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RS: Welcome to this month’s bonus episode of Rite Gud. In this edition of the Book Club, we’re discussing Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow. Joining us once again is Stephen Mazur. Uh, Stephen, given your tendency to over prepare for all of your guest spots on the show, I fully expect that you’ve prepped for this episode by joining a Jesuit order, learning Latin, and taking a vow of chastity.

Stephen: If only I had the time, I could have done all [00:01:00] those things. sadly, I, I only Have in front of me, uh, 18, yes, not 17, 18 pages of typed notes. Uh, I wasn’t even able to read everything that I wanted to read in preparation for the episode. Didn’t get around to finishing the Book of Job, or, one of the papal encyclicals that I thought might be good just for, like, background prep.

And also, I didn’t get a chance to read, What’s the name of the book? It is A Case of Conscience by James Blish, which came out in like, I want to say 1958 or so. It was the late 50s, won the Hugo award, and also is coincidentally enough, about Jesuits in space who make first contact. Yeah, I, I don’t, that’s basically all I know about it.

It’s not my impression that the books are any more similar [00:02:00] than just that superficial, yet very specific, um, premise. But that was always kind of a, a stretch goal, let’s say. I didn’t think I would have time for that, and I didn’t.

RS: Yeah, no kidding. Uh, so as listeners have probably guessed, you are Catholic. I’m very much not. I guess I’m an agnostic, which is a very, very lazy philosophy, I think, of just, I don’t know, man. That’s, that is my understanding of the universe. But I, definitely wanted a Catholic guest because it would be very, very easy to read a sci fi book about religion and go at it as, an early 2000s, Reddit atheist talking about flying spaghetti monsters or something. And I was wondering if this book would end up taking that position and I think so were you. It sounded like both of us went into this thinking, is this going to be Fedora y? Is this going to be Is this going to be a Fedora book? Where, where some people get [00:03:00] owned with facts and logic. And it’s not. But at the same time it’s not this, I felt, not this evangelical book about some wonderful religious people showing a superior way and saving the souls of an inferior culture. Exactly. Something a lot more nuanced and rather interesting than that, which I really appreciate, uh, this book being.

Stephen: I agree. First of all, yes, Catholic, born and raised. I even went to, Catholic schools for almost my whole education, nearly all of grammar school and high school as well, and somehow still with it as a friend of the show, Tai. Tai would say he, he’s kind of surprised that, You know, still Catholic even though I went to Catholic school.

I’ll do my, I’ll do my best to, uh, represent the religion. Although, although as I was reading it, I realized that I’m actually not, not the best person to like judge specifically, Jesuit aspects of the book because, uh, I, I don’t know any [00:04:00] Jesuits. I didn’t go to Jesuit schools.

The two schools that I went to, were nominally staffed by, religious sisters. St. Lucy Filippini for grammar school and, the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary for high school. But that doesn’t really matter. As far as the book itself, yeah, I agree. I don’t know I don’t really know where I picked up this idea about the book, but when I started, I’d wanted to read it, before, you said that, uh, you were gonna do it for the book club, like, I’d had it on my mind, and I actually owned the book as, like, something to get around to eventually.

I had this vague idea that it was, like an anti Catholic science fiction book, and like you said, like, like a kind of Reddit atheist book. I don’t know where I picked up that impression, because, like you said, it’s not like that. I kind of, I guess I kind of thought it was gonna be, it was gonna go one of two routes.

Either that it would be kind of like a, uh, I [00:05:00] guess you could say a sort of childish, like, you know, screw you, mom and dad, kind of book, the way that, Behold the Man by Michael Moorcock is, uh, which I haven’t read, but I did read a, a rather in depth essay about it on, Paperback Paradise, I think is the, the website.

And so I read that and I was like, oh, geez, one of those books. I mean, it also sounds kind of funny, but, you know, whatever, It seems like the kind of book that Michael Moorcock maybe might write. Or, I thought that it might, I thought it might grind a certain kind of axe the way that, His Dark Materials does.

You know, the, the Philip Pullman,

RS: Right.

Stephen: The Northern Lights trilogy. Which, you know, great fantasy. I read it in college, actually for an English class. Great fantasy books, but they definitely have a certain point of view.

RS: They sure do, from what I understand. It’s not subtle.

Stephen: yeah, it’s, it’s not. But so this, The Sparrow, uh, is neither one of those.

It’s, uh, doesn’t really come off as, as, as childish towards [00:06:00] religion. And it’s not even, specifically anti Catholic or even really anti clerical in, in the way that, uh, a lot of other, well, a lot, but like, Some other books can be when they take that. I thought it was, uh, I mean, I disagree with some of the points that it comes up with, but, I thought it was a fairly nuanced book.

RS: Yeah, which I think is for its strengths. It’s a lot stronger than if it, had been this sort of one note screed in any direction. Mm hmm. Which I really appreciate. I actually quite liked that about it. At the same time, it’s not portraying the Catholic Church as this perfectly wonderful thing. There are a lot of sections where Father Sandoz is in front of a sort of tribunal, and it’s not great.

It’s not a good time.

It’s pretty rough. He’s not having a good time.

Stephen: Yeah, I, uh, I even liked the way that, that Russell portrayed the, the tribunal. I, I thought it was a, a pretty good mix of, of characters and personality types. And, both, well, it’s not really a tribunal, it’s more of an inquiry. But, you know, both with the inquiry and I guess you could say like [00:07:00] the whole organization writ large.

There’s some good, some bad. People try, people make mistakes. but so, uh, where do you want to start?

RS: Well, I guess I’ll start by talking a little bit about why I was interested in this. My old linguistics professor, way back in my undergrad days, said that this was his favorite novel because it dealt with linguistics in a way that was true to linguistics. A lot of people don’t quite understand what linguistics is.

They think it’s just learning a lot of languages, but it’s more about the study of Language as a science, as a soft science akin to, like, uh, anthropology or something. And trying to create a cognitive model for understanding how language works. It’s not just learning a bunch of languages. And this is something that so, so, so many novels mishandle and so much pop culture mishandles. They kind of treat language as this magical thing and not as a sort of system to be sussed out, and the main [00:08:00] character, on top of being a Jesuit, is a linguist. He is not just a guy who speaks many languages, but it’s a linguist. He’s a guy who can sort of take language apart and figure out how it works and understand it a lot better and teach others better. He has an incredible talent for learning languages, which is why he’s the guy to go to this new alien society, because he’s the guy who could figure out how to speak the language very, very quickly.

Stephen: Cool. Yeah.

RS: Docs, Dr. Ernst, this is your fault. I don’t know. Or thanks, I’m not sure. The Discord fucking loved this book, man. People went crazy for it.

Stephen: I know, I

RS: it and had a terrible time. That, cause that, that is another thing about this book. Of course, we’re going to spoil it as always.

But you’re in for a bad time when you’re reading this book. Very, very unpleasant things happen. And, and the book sets you up for that in a, perfectly, within the very first page. When it says, ” They meant no harm.” Which is, I thought was a perfect way to open it. Just, [00:09:00] “they meant no harm.” You read that and you go, oh fuck.

Oh no.

Stephen: yeah, here we

RS: oh no. Shit.

Stephen: What’s gonna happen?

RS: You can’t say they didn’t warn us, because they warned us. You are here for a bad time today when you were reading The Sparrow.

Stephen: I was a little worried as I was, uh, cause you, You gave me a little, uh, head start to start reading because I knew I would need extra time. So I was farther ahead when everybody started on the Discord talking about how much they loved it, and I got a little worried because I was thinking like, Oh boy, actually I’m I’m not really, I’m not loving the book just as like a reading experience.

