Slouching Towards Kalamazoo by Peter de Vries is worthy of the 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read list and is indeed one of the best comedy books you can find https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jan/23/bestbooks-fiction 10 out of 10

 Slouching Towards Kalamazoo by Peter de Vries is worthy of the 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read list and is indeed one of the best comedy books you can find https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jan/23/bestbooks-fiction

10 out of 10

 

 

When we reach Singularity, Artificial Intelligence will have taken over many tasks, if not most, that humans perform – there are glimmers of hope for archeologists, because as one of the most prominent luminaries of the age, Yuval Harari, explains in his stupendous Homo Deus http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/homo-deus-brief-history-of-tomorrow-by.html this is a profession where investment in replacing earthlings would not bring savings, nobody is interested in the relics uncovered by these people to the point where they would automate the activities involved… hence we could say the paleontologists are safe too – and maybe we would be reading Perfect Flexible Personalized Novels that would exhilarate us (individually, if there would be mass market blockbusters like Fifty Shades of Grey remains to be seen, writers’ creativity remaining undisputed notwithstanding)

 

Indeed, in A Brief History of Tomorrow we find that experiments with Operating Systems creating both literature and music have been around for some time and people are unable to tell the difference between music by Bach and that created by Artificial Intelligence, so in a few ways, the under signed wishes the AI of the future would be here, so that I could immerse in music, literature created for yours truly, for algorithms know us better than we do – you find this from reading the aforementioned magnificent work – and this would be spectacular – I have been trying for years to find music similar to some Buddha Bar tunes I adore, but though there have been several discs, similar sounding fare is there, I have not been able for the past twenty years to get the same effervescent, dazzling, enrapturing, luminescent, radiant musique, which a clever AI would provide presto…

However, Slouching Towards Kalamazoo  -and to give just one other glorious example Quarantine by marvelous Jim Crace, a chef d’oeuvre which has nothing to do with recent lockdowns, but tells instead a possible tale of Jesus and some people he meets http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/quarantine-by-jim-crace-from-1000.html - is so close to the perfect combination of humor and sophistication that this reader wonders where the AI improvement would come in – but then we can envisage that there would be, this is Singularity we are talking about here, the moment when the computer mind will have surpassed all that humanity is capable of thinking, when added together, so there will be things happening that go beyond not just my single, feeble comprehension, but will just speed by All of us, out together – what characters can be changed and how…

 

This fabulous book is excellent at inviting readers to enjoy themselves – impressive joie de vivre and some French jokes too – and at the same time, challenge them with important – indeed, nothing beats those – themes like Christian Atheism – the provocations bring us to Optimum Experience as explained in the fundamental, life changing Flow http://realini.blogspot.com/2016/10/flow-by-mihaly-csikszentmihalyi-this-is.html -a new ‘religion’ that combines elements of the opposites, making us think of Aristotle and his Golden Mean – the notion that one has to avoid excess, we must avoid being a miser, but the alternative of giving all away and putting family on the street is also excessive…

 

Slouching Towards Kalamazoo is brimming with spectacular moments of jest, joy, educational insight, sophisticated images ‘Long Utrillo street…My old eight- grade teacher, Miss Maggie Doubloon, said she was half Spanish, half French, and half Irish, a plethora of halves not entirely unnoticed by the brighter pupils…Dog smells existential dread close to fear’…satire is surely intended and we can think of the intense consumerism of these days – this the moment to pitch my own ‘invention’ SSW Stoicism Saving the World, the idea that we need to adopt Stoic principles and fast, for otherwise the planet is doomed…in a recent article in The Economist (in fact it was the week of February 10, my birthday and yes, thank you) Yuval Harari talks writes about the peril that the Ukraine crisis presents, which if it brings a paradigm shift, by making states nervous about being swallowed (something that after the WWII catastrophe has tended to disappear) and thus bringing about a death spiral, with armament race and neglect of Climate Change, which could well lead to the disappearance of Homo Sapiens…

Anthony Thrasher, a fifteen year old at the beginning of the tale, is the hero of the book and tells us that ‘I have been kept back a year in the seventh grade thanks to time spent reading Joyce and Proust that should have gone into homework, and so here I was in the eighth grade still, at age fifteen’ – he is superbly gifted, knows that ‘All hell broke loose is from Paradise Lost of John Milton’ and so much more (not to the level of Singularity AI, to refer again to the leit motif of contemporary notes) that is seems incredible that he is kept back by such obstacles as tests in geography – what is the main export of Venezuela escapes him

 

His teacher, twenty nine years old Maggie Doubloon, summons his parents to tell them that their son is too much distracted by Joyce and Proust to bother with quite a few other subjects – and who can blame him, indeed, Joyce is still inaccessible to this reader, albeit he holds Proust to be the best author he has ever engaged with – and then she accepts to become his tutor and the two have a brief sexual intercourse, the teacher is pregnant and that results in humorous and quite dramatic incidents…the father, who is a minister in the church, tells the tutor that his son had told him ‘everything’, which Maggie Doubloon takes literally and then a small debacle ensues, there is the attempt to get from the pharmacy something that will end the pregnancy, but finally, a boy is born and he is named Ahab…

A jocular, satirical and intellectual delight is offered through the debate that matches the mister with the dermatologist, doctor Mallard, where faith and atheism are facing each other ‘the doctor is Bertrand Russell to father's C. S. Lewis’ in the intellectual fight, which will result comically – but then this is but the more visible intent, there are other, more subtle implications here – in the conversion of both pugilants, the minister becoming an atheist and the doctor a fervent believer, albeit they would later have a rematch and each will convince the other to make the return trip, but only half way, thus they both become Christian Atheists…here are some notes made while reading, they are not exact quotes, but close enough, Insha’Allah

‘Scarlet Letter is not about adultery at all, it's about hard core chastity and the cruelty of vindictive Puritanism…memory isn't just memory but a selective principle, offering a key to the personality…

Sovereign cure for the woes of man, the pagan dignity of mating...Father is convinced by the doctor and talked of Luke as the only one who says this is my body and he wasn't even present, wasn't a disciple only Matthew and John were, and John doesn't even mention any such supper

The Church took over its chief rival, the Persian cult of Mithras...who was the Sun God, whose birth was witnessed by shepherds, and who was annually commemorated with a ceremonial meal'

Omnivorous erotic athleticism is the precise opposite of what it appears to be…’