understand that the story the show has been telling has always been about her fall. No escape, no extraction, no pull-back before the cliff: she, like Jimmy, like Mike, like Nacho, like Walter, like Jesse, like Skyler, lacks the will ultimately and decisively to will the good. They're all fallen; and in a way, they were all fallen even before the time came to choose.

In this way the so-called expanded Breaking Bad universe has made itself (unwittingly?) into a dramatic parable of original sin. Not that there is no good; not that characters do not want to do good. But they're all trapped in quicksand, and the more they struggle, the deeper they sink.

This was only three episodes into season 5; the closing moments of the eventual season finale—in which Kim not only initiated an unnecessary, risky revenge-scheme (now being played out in season 6) but also wryly double-barreled Jimmy just the way he had done in the closing moments of season 4 (“It’s all good, man!”)—signaled that the writers have known this was the destination, and the overriding theme of the show, for some time.

The present two-part final season is stretching out that slow burn to the breaking point, in peerless, masterly form as usual. In Gilligan and Gould we trust.

The Book of Strange New Things, 2

In my last post I wrote about how Peter, the protagonist of Michel Faber’s The Book of Strange New Things, is unbelievable. I want now to say a bit more about why the novel doesn’t quite work.

One is the prose. It is bloodless and boring. Perfectly adequate, never “bad,” it is so unmemorable that at times I wondered if that was Faber’s intention: perhaps to signal the inner purity of Peter’s converted heart and mind. Based on a quick perusal of Faber’s other work (esp. Under the Skin and The Crimson Petal and the White), the man can write interesting and stylish prose. So what went wrong here? Or, if the plain style is a choice, why does it fail in its purpose? The only possible narrative effect is to make of Peter an utterly vanilla protagonist.

A second issue is the tone. For much of the novel the atmosphere on Oasis, the alien planet, is somehow askew: haunting, haunted, moody, oppressive, mysterious. The reader gets major Solaris vibes (or even, for me, echoes of Sphere). Something is wrong here. What could it be?

Nothing at all, as it turns out. The “reveals,” such as they are, are fourfold:

1. Light years away, Earth—politically and ecologically—is falling apart at the seams.

2. The corporation that sponsors both the intergalactic travel to Oasis and the scientific outpost on it has as its goal to make Oasis a kind of ark or haven for the elite few on Earth who are (a) rich enough and (b) sane enough to qualify to come.

3. The corporate employees (scientists, engineers, doctors, mechanics) who work at/for the Oasan outpost are such flat personalities—resorting to neither sex nor drugs nor violence to let off steam or give vent to their vices and repressed desires—by design: they were selected by a sophisticated psychological process created to exclude all persons who might fall back on such “anti-social” habits.

4. The intelligent alien species, the Oasans, have extremely vulnerable bodies supported by nonexistent immune systems. The slightest injury or illness is terminal, therefore, and they believe “the technique of Jesus” to provide deliverance from, and possibly miraculous healing for, this condition.

I’m going to save comment on number 4 for the next post, because (along with the depiction of Peter’s epistolary estrangement with his wife, Beatrice) it the depiction of the Oasans is the best thing about the book. What I want to focus on now is simple: none of these reveals is satisfying, because none of them explains the brooding, discombobulated atmosphere so effectively manufactured by Faber. The closest any of them comes is number 3, and this one is the least credible. Why?

Answer: Faber wants us to believe that, so long as you put the right controls in place, you could transplant 50-100 adult human beings from Earth to a colony on another planet, and without actually lobotomizing, sterilizing, or otherwise chemically sedating them, they would go about their daily jobs more or less contentedly and consistently, without psychic or emotional needs or problems, absent children, elders, religion, recreation, marriage, family, sex, alcohol, drugs, gambling, art, literature, theft, envy, deceit, or violence.

To me, that reads like a joke. Or a thought experiment by someone who’s never met a human being, or read human history. Or, at best, a “what if?” exercise or narrative puzzle that calls for further explanation—rather than itself an attempt at an explanation of some other mysterious phenomenon, which is how it functions in the novel. How can this fanciful assertion of neutered, compliant, prelapsarian humans (who are, mind you, nothing but a random assortment of corporate employees who live on an alien planet with nothing to do but work) serve to answer the reader’s befuddlement at the unyielding, inhuman, overbearing environment in which Peter finds himself? The answer to one inexplicable mystery cannot be the assertion merely of another inexplicable mystery, not least one so implausible as this. But there it is. And it does not work.

A word on Better Call Saul

A brief comment on Better Call Saul, prompted by Alan Jacobs' post this morning:

I think the show rightly understands that Kim is, or has become, the covert protagonist of the show, and by the end, we (with the writers) will similarly come to understand that the story the show has been telling has always been about her fall. No escape, no extraction, no pull-back before the cliff: she, like Jimmy, like Mike, like Nacho, like Walter, like Jesse, like Skyler, lacks the will ultimately and decisively to will the good. They're all fallen; and in a way, they were all fallen even before the time came to choose.