So, usually like when I’ve come on before, they’ve always been for, for books that like, I already knew. So it was definitely interesting to, to go into it cold for this.

RS: Yeah.

Stephen: agree. It’s a, it’s a great first page. It’s,

RS: love a bad time. Our Discord people love a book that just kicks you in the dick over and over [00:10:00] again. And this book does it. It’s so grim when you’re getting near the end, you’re like, I remember reaching a point where I go, I think there’s maybe four chapters left, and most of these people are still alive.

And I,

know that Father Sandoz is the only one left at the end.

Oh no.

Stephen: I had the same thoughts. It’s like, gosh, there’s 40 pages left in the book. They’ve gotta like, you know, how is she gonna cram it in here? I’m still getting the wind up, like, when am I gonna get the punch? And then it just, it just, at first it was like, oh, okay, so that’s what it is.

That’s it?

RS: fucking wiped out so quickly, so, it’s so cruel. This is a mean book, by the way. This is a mean, mean, mean

book. It is mean to its characters.

It’s mean to you for liking the characters.

It is, it is mean.

And I don’t mean that as a criticism. I mean, that can be a great thing. It’s just, there it is. It is rare for me to find a book that’s that fucking mean.

Stephen: Yeah, like the first [00:11:00] thing towards the end of the book happened and I kind of felt like, Oh, well, that’s it, like, eh, okay, kind of weak sauce. And then like, another thing happened, so I, oh, well, okay, and then another thing happened, and another thing happened, and it just, she just kept piling on.

RS: Yeah, it’s interesting because the pace, the pace, it takes so much time at the beginning, just setting everything up,

gathering these characters together, establishing the relationships, and then everything goes really, really, really fucking bad in the span of about 30 pages.

Stephen: Yep.

RS: And, and we’re talking like hundreds of, at least a hundred pages to just get everybody together.

Stephen: I do have to say, the, the structure of the, of the novel is, Well, odd’s kind of a weighted word. Let’s just say unusual. I do have to give it to Mary Russell. She did a great job of building up tension, because, you know, looking at your outline and stuff that you wanted to talk about, I feel like I noticed, or I was focused on different things, Mostly which [00:12:00] to, to my chagrin, I feel like I wasn’t that careful a reader because I feel like a big part of my brain, I was just reading to be like, okay, but when am I going to get to it?

When are we going to get to it? When’s it going to happen? She did a great job of like really keeping, really keeping that tension and like really saving it until like almost the very end of the book. It,

I enjoyed the wait.

RS: Yeah, and I mean the way it’s structured, we start really with, with Emilio’s return. We, we start after most of the stuff is happening, happened, and we’re picking together, or we’re picking apart how it came to be. Which tells us exactly, here’s how it’s gonna end. We know from the beginning how it’s gonna end.

We know there’s only gonna be one survivor. His hands are gonna be fucked up. Shit, he’s gonna be really messed up. Some real bad shit happened. This is a foregone conclusion. So what’s gonna happen is not exactly that much of, of attention here. The tension is, how are we gonna get there?

Because we’re already there.

And I, the way it plays with time is so interesting too, in terms of space travel. [00:13:00] This is a guy who’s In his mind, he’s only been gone for a couple years, but because of the way time travel, or space travel fucks with time, he’s been gone for about 40 years, there and back. So he’s this man out of time, and because, again, of how space travel works, the broadcasts that he’s sent home by radio have gotten there years and years and years before him. So again, everybody already knows. What happened to him. They just want to hear it from him and hear more of the details, or at least they hear a version of the truth. So we’re already playing with this distortion of time and this… it almost feels like a possible idea on fate or predetermination and that there is no tension as to what is happening, going to happen. It’s predetermined. But how did we get here? Let’s look at, let’s examine it more closely. Which, I always, I don’t know, wondering if that has to do with the idea of God having a plan and things like that.

Everything being [00:14:00] set out in advance. It’s just you, the guy it happens to, are kind of the last to know. Sorry! Sorry, dude!

Stephen: yeah, well that’s getting kind of close to predestination. I mean, theologically speaking, at least from certain Christian view, you know, God is outside of, of time, so we experience things, differently than He does.

It could be, I, I, I just, I feel like I don’t want to, like, go on about predestination, which is more of a Calvinist thing. It’s not a Catholic idea.

RS: Oh shit, sorry. I don’t know these things, man. I’m a heathen.

I was raised Unitarian. I know nothing.

Stephen: I don’t know very much about it either, and I certainly don’t know where to begin. But that’s, that’s an interesting idea that I hadn’t thought about before.

That like you said, it’s, it is predetermined because of where we’re starting. And, it’s all just gonna play out the way that it plays out. So yeah, actually I like that. That, that is more from like, I guess you could say a God’s eye [00:15:00] view, as opposed to if it, if she’d written it linearly. So, you know, we wouldn’t have that same sense. I like that. See, that’s what I was getting at before. I, I was reading it for, what happens, and then I spent all my time reading, like, things trying to come up with an answer to the problem of why do bad things happen to good people.

I’ll give you a spoiler, there isn’t, nobody’s really come up with a good answer. Uh, so those were, those were my big, uh, preoccupations.

RS: Yeah, yeah, I’m trying to look at it. Trying to look at it a little bit structurally and, and, and just in terms of craft and how it’s put together, which I find interesting. Now, I liked a lot of this book, but before we get out of the way, I, I have to talk about what, for me, was one of the most frustrating aspects of it, which is the dialogue.

Stephen: Yeah.

RS: dialogue in this book is not great, and there’s a lot of it. I’m sorry, I’m not trying to be a hater, but it is very, like, it struck me as very 1990s [00:16:00] TV dialogue. In a way, and part of that, I know you had issues with how Ann and George, the sort of older boomer couple talked, but then again, these are wealthy boomers living in Puerto Rico.

I can absolutely 100 percent see them talking like that and acting like that. That that’s just what older white people who live in Puerto Rico are like, that’s how they are man. That’s spot on. But Oh man, the. A lot of the dialogue was, was not the greatest and one of the, I think we both were not very fond of the use of pop culture references and impressions.

Stephen: There’s, there’s a moment where, one of the Jesuits, uh, Father John Candotti is talking to, to, to Father Sandoz and Candotti jokingly speaks in a German accent about, you know, following the orders. Clearly a World War II Nazi reference, but this is in 2060. Like, for him, World War II was 115 years ago.

Why would it have the same [00:17:00] cultural valence as it, you know, had for people in the 1990s?

RS: There’s, there are parts where he’s quipping and quoting from the Princess Bride and

Young Frankenstein in 2060 and the, and the references hit and it’s like, bro, no one’s gonna quote Young Frankenstein in the year 2060. No one’s gonna remember that shit. It’d be like me and you casually referencing, I don’t know, Train Arrives At Station

Stephen: Yeah, or

RS: or, or fucking. You know, let’s quote from the Testament of Dr. Mabuse, like, no, we’re not doing that now. That’s too old.

No one’s going to remember that shit.

Stephen: People don’t even really quote from, like, Gone with the Wind or, uh, or Casablanca anymore, you know. And that was, that was getting to be like, what, 60, 70 years ago? So, like, annoying. And also, I, uh, the impressions that Father Sandoz does, they just It was an annoying choice to have a [00:18:00] character do impressions through the medium of the written word on the page, because how can those impressions possibly come through?

I’m just reading the words . But that’s all I want to say about

RS: Here’s something that I think could have worked really well. If, if his impressions went over really, really well in 2019, which is when the sort of, when the book starts, it starts in 2019, which at the time this was written was the future. But he keeps trying those little impressions and references when he returns home in 2060 and people just stare blankly at him.

