I have fond memories of reading Robert Heinlein’s juvenile Science Fiction novels, back when I was juvenile in age, rather than taste. I occasionally give in and reread one, just for nostalgia’s sake. As with most nostalgia, it’s generally a mistake. The grown-up critic can’t shut down, and the fond haze of memory is blown away by the cold wind of, um, January. Or late December. I mean, damn is it cold.
Where was I? Oh, yes, Citizen of the Galaxy. The thing that struck me about this book after many years was just how pointless the whole thing was. I mean picaresque, I suppose, but mostly it’s just one damn thing after another. The main character doesn’t have any sort of overarching goal, but accedes to the direction of one father figure after another. For a while, at the end, when he falls into wealth and has to fight for power, it sorta kinda comes together, but then he just hands the whole thing over to other father figures and they take care of it. He does nothing actually clever during the whole book, except synthesize some data that he was in the right place to gather, and that more-or-less shows something that everybody already knew.
Anyway, the remarkable thing is that the rambling pointlessness doesn’t make the book particularly dull, even as a grown-up. There are three different world-creation bits, each of which is a quite detailed shift on an old SF theme (I think old even in 1957, but of course it’s difficult to tell) and each of which held my attention for about the amount of time it took Mr. Heinlein to switch to something else. So although it’s a bad book, in my opinion, it wasn’t a dull book, which is a mercy.
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.
Entry in the People Are Different, One From Another, and That’s What Makes the World Interesting and Fun category: this is my favorite book in the whole world.
Naturally, since it has been my favorite book for, what, 25 years, I can’t view it objectively. I grant you all of your objections.
But it’s not about an overarching goal, it’s about becoming a man. Thorby starts out with absolutely no ethical sense or moral framework or sense of self or anything other than survival instinct. Baslim teaches him a lot of useful stuff. Along the way, sometimes explicitly but often by example, Baslim gives Thorby an ethical framework. Then Thorby tries to enter some worlds that have other such frameworks; the one he learned from Baslim sometimes fits, sometimes conflicts, but is ultimately so strong that it remains his touchstone.
In so many ways, Heinlein’s political and (probably) moral viewpoints are very very different from mine. But I learned a lot of what a man should be like from these books, and this was the main such book.
Huh. People really are different, one to another. And it does make the world interesting and fun. I find the lack of a goal to be a serious problem; I can’t root for Thorby if Thorby’s not doing anything. I see your point about manliness (or menschkeit), but it seems to me that it could have worked better in the service of a plot.
And, if you don’t mind the question, do you find Thorby’s relationships with his mentors disturbing or inspiring? No, I phrased that wrong, but … on one level, I think that Heinlein is saying that the ultimate expression of manliness is as a mentor to a young man. The Greek business. As a father (albeit of a girl) I sometimes find that inspiring and moving and all, but I also find it troubling. Moreso from Thorby’s point of view; he seems to me too ready to hand over his autonomy to a mentor, and insufficiently prepared to become a mentor himself (or to find some other expression of fulfilment).
I don’t mean to make this into a Defend That Book! segment, but I really would love to know what you think about that issue.
Thanks,
-V.
Well , Thorby’s a kid, remember. When he enlists, they have a fair amount of trouble deciding how old he is, but the ship’s doctor estimates between 14 and 22. By the end of the book he’s not much older, but he has already deliberately put himself in the way of a fair amount of trouble in service of his sense of right and wrong. That’s pretty good for that age; I’m willing to believe that by the time he’s as old as Baslim or the old lawyer guy Thorby will be ready to help another kid.
When he gets to Earth, he definitely has an opportunity to turn his autonomy over to others and live a very comfortable life for as long as he likes. He chooses not to do that, because his internal sense of justice, his loyalty to his unknown parents, and his need to work on his own long-term goals (fighting the slave trade) won’t allow it. That’s not a weak character.
And, yeah, I think mentoring is cool. Hell, growing up is always about turning over parts of your autonomy to others while you figure out which parts of what they teach you you want to assimilate into your self. A lot of the stuff I did when I was 18 or so, in retrospect, seems pretty clearly to have been a matter of believing in an ideology or an institution or a system or a person for awhile and taking on the roles given to me by that belief. And then moving on, keeping the parts I liked. It was a while before I really started creating a self that was just me. And I’m only just getting to a point where I’d want to mentor someone else in that way. (Convenient timing; my son was born 4 months ago.)
I’d add that Baslim’s mentoring of Thorby was more absolute and heavy-handed than anything that would be appropriate in most circumstances — he starts by telling Thorby how he should do _everything_ — but that was appropriate in this circumstance, where Thorby started from almost nothing in terms of self.