In this way the so-called expanded Breaking Bad universe has made itself (unwittingly?) into a dramatic parable of original sin. Not that there is no good; not that characters do not want to do good. But they're all trapped in quicksand, and the more they struggle, the deeper they sink.

“We can't really be that fallen": a question for Christian socialists

Recently Nathan Robinson, editor-in-chief at Current Affairs, a socialist magazine, responded to National Review's issue "Against Socialism." He considers, successively, thirteen different writers' contributions in the issue. The tone of the piece is cheeky while wanting genuinely to respond in kind to substantive critiques of socialism.

One passage stood out to me. First, here is a paragraph that Robinson quotes from Theodore Dalrymple's essay in the NR issue:

"Socialism is not only, or even principally, an economic doctrine: It is a revolt against human nature. It refuses to believe that man is a fallen creature and seeks to improve him by making all equal one to another. It is not surprising that the development of the New Man was the ultimate goal of Communist tyrannies, the older version of man being so imperfect and even despicable. But such futile and reprehensible dreams, notwithstanding the disastrous results when they were taken seriously by ruthless men in power, are far from alien to current generations of intellectuals. Man, knowing himself to be imperfect, will continue to dream of, and believe in, schemes not merely of improvement here and there but of perfection, of a life so perfectly organized that everyone will be happy, kind, decent, and selfless without any effort at all. Illusion springs eternal, especially among intellectuals."

Here is what Robinson writes in response:

"Now, this part has a bit of truth to it. Socialism is not principally an economic doctrine, and I’ve suggested that the best way to understand it is as the set of principles that arise from feelings of solidarity. But it is not a 'revolt against human nature.' We simply have a difference of opinion on what 'human nature' means and what it allows to be possible. We believe human beings can be a cooperative species and do not see our fellow creatures as helplessly 'fallen' (or rather, if they’ve fallen, it’s our job to extend a hand and get them back up.) It’s true, we like to daydream about everyone being happy, kind, and decent, perhaps because we know so many people who fit the description and we find it easy to imagine the ethos spreading further. But we’re also realistic: we are not focused on mashing our fellow people into a vision of the New Human Being, but on achieving concrete goals that will materially improve people’s lives. I’m a utopian by twilight, but during the day I’m a practical sort, and so are the other lefties I know. Their goals are actually so modest that it’s remarkable they’re so controversial: a good standard of living for all, freedom from exploitation and abuse, democracy in the workplace, a culture of mutual aid and compassion. Can we not manage these things? We can’t really be that fallen."

It's unclear to me whether Robinson is having some rhetorical fun here, or whether he doesn't know the Christian theological language of "fallenness" on which Dalrymple is drawing. For what fallenness names is the condition of human (and indeed all created) life under sin, a condition that, according to Christian faith, will not change, much less be resolved, so long as this world endures. To the claim, "We can't really be that fallen," the broadly catholic, or Augustinian, tradition replies, at least in principle, "Indeed we are that fallen—and it is far worse than you imagine."

Now, that doesn't per se answer the concrete political, economic, or policy goals that Robinson sets out (though I do think there is a bit of a sleight of hand at work between the "modesty" of the proposals and the normative anthropological vision of flourishing he admits underwrites them). And non-religious or non-Christian socialists may be perfectly coherent, and even justified, in rejecting the theological account of human being that the church confesses, following revelation, to be true.

But the Dalrymple/Robinson pairing of perspectives makes for a nice contrast, and one, moreover, that touches on a question I have had percolating in the back of my mind for a while now. The question is for Christians who claim the socialist vision—and here I mean socialism in the strongest of terms, not as a cipher for left-of-centrism or left-of-the-DNC or even social democracy as such.

Here's the question, put a few different ways. What is the relationship between the Christian doctrine of original sin and Christian support for a socialist economy? What role does ineradicable human fallenness play in such an account of socialism's operation and success? Is "human nature" and/or the limits and/or sinfulness of all human beings without exception a determining factor in the Christian support for, or version of, socialism? Does affirmation of human fallenness in some way modify, alter, color, qualify, mitigate, or otherwise affect specifically Christian socialism as opposed to secular or atheistic socialism? Does original sin put a "brake" on the envisageable "perfectibility" (however analogically defined) of human character, action, will, and life together? What role, if any, do fallenness and tragedy play in theoretical accounts of, and policy proposals regarding, ideal economic arrangements in human society?

You get the idea. It's a real set of questions. I know or read just enough Christian socialists to suspect there are answers; I know or read just few enough to lack the awareness of which resources to consult on these questions. I welcome direction—or answers!