And I think that could, like, emphasize how out of time he is, how lost he is, and how alone and lonely he is. And that, this way that he would connect with people by doing these funny little impressions. That even doesn’t work anymore, and it’s just like “oh fuck” like I think that could have been so effective and like heartbreaking And you know he he does a little drawl John Wayne drawl and people are like “who the fuck is John Wayne, man It’s 2060.

I don’t know that is” [00:19:00] I

Stephen: wrinkle.

RS: Think that would have worked really really well, but no they haven’t like quoting like the Princess Bride or young Frankenstein in 2060 They’re going “haha. Yeah, I recognize that” like no you don’t. You’re you’re not gonna recognize this. I’m sorry, they’re great movies, but people are gonna forget them.

Stephen: Yeah, I, I have, I have mixed feelings about the way that Russell portrays the characters because on the one hand I find it, it’s, it’s kind of annoying, or maybe not annoying, I guess I just personally don’t like her portrayals that much because like the characters to me, the main characters, they don’t, feel, like, very natural.

They’re all, like you said, it’s like a, 90s sitcom dialogue, so everybody’s like a capital C character. It’s kind of cheesy to me, but at the same

RS: there’s this very outsized sort of Again, 1990s TV diversity, where it’s like the French Canadian calls everyone Mon [00:20:00] Cheri constantly.

Stephen: Oh gosh,

RS: How, like everybody is their ti Everybody is diverse in a type of way that is very very like, “I’m the blah blah blah guy.” I fucking love it how There’s a bit where it says, “Oh, it’s a shame that Alan, the English guy, died so quickly because as an Englishman, he would instinctively hate the lower class Supari and recognize that he is dangerous.”

Because British people just instinctively, genetically hate the lower classes, I

guess. That

Stephen: that was another fun wrinkle. Jumping, jumping off that, I also felt like a lot of the, a lot of the ways that, Sofia was, portrayed,

RS: Yeah, yeah, where it’s constantly about her, her

Stephen: heritage

RS: Right.

Stephen: uh, was kept references, it was, it was almost like, you know, I guess like stereotype as the, the character herself, it’s like, oh, you know, we’re like this, we’re like [00:21:00] that, I embody all this stuff.

And like, it’s not like anything was really, negative per se, but I guess it just

RS: Yeah,

philo semitism, I’ve heard people call it, where it’s like, almost this fetishization of the concept of Judaism as it’s almost a superpower, in a way, which, granted, the author of this book, what used to be Catholic. Excuse me, I think became an atheist and while writing it started converting to Judaism.

So I think there’s a little bit in there of her

being in awe of this, this, Jewish tradition and, and really having, “I’m falling in love with it,” falling into almost an infatuation with it to the point where it’s a little like, are you fetishizing this a little bit? But I, I mean, I can’t, I don’t think I can like dunk on her for stereotyping Judaism because she’s Jewish, you know.

Stephen: Yeah, yeah, it’s, like, it’s, it’s not a, it’s not a big complaint. It’s, it’s not even something that I probably would have even noticed even, like, ten years ago. But just somehow reading it [00:22:00] now, it, it just stuck out a little. It felt old fashioned to me. But what I was, to circle back around to what I was getting at before, in spite of my thoughts on how I, how I feel about her characterization, I, I have to hand it to her again, because as everybody started dropping like flies, we’d, I’d spent so long with all these characters, I really, uh, I really did start to feel concerned for them, even though I knew it wasn’t going to end well, cause, you know, I’d, I’d gotten to, to, to know them and sort of live with them for a while, so it was

RS: Yeah, they stand out and they’re memorable.

Each of them at least, “That’s the guy who blah blah blah. That’s the guy who’s like this. That’s That’s the guy who’s closeted gay. That’s That’s That’s the massive Irishman who can eat anything.”

Stephen: And this is the guy, and this is the guy who was a last minute replacement, and the second she said that, I thought to myself, well, somebody has to go first, we hardly knew ye,

RS: Yeah, sorry Alan R. I. P. I do love that. I do love that when they get to the planet, they [00:23:00] immediately start putting things in their mouths, and they’re like, Jimmy, you’re the guy who’s gonna eat the alien food, cause you’re tall. You’re young. You’ll be okay.

You can do it. That’s great. Put a lizard in your mouth, Jimmy.

Just do it. That’s incredible to me, the idea of just going to an alien world and just putting lizards in your mouth.

Stephen: They have a very breezy attitude towards interstellar travel, which nobody had ever done before, and going to a planet that nobody had ever been before to make first contact with an alien species. It, honestly, it kind of felt like they were just, like, planning a trip to New Zealand,

RS: They’re not worried about germs at all. It’s

crazy. They’re like, well, the

atmosphere is breathable enough. Let’s go outside. Like, what the fuck? Do you know how terrified I’d be of everything?

Stephen: What, what if What if the Runa were like wasp monsters or something? Ugh.

RS: you don’t [00:24:00] know or just what if there’s there’s got to be space germs there’s got– I mean that there is this implication to the crew members get sick and one of them dies immediately and the other is just sick for a long long time and I guess that is a suggestion that there’s some kind of pathogen or something in the food or something that some of them have a resistance to and others just don’t. And they don’t know how to test for it, which I get, again, I rather appreciated that Anne is a doctor, but she’s not super doctor medical researcher lady.

She’s not like, “ah, yes, I can immediately identify what weird alien thing fucking killed this guy.” Cause like, man, there’s too many factors in this. There’s too many things that it could be.

Stephen: Right, and, and, you know, she’s basically unsupported. I mean, you know, she, it’s just her and she only has whatever they were able to bring with her.

RS: Yeah.

Stephen: with them, so. But that, well, it, as long as we’re like, bouncing around, the, the fact that, you know, Alan Pace just dies and we never really, we, well, we don’t know what happens to him and we don’t [00:25:00] find out.

Like, you know, why was D. W. wasting away? Was it, something that was going to happen to him on Earth? Or was it something to do with the, the, the environment on Rakhat? I feel like this, I, I have a section of my notes that’s just called Red Herrings. Because I feel like there are, I don’t know how to feel, I still don’t know how to feel about this aspect of the novel. You know, I, I don’t know if it

RS: Yeah, a lot of plot threads are set up and then immediately severed

instead of tied off over

Stephen: either severed, or they’re just like, I guess you could call them Chekhov’s guns that don’t go off. And I don’t know if it’s, uh, like, inexperience on the author’s part because it was Russell’s first novel, or if it was something more deliberate that, you know, I’m just not picking up.

Cause a lot of the A lot of these plot threads, they’re both, like, things that just never pay off, but they’re also subversions of various, genre subtropes,

RS: Right.

Stephen: uh, you [00:26:00] know, related to, exploration and first contact, and also related to the, the, the fact that it’s a, A book dealing with religious matters.

Like, for one thing, I thought that, going into it, one of the ways that I thought the book was going to be was, I thought it was going to be a, you know, I thought it was going to be a conversion gone wrong narrative, you know, like, oh, they introduced their Christianity to this great planet and these great people and it ruined everything and, you know, it, it doesn’t do that at all.

RS: yeah. At the same time, though, it wasn’t necessarily this thing where, ah, this evil society needs the light of Jesus. I mean, their society’s fucked up. Not gonna deny that.

It’s a fucked up society. It’s very fucked up. But the book takes great pain to the beginning to establish that things are really, really fucked up on Earth.

I mean, one of the characters, Sofia, is basically a slave. Who was sex trafficked as a child. And that’s just sort of tolerated. That’s just sort of how it [00:27:00] is. So it’s not like, uh, our superior society is enlightening this inferior one. No, it’s just, there’s, there are two societies that are fucked up in different ways.

Stephen: have you ever considered that really they’re just giving these, disadvantaged youths jobs and futures and educations?

RS: was, that, that, that bit of, little bit of, uh, world building. Uh oh, we’re using that term. Sophia is basically an orphan who is kind of like a slave, and in this future 2019 in here, basically venture capital firms can invest in orphans. And invest in individual orphans futures. And it’s horrifying, but it felt so real.

I’m sure some Silicon Valley person is right now putting together a fucking PowerPoint presentation on, on doing exactly this and is going to propose it. It just felt so incredibly realistic to me and, and, and it was horrifying. So, so this isn’t necessarily like, Oh, this species needs us to save them [00:28:00] or, or, or anything like that. It’s just, hey, this, this stuff’s different, which I really appreciated, too, because on the one hand, I don’t want one of those classic sort of sci fi fantasy racism things from, from the olden days about, oh, we need to, we need to save the society from themselves with our superior culture. But at the same time, I don’t like the overcorrection of the sort of well meaning liberal that ends up, I feel like, Kind of infantilizing other people and saying, “Oh, the only cultures that have ever done anything wrong were white cultures.”

Like, no, come on, come on, grow the fuck up.

Stephen: Yeah,

RS: Like, that, that kind of rubs me the wrong way too, because it does rob other people of their agency, and it’s a little infantilizing in, in, in a way. Okay, come, like, I can acknowledge that, You know, the Conquistadors were monsters without saying, “Oh, the Aztecs did nothing wrong.” I’m not that crazy.

Stephen: I [00:29:00] agree. It does a good job of not straying into either of those extremes. But I still, on that topic, I still kind of feel like The novel is a, I kind of want to say a little confused, that might be a little strong, just in how it sets up the premise of what happens and how, I think anyway, the novel seems to view what happens. Because, right there on the first page, like you said, the last sentence of that page is, “they meant no harm.” Great sentence, so much foreboding, but I feel like, since it doesn’t turn out to be like an ironic, Columbus contact, tragedy story, I sort of feel like it, uh, to like load it up to the Jesuit mission was this, you know, huge tragedy and they meant no harm, like the saying that like you meant no harm, Kind of feels to me like, oh man, they like really screwed this place up, which, in a way, they kinda do.

Not [00:30:00] revealed so much in this book, but I read a little bit of

RS: I mean, it did result in a in a huge massacre, in a, in a huge fucking massacre.

Stephen: Yes, a huge massacre. But, I guess what I mean is like, I feel like if you accept what It seems to be the novel’s premise that the human mission was a tragedy, and an inadvertent one, and caused ruin and harm to, the native Rakatis, and all that was caused by, maybe a foolish belief in, like, a benevolent deity.

And I feel like, in a way, you’re also kind of accepting that, Rakati civilization is okay, the way it is, like not, not perfect, but just like, you know, sure they, I, I guess, you know, it’s like you said, like, yeah, they caused harm, but also it’s, it’s a messed up world. That world is so messed up the way that she wrote it.

It’s so cool.

RS: Yeah, yeah, she sets it up where you know something’s really fucked up and I love that as you’re reading [00:31:00] it you know how, you can smell, like, oh this is fucked, this is real fucked, this is gonna go real bad and the character’s going, “everything’s fine! We’re building gardens, it’s great!” I really like the bit where they’re starting gardens and the Runa are just going, “yeah, yeah, dirt looks way better over there, good job guys. Good job!” It’s really kind of a great play– I loved that bit,

but to me, it felt very real of this idea of “hey, you can go into a foreign culture you don’t understand with the best of intentions and accidentally fuck things up without meaning to while doing something that is innocent” is just planting some vegetables like that’s all they did that caused a huge fucking problem was to plant some vegetables which Any, any human being would think, yeah, this is fine, like, this is what you do.

But, the idea of, “we meant no harm and it was a disaster” felt very true to me in terms of the way that missions do sometimes go. As I was reading this book, I was thinking about that incident in 2018, I think, where a young Evangelical man decided that he was going to bring the [00:32:00] word of the gospel to North Sentinel Island, which is this island that has not had any contact with the modern world and in fact, it is illegal to go there because they probably don’t have antibodies against our germs and like literally one of us going there and sneezing on someone could wipe out at least a third of the population. It’s it’s real fucking bad. But this guy got it in his head where the idea like “no i’m gonna do it. This is what God wants me to do.” and he went there once. The uh, North Sentinelese shot his Bible with an arrow and chased him away. And instead of taking the fucking hint, he went back, and that time they fucking killed him.

And that’s kind of what I was thinking of while reading this, this, this kind of, this real naivete that sometimes missionaries will have, where they’re like, “oh, I can, I can handle this,” and they might go with really, they might have great intentions, they might be evil, you know, the thought imperialists, I don’t know, I’m not gonna, decide [00:33:00] that.

It depends on the person, I suppose. It depends on what’s going on. But you can, sometimes they’ll go at this with these, this really naive, simple minded idea of like, “it’s just gonna be an adventure. It’s gonna be fun. It’s gonna be awesome.” Without recognizing like, hey, you’re going to a culture that is so radically different from yours.

You are fucking out of your depth. You have no idea what you’re doing here. You’re probably gonna get killed with a spear at some point, man. Like, you really don’t understand seem to appreciate how fucking dangerous this is. Which, that that does happen to this day, with missions who go out into, like, the Amazon and try to contact uncontacted tribes, and tell them about Jesus, and then get killed.

That’s kind of what I was thinking of while reading this book, was that particular dude who got shot with a volley of arrows while trying to visit North Sentinel Island.

Stephen: Yeah, I’d, I’d, I’d forgotten about him, actually.

RS: yeah, yeah, it is, it is, [00:34:00] heartbreaking. I watched a documentary about him on Hulu and it was really, really good. And they interview his dad, and his dad is very religious too, but he felt like his son just got almost seduced by this, like, mania

for being, you know, wanting to have this, this boyish adventure without really understanding just how dangerous it was and how, how much of a risk it is and how, like, Have you considered if this culture is ready for you?

If they’re gonna want you, buddy? You were not invited.

Stephen: Yeah, yeah, it’s, uh, yeah. I don’t know, I guess I just, the only thing I felt about it is, like, I kind of felt like if I were, like, if you wrote a book that was about aliens coming to, like, the antebellum south, and contacting, and like, they make first contact with slaves on a big im– uh plantation, and then through, you know, not really understanding what the situation is, they, inadvertently cause like a whole bunch of slaves to get killed, but then just having the [00:35:00] book being like, treating it all like, oh, what a huge tragedy, it’s like, is that the right way to think about it though?

Like, isn’t slavery fucked up, shouldn’t we be, shouldn’t we have like a slightly different take on this?

RS: Yeah.

Stephen: It was so much of a gut punch at first when we get towards the end of the novel when, you know, we finally, it’s revealed to us what the relationship is between the Runa, the, the, the species that they, that they are. That the, the mission first makes contact with and lives with, and the, the Jana’ata, the, the other alien species on the planet, when it’s revealed to us what the relationship is between these two species, uh, it was, it was so much of a gut punch that I didn’t even realize it at first. And like, all the various knock on implications of all the things that the mission had been doing and things that they had witnessed and then misinterpreted and the way that, especially the way that Sam, that, uh, Emilio [00:36:00] felt about, his First contact with the Runa and, you know, how he felt that, like, God had led him to these people.

And, you know, it’s, it’s basically almost like, I feel bad saying it, but it’s almost as if he, he had made first contact with sentient cows. It’s so mean.

RS: Right. I mean, there is that thing throughout Christianity about the lamb and the lion shall lie with the lamb and all that stuff that I’m kind of thinking about here. When you have these two species that are sort of the lion and the lamb.

Though they both look like cats. They both look like alien cats. They’re cat people. They all look like Na’vi. Yeah,

Stephen: have to apologize. I, I’m not very good at like, picking up on Christian symbolism for most of grammar school in religion class. Like, I sat in the back in the row, like [00:37:00] farthest away from the teachers.

So a lot of the times I just wasn’t paying attention. So, I’m a poor student. As far as, like, other red herrings, the, the Jimmy Emilio, uh, Sophia love triangle, that gets diffused. There’s no, infidelity, well, not infidelity, there’s no, like, breaking of, Sandoz’s, priestly vows as far as chastity goes.

There are these tension points, but then they just don’t, so they just don’t release.

RS: there’s a lot of things set up. Like, DW talked, and Anne had that talk about how, like, “Hey, DW, you should maybe be open about your sexuality with, uh, Just tell Emilio you’re gay, it’s cool. He’ll deal with it, he’ll be over it.” And DW’s like, “I don’t know about that.” And his, that talk about, the vacuum of power that’s gonna happen after he dies, and then it’s just completely cut down short. And it happens over and over and over again in the book to the point where, to me, it’s very clearly intentional. I don’t [00:38:00] see these as mistakes. I mean, she’s a writer. She knows

what she’s doing here. You can’t do that much accidentally. I think it is very deliberate as a way to maybe make it hurt more.

Where, These, all these un these things don’t get resolved because these people are just straight up murdered.

Stephen: Murdered and eaten.

RS: Murdered and eaten, man. Including a pregnant woman, that’s dark, dude.

Stephen: Yeah.

RS: That’s dark.

Stephen: Do you, do you want to talk about, like, what happens, or is that just, plot wheel spinning? I mean, people, people have read the book. Okay.

RS: Yeah,

people have read the book or you’ll figure out what happens from reading the first chapter. Oh, everybody fucking dies. Everybody dies super hard. I’m sorry. Great. I think examining more of the details is a little bit more interesting. And something I noticed about this book, which I found interesting, is the parallels between the Jana’ata or Rakat society versus Earth society in terms of controlling or siphoning [00:39:00] off or quarantining or whatever you want to call the sexuality of indesirable aspects of society.

We have this major character, the first Jana’ata, sort of, carnivore class alien who meets up with the humans and immediately tries to decapitate them. Emilio Santos until Emilio knocks him down with his fierce Puerto Rican fightin strength. Um, Sipaari’s great. He’s a stupid bitch, and he rocks as a character. His motivation is greed and horniness. His entire driving force is that feel when no girlfriend. He’s ludicrously petty and short sighted. He’s a great fucking character. He’s just an absolute bitch. He rocks. Um, I fucking love it. He’s great. He’s great. He’s this petty little bitch. Little shit, but he is what’s called a Third because this is a society that practices strict population control and eugenics so basically Only the first two children in in a [00:40:00] family get to reproduce. The third is kind of on the margin of society. The first two are there’s it’s like you’re a bureaucrat or basically a fascist cop. And then the third is just kind of surplus, and maybe you can be a merchant, or some of them become artists, and it’s almost like, this, it feels like this parallel to the priesthood, in a way, in that you are this non reproductive class, that’s focusing maybe on intellectual pursuits, maybe, or, or, or just money, and, and whores, if you’re Supaari. Um, Although it’s handled differently in that they aren’t expected to remain celibate, they’re required instead to have like a harem of sterile concubines or something like that. And then on the other side, you’ve got obviously the priesthood, which requires chastity or celibacy. But then also Sophia, who, as a minority and a war orphan, is this undesirable segment of society and how her sexuality is not necessarily, [00:41:00] suppressed, but just completely commodified and becomes an object for other people to use. Right,

Stephen: see this is just another thing that I didn’t really pick up on when I was reading it, but I’m, I’m glad you did because I agree with you. I did feel like there were, like you said, parallels between Earth Society and, and Rakat Society. I, I was kind of getting more of like a medieval, um, It kind of felt like almost like a, like a, a medieval vibe to it, in that sense of like, you know, uh, like,

RS: the oldest son takes over the business, the second son becomes maybe a soldier, then

Stephen: Yep.

RS: the kind of loser kid who can’t get married, like, uh, you go to the clergy.

Stephen: Right, yeah, exactly. And then the Runa are, are the productive classes, kind of like the peasants, you know. So it kind of reminded me of that like, medieval sort of tiering of society. And the fact that the, the Jana’ata are only about three or [00:42:00] four percent of the population, and they keep the Runa down by repression.

So, you know, sim, sim, actually similar to, to, to the Runa. Uh, knights, I think we’re also, generally speaking, depending on where you went, around like, you know, 5 or so percent of the general, population. I just wonder, how many other, like, what deeper, I’m struggling to think of a deeper thing that I could, add to, to, to your observation about the parallels between, uh, Supari and, and, and Emilio and, and Sophia.

RS: Right.

Stephen: I did think it was, I thought it was funny when he first, meets them because it’s like his immediate reaction is like, “Oh, what are these? I’m going to kill them.” It’s like, yeah, you know, how, how would you react if all of a sudden you just saw some, like an alien that you’d never seen before?

RS: What if he just fucking hated Van Halen?

Stephen: Could be.

RS: They were playing Van Halen then, and he’s like, “Oh, fuck this shit.”

Stephen: Oh right, yeah. I, I,

RS: a Depeche Mode guy.

Stephen: I also liked how, uh, at the, the, the meeting of, uh, between Supari and, and the mission, I liked how [00:43:00] we don’t, cause we, we meet the mission. There are a couple of chapters from Supaari’s point of view before that time, and I like how we don’t get the full description of the Jana’ata at size and physicality until he meets the humans, because, you know, when he is among his regular society, there’s no reason for why would it be commented on?

There’s no reason for it. So that was, I, I liked that that was a, that was a good, detail to the story.

RS: Yeah, that we get a few chapters showing how he operates with other people, and kinda what his deal is. I I rather like that. Right. So there’s this wonderful contrast over and over again about how he sees society and how then when he meets the humans how fucking naive these people are with like, “Oh my god, how are you handling handing me a gift directly?

You’re not supposed to do that, you fucking dipshits. You have no idea how many errors you’re committing right now. I’ll overlook it because I like you, Ann. I’ll overlook it because I like you. But man, you’re fucking this up.”

Stephen: So something, something that I feel. [00:44:00] To me it is sort of like a, guess you could say a vaguely Catholic viewpoint to the book that I enjoy. In, is in the character of Supari, like you said, like how, He is like a dumb bastard and you know, all he cares about is like, “Oh, how can this improve my position?

Like, oh, maybe I’ll get to mate.” And, self serving, short sighted. But at the same time, he does have good qualities to him. He seems to be, like, literally the only Jana’ata on the planet who, has like kind of a good relationship with the Runa and sees them as like a little bit more than just, oh, you know, these are our prey, like whatever, you know, like the Runa of his village, actually seemed to like and respect him and he seems to, respect them and in turn in his way.

And I just, getting to why I feel like that’s, kind of Catholic in a way, is just that I feel like he’s a character who’s both very flawed, [00:45:00] but also you can see that he has good points and, except for the fact that we know that it’s all going to end horribly, you can kind of see these like back and forth points where you kind of think like, oh, like, you know, he could make the right choice.

Like, anybody at any time could just, you know, decide to do good. We all have that within us, you know, good or bad one way or the other. It’s, it’s not predetermined. It kind of reminds me, it reminds me of, um, you saw uh Barbarian, right?

RS: Yeah, yeah,

Stephen: Yeah, so without saying hardly anything about that movie, because I loved it,

RS: Cause it’s

Stephen: don’t, yeah, don’t, don’t, don’t spoil anything about it, even though it’s like three years old.

But so, Justin Long’s character, I feel like, is a similar dipshitty kind of guy, but you can also see where, like, there’s good in him, and it’s all just a question of, the choice [00:46:00] is always his to make, as to whether, are you going to choose to do good, or to do something bad. And, you know, I won’t say anything more about what he does or does not do, but I feel like it’s that same kind of setup, and that’s something that I always tend to notice in, in books that construct those kinds of characters.

It always feels kind of Catholic to me.

RS: Hmm.

Stephen: Just in the way that, like, you’re not predestined or, predamned to be bad one way or another. We all have, free will.

RS: Right. I feel like we need to get to the, the, issue of sexual violence, cause that is a huge section in this book. I mean, our main character, Emilio, he’s a priest who, at the beginning of the book, we find out he’s been in an alien brothel. The book, or at least the characters, seem to treat it as a surprise that this was not a voluntary arrangement.

To me, that did not come as a surprise. Like, he’s a [00:47:00] foreigner with a severe disability. Yeah, of course he’s being trafficked. I mean, I’m, I’m a cynic, but I don’t know, for me, this was one of the most disappointing parts of the book where it kind of, the climax where he’s in front of this, this panel, it almost turns into an episode of Law and Order SVU, Space Victims Unit.

This is where we really could use Elliott Stabler. He is Catholic. He would punch the aliens and glower a lot and say, “I did what I had to do.” While flexing, I just, I don’t know about, I know there were some folks in our Discord who had a very different response to it. And I’m not like, I’m not trying to take that away from anyone.

I mean, we all bring our own personal baggage into something like this. If you have any experience with sexual violence, you’re gonna bring your own baggage, your own issues into it. So, I’m not gonna, like, tell someone, “You are wrong! You can’t, you’re not allowed to see it that way.” For me, I just, I found that section of it to be [00:48:00] absolutely horrific. where he’s being ordered to say that he was raped, but he has to use the words, I was raped, or it doesn’t count. Basically, like you have to say, “I was raped” and I don’t know, I feel like the book is treating this as a form of like, “ah, this was, this was a necessary step to admit to that and get over your, your Hispanic machismo to admit that you’re a victim”

Stephen: Yeah,

RS: in order to heal. But for me, that That, for me, what this felt like was, I feel like a lot of sexual violence victims are kind of expected to perform victimhood in a certain way, and that’s not necessarily the best thing for the victim, and demanding that performance and demanding, “you have to say it the way we want you to, and you have to express it the way we want you to on our timeline and not on yours.” To me, that feels like another level of violation and another level of trauma, uh, re traumatization and not necessarily like, [00:49:00] Oh, we’ve had a real breakthrough today. Like, no, that, that’s not a breakthrough. Like, you just fucking re traumatized that guy. I just kept thinking of that bit in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, where like, Charlie Day has to touch the doll while his family, including his creepy uncle, watches. Like, that’s what was going through my mind during that scene, and I just fucking hated reading it. It was, it just made me, it was upsetting to read. I know that’s my own issue, that I’m bringing a lot of my own issues into it, but, but, that that kind of became the emotional climax of the book was like, Oh, man.

Stephen: Yeah, it’s definitely, I can see what you’re saying, and it’s definitely constructed as like, the big set piece, like, here’s like, the reveal. For, for my own self, at the, at the beginning of the book, I, I did, I did, I was kind of, I was kind of surprised by, you know, the revelation that, that he was, that, he was in sex slavery.

Of course, it’s one of those things where, like, once it, it happens, like, oh, right, yeah, of [00:50:00] course, how could it be another way? I guess I was trying not to, I guess I was just trying not to, make like a, a predetermination on what exactly happened to him. There’s a, a, a phrase that, Kurt, the, the the publisher of Bloodknife, I’ve heard him say on various podcasts where he says that he reads, uh, “eyes open, head empty,” and, and that’s how I was taking that particular aspect of the book, you know, of like, you know, the capital W, what happened, because I knew it’s like, they’ll tell, she’ll tell me, let me just get to it.

I can see how it could be cathartic in, in a certain way, uh, but like, as far as like particulars, the inquiry isn’t like fully antagonistic, but it’s also not, fully, supportive either.

RS: Yeah, it takes the, it, to me, it really does feel like the dramatic courtroom scene.[00:51:00]

Or something which, actually going through court, again, as a sexual abuse victim can re traumatize you in horrific ways. Like, it is a horrible, horrible emotional and psychological trial to have to go through court, even if you win.

Even if the perp gets busted and goes to prison, it is a horrific experience for the victim to have to go through that. And that’s kind of what I’m thinking of here. That’s what I’m bringing to it. I don’t know if that’s intentional. Maybe it is intentional! Because, I mean, this, the court, so to speak, the, the the Inquisition here is not necessarily portrayed as benevolent, a lot of it, but there’s just this moment afterward where I think it’s Father John Candotti afterward goes, “Ah, alright, you know, confession is healing, now, now we can heal.”

I would not feel healed by having to go through that, at least, is what I could say, I would be immensely more fucked up afterward.[00:52:00]

Stephen: Yeah,

RS: I’d be picking up more rocks and throwing them very poorly.

Stephen: this feels like such a quibble now, but in that same scene, I also, it’s definitely a courtroom drama, like, you know, this is the moment. I feel like Russell writes the, uh, the rest of the characters as, uh, obligingly speechless. Which, I feel like never happens in real life, that’s only in TV, like, in real life, no to my eternal disappointment, in real life, nobody ever just, just lets you drop a cutting remark without any kind of rejoinder.

RS: Mm hmm.

Yeah,

Stephen: let you have the last word.

RS: Or that the response is this total shock and flabbergastedness. It strikes me as being a little naive. I

mean, these are I know these are these are These men are cloistered in some ways, but like, they They know what the world is. They know that shit happens. Surely they understand that, like, bad things happen to [00:53:00] people, and the idea that rape is a thing that happens probably, it shouldn’t shock them. I don’t know, and, I don’t know, it feels like this naivete of how people being shocked at the idea of sexual violence when the reality is that it’s horribly depressingly common. And often the response to a big confession or a big, um, disclosure is, is not dramatic, but this sort of “Oh. Oh, alright. Uh You want a snack?”

Stephen: Yeah,

RS: You know?

Stephen: what to do with this.

RS: Oh.

Stephen: Maybe I partially rescind my earlier, uh,

quibble about people not knowing what to say.

RS: Cuz they don’t, I mean they, well they might not know what to say cuz I don’t know what the script is, but that doesn’t mean they’re not gonna say anything. It’s just,

the thing they do say is, the majority of the time, is incredibly disappointing.

Stephen: Yeah. Part of me, I feel like part of it could be, just in the way that there are [00:54:00] like, That Russell writes the, the other priests as, flabbergasted is because, at the beginning of the book, some of them, not all of the four or five of them, but a couple of them, the father General included, do harbor this suspicion that, like, maybe he really was a whore there.

Maybe he wanted to be there. Maybe he’s fallen. And, uh, I feel like Russell does a good job of setting up at the beginning. Because she does give us the bare bone facts of what happens, but, she withholds details and she disguises the facts in such a way that, to me at least, it’s like, you know, well, okay, I don’t know if I really, well, I don’t know, maybe I did think that, that he wanted to be there and we were going to get like, this story of, of how he, falls into depravity or whatever.

But I do think she does a good job of withholding details and disguising the facts at the, of what happened at the beginning of the novel so that you can either, if you choose to, read your own things into, well, you know, what did [00:55:00] happen. So that was another good point, to me of, of tension.

RS: Hmm. Yeah, I guess so. I guess. I mean this was written in the 1990s.

So I’m wondering if an audience of the day might, might think differently of it, for them, the, the revelation that, Emilio was, was gay space raped was, might, maybe would have been a lot more of a surprise, which, when now, I think that doesn’t come as, as shocking

Stephen: Yeah. And, and, and just to be clear, I’m not, I, you know, I’m. Just, like, struggling for, for things to say. I’m, I’m not contending your, your reading of the, of the scene. It, it, it is kind of cruel. Well, kind of cruel. It is cruel.

RS: Yeah, I just don’t know if it’s intentionally so or not. I’m, I’m having trouble, I’m having trouble with it. I’m not sure if it is meant to be that way, how, how it’s supposed to be taken. I, I just found it a little, I just found it, [00:56:00] again, too Law and Order.

Which is just such a bummer because this is where the novel reaches this emotional climax after, after all of this.

Just after all of this nightmare, and this is what it leads to.

Stephen: Yeah, it’s, it’s both the, it’s at once the emotional, the physical, and, the, the theological heart of the book. Because he’s not only, you know, not only is, is, is he raped, but he’s Well, he’s raped, you know, many times, but the first time, it’s by the um, the the Reshtar, who is, you know, the

RS: the singer!

Stephen: right, the singer artist, elite person who is, the author and the originator of the, the songs that, uh, that Sandoz and the his friends, first heard, they picked up on the, on their transmissions and is what.

Inspired him to suggest, like, we gotta go to this planet, God is leading us there. And, you know, he thinks, like, Oh, I’ve come through all this, I’m gonna meet this [00:57:00] guy, it was, it was all, like, a tribulation, and, like, And now I’m having, like, this deep spiritual moment, and, you know, then this deeply horrible and deeply personal thing happens to him, it’s, There are, uh, a lot of, uh, ironic punishments in, in the novel,

RS: I mean, I don’t necessarily see that part of it as a flaw, that how these things happen

Stephen: Oh yeah, no, I didn’t mean it was a flaw.

RS: yeah, yeah, yeah. Not, yeah, I guess I want to stress that this isn’t necessarily a criticism, like, the fact that the narrative, the fact that things that happen in it are incredibly cruel, that’s not necessarily like, oh, that’s bad, because I mean, that’s real life,

Stephen: Yeah,

RS: a lot of the

Stephen: not, not at all. I’m, I’m, I’m glad, I’m glad that she went as far as she did because as, like I was saying, at, at first I kind of felt like, Oh, is that it? And then, but, but no, it just, it kept on happening. It’s like, Oh, well, okay. Both, both from, I feel [00:58:00] like, I guess from, you could say from like an entertainment point of view, like, you know, Russell delivered the goods, but also from, I feel like, Her, the novel’s own stated goals, I feel like if you’re, if I think if you’re going to try to make this kind of theological argument, personally, I, I disagree with, uh, I disagree with it.

But, you know, I, I think you really have to, you have to try and push it. And especially since every, you know, it’s not a novel based on, on, true to life events. Everything is, is made up and, it’s like I, we’ve been saying this whole time, it is, it’s a mean book, it’s a cruel book, and I think that is to, to Russell’s credit.

Because also, I’ve like, I’ve tried to write a few things here and there and like, it’s, uh, it’s kind of tough to write, uh, to, to be cruel to your characters and just describe all these things, at least I feel

RS: Yeah, it’s hard not to let up and give them a little bit of, “well, I’ll give you a little bit of a, I’ll give you, I’ll give you a little relief.”

Stephen: Yeah, just cut him a break, yeah. Yeah, and

RS: she does not.

[00:59:00] She does, she is unwavering. She goes hardcore, and I do respect that. And I think it is part of the point that she’s making here about, okay, how do we handle the, the concept of immense arbitrary cruelty and suffering and the senselessness of it, how do we come to terms with that? How do we fit that into our idea of justice or our idea of God or what have you?

I mean you have to go that hard

Because if you had these little nice little bits where things turned out, okay, then it Kind of would not get to her point as well

Stephen: Or even if you could say, yeah, or even if you could say that like, Well, but this happened for that reason. A lot of the cruelty is, in the novel, is pretty pointless. Yeah, I agree. It’s a tough question to answer, and there’s Not a, uh, a great one. Like as I’ve said before, I, I still don’t agree with what I think, anyway, is her [01:00:00] assertion that is kind of embodied by, uh, well, both by, uh, Sandoz at the end of the novel where, you know, he says that, That, you know, either God doesn’t exist and, I was just a foolish dope who, led myself and my friends to ruin, or God does exist and he’s the author of all of my woes. Uh, and also in, Anne’s conception of God, which she delivers at some point earlier in the novel, Again, saying that, either there’s, there’s no God or, if you ascribe, good things to, to God, then, you know, then he has to be responsible for the, the bad things as well.

Well, I mean, I, again, see, when we’re talking about, like, you know, suffering and the, the problem of evil and, and why do we suffer? I don’t know. Part of the reason that I had to read a lot of things, in fact, like the Pope John Paul II literally [01:01:00] wrote an encyclical just all about the problem of suffering and why do we suffer.

There’s also no pat answer in that either. But I feel like the reason that I had to read all these things is because I can’t approach it, um, from my own personal point of view, because, uh, to be perfectly honest, nothing bad has ever happened to me in my entire life. Uh, I have

RS: Wow

Stephen: it’s true,

RS: That is a bold statement

Stephen: I have, I had a very nice, uh, family life growing up. I have never broken a bone. I have all my organs. I even have all my wisdom teeth. I’ve never had an operation. I’ve never lost anybody, tragically. Everybody who has passed, it was, you know, it’s like, well, you know, that’s sad, but they were old, or something like that.

Even people, like, even the bad funerals that I’ve gone to, [01:02:00] they, they weren’t, it was like, somebody, like a friend lost somebody, or a family member lost somebody, but it wasn’t like directly my family member. So, just like, I don’t really have An experience of capital S suffering where I can like, put it to myself.

So I guess I can just say that, uh, Catholic teaching would say that, uh, Ann’s and Sandoz’s uh, conceptions of, uh, God and, uh, evil, that’s not what, what we teach. God is not the author or the originator of, of evil, uh, but he does for whatever unimaginable reason, since, people don’t know everything, he does, permit it to happen in this life at least. By happenstance, I happened to read a different novel, earlier this year, back in, April, that, covers a lot of the same ground and, uh, I feel like, well, personally, I liked the novel better and it takes a different tack, [01:03:00] uh, and so, I don’t want to put, like, a value on it, like, oh, it did it better, well, of course, I think that this novel did a better job with the question because it delivered an answer that was more in line with Catholic teaching.

And the novel is Silence by, um, Shusaku Endo. He was a Japanese novelist, in the, uh, Middle of the 20th century. And he was also a Catholic. Martin Scorsese, uh, adapted it into a film back in 2017. Uh, I haven’t seen it, uh, yet. I want to, but you know, it, it starred Liam Neeson and, Andy Garfield.

And I, I think, who’s the guy who was Kylo Ren? Uh, he was in it too. So that novel, it’s based on historical events. It takes place during the, the Japanese crackdown on Christianity in the, the, the Tokugawa Shogunate, their crackdown in the 1600s on the, uh, the Tokugawa Shogunate.

Jesuits and the, the native Japanese population. So I feel like one way that [01:04:00] Silence is, is a better, examination of the question of, why doesn’t God do anything? Why does he let bad and senseless things happen to people who, who don’t deserve it? Is that, um, The Sparrow is all made up.

Everything in it is contrived by Mary Doria Russell, and even if, we can say that like, well, it takes certain things from, Columbian contact and, the European colonization of the new world in the global South. Like, you know, it’s still a made up story. It’s people in space.

Go into another planet. Whereas, Silence, this is a real historical period. And, uh, a lot of, of Japanese Christians, you know, suffered a lot of things very horribly, like it’s real stuff that happens. So you, the reader, don’t just have to sit with the narrative. You also have to sit with the uncomfortable fact that what you’re reading is, is true.

It actually happened. And why did God let it happen? Uh, and just to sort of like, try to very Briefly wrap it all up. Like what is the, the message [01:05:00] and the, the, the viewpoint of the, of, of Endo’s, uh, novel, at least as, as I understand it, I, I’ll have to read it again. It, it was kind of a complex, subtle novel.

I don’t feel like I have everything. So at the end of the Sparrow, when, when Sandoz, when he asks the other Jesuits, you know, like, was God with me? You know, it’s clear the way he says it that his answer, and maybe Russell’s answer as well, I’m not sure, is no, God was not with him.

But for Shusaku Endo, in silence, the answer for him would have been yes, that God is with Sandoz. In all of those, uh, moments, and that he is suffering alongside of him, that he’s with him the whole time, even though he is silent. It’s kind of like a more mature, not as, um, cloying version of, you know, the Footprints prayer.

You know, it’s like, oh, when you only saw one. You’ve heard of [01:06:00] that, right? You’ve

RS: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Onion had a really great op ed parody of it called, like, “Bullshit, Jesus. Those were my footprints.”

Stephen: yeah.

RS: yours going over to a picnic table. There were several cigarettes in the ashtray over there. Looks like you were having a smoke. Thanks a lot!

Stephen: Right, yeah, I mean, like, the prints thing sort of gets at, like, a true thing, but it’s sort of inartfully, inartfully written, or it sounds great at first, but then you start thinking about it, and it sort of opens itself up to, you know, a lot of criticisms. But so anyway, To me personally, if you, if you want to read a novel that deals with the question of, why does God just let all these horrible things happen?

Like, where is he? I would, I would recommend, uh, checking out Silence. I feel like it’s a more, um, mature novel. I feel like it, it handles it better. Something

RS: is very much the Bullshit Jesus, Those Were My Footprints version of that, of that. This is “Bullshit [01:07:00] Jesus, These Were My Footprints, You were in that bar getting wasted on space edibles.”

Stephen: Yeah.

RS: and George, or whatever.

Stephen: Yeah. Um,

RS: That was a great bit.

Stephen: but, uh,

RS: I can’t believe they didn’t get harmed by that. That is crazy. Let us go to a space bar and do space drugs. And not test it. Let’s just fucking eat them. Let’s do it. And

nothing went

Stephen: biggest guy. He’s, he’ll be fine.

RS: large, he’s Irish, he’s okay. It’s just, that’s wild that that didn’t kill them. That that’s not what killed them. I thought that’s what was gonna kill

Stephen: I thought it was gonna be the

RS: I thought they were gonna overdose.

Stephen: I, I thought it was just more red herrings.

I thought it was gonna be the food, the water, you know,

just all

RS: up on Runa gummies.

Stephen: any of the typical space explorers land on a planet and what is it that does them in, you know, or like, like a reverse, uh, War of the Worlds.

Like, it was the germs! The ricotti germs! [01:08:00] I

RS: Except maybe maybe Space Germs gave DW diarrhea.

That is a possibility.

Stephen: Maybe.

RS: Or, or, or it was being sad about being gay. He had porai.

Stephen: Honestly, I didn’t I didn’t like that hippy dippy Runa, like, “oh, his heart doesn’t have something that it wants.” Like, that’s not what it is! There’s a medical reason! I’m dead.

RS: He’s got an amoeba. Come on.

Stephen: Get

RS: That, that kinda, that he, that he immediately falls ill right after he’s revealed to be gay is a little, it’s a little LGBTQ representation 1990 style there. Like,

yeah, yeah, but he specifically got sick after admitting he was gay. Which,

like, alright. Alright, okay. Are you doing that? Are we really doing this? We really giving them space AIDS? Is that what’s happening here? Come on, man. Don’t do this.

Stephen: The, the other, the thing that I had a little bit of trouble [01:09:00] squaring with the book as I was trying to read it in terms of, of like, a Christian understanding of suffering is that, to its core I think Russell was wise in, I guess, not playing, not playing on, on Christian turf because a lot, not, not all, but a lot of what I was, uh, reading in, uh, on, on that subject, suffering is usually framed in like a Christian understanding in that You suffer for Christ for some kind of reason, like maybe people are persecuting you because of your faith, for one reason or another, it, it happens today, it’s, it, and it’s certainly happened historically, but that’s not, that’s not the narrative that, uh, that The Sparrow gives

RS: No, they’re not really,

Stephen: They don’t proselytize.

They’re not, they don’t even really talk to the Runa or to the Janata about God. They, they’re [01:10:00] more just like lay people and Jesuits who just happen to be Priests, but they’re really just more like they’re on an anthropological mission. Like, they don’t tell the Runa about Christianity. The Janata don’t oppress them.

Because they’re like, what’s this, what are these wacky ideas you’re telling them where we don’t, we don’t like this, right? The bad things that happen to them, except for the fact that, like, they, they felt that God was calling them to, to go, and, and do these things, the stuff that happens to them, it’s, it’s not, it’s not really about faith or proselytization or conversion.

Even though they’re missionaries, it sidesteps this common missionary narrative of like, you’re going to go somewhere to preach to people. And, you know, some people are going to like that and, and convert. And then some people are really, really not going to like that.

And they’re going to persecute you for that, but that’s. So, like, that’s kind of the model that a lot, and not all, but that a lot of what I was reading [01:11:00] in, in prep, that’s how it frames it, but that’s not how The Sparrow frames it.

But, uh, yeah, as far as anything else Gosh, I wrote, I typed up so many notes from, if anybody feels like reading more about this, you could try reading the, uh, papal apostolic letter, uh, Salvivici Doloris, uh, it literally means savior of pain. It’s on the Christian meaning of suffering by Pope John Paul II. I found that kind of, uh, interesting.

Uh, I also liked the, uh, papal encyclical, uh, by, uh, Pope Benedict XVI, uh, Deus Caritas Est, um, God is Love, which was mostly just about how, uh, I tried to read that to be like, no, God isn’t a mean guy who does bad things to all these characters in the book. But it’s also an interesting, uh, look [01:12:00] at, um, uh, that idea that God is love, but it all Both of, that encyclical also touches on like, you know, Hey, uh, why do we suffer?

Why does God let us suffer? And, uh, honestly you could even say that like the whole Catholic religion is trying to answer, if God is there and he loves us, uh, why is everything such a bummer all the time? And, uh, there’s, really isn’t a good answer. Uh, it basically just comes down to, uh, it’s a mystery. We’ll find out. After we die,

RS: Ah.

Stephen: uh, you could all, I’m being glib now on this last point, but you could always try to find the good in suffering, which, is true, can be true. Not a great, you

RS: a certain extent.

Stephen: to a certain extent, but it’s, it’s not a great answer. Basically, there are no great answers.

I guess Catholics just, uh, try to have faith that,

RS: Speaking of suffering, you can hear my [01:13:00] cat in the background. He’s having a bad time.

Stephen: Well, God

is with the cat, I guess. I guess it’s just the idea of, like,

the idea that ultimate justice Is Is not ever going to be found in this life, and there’s nothing that, uh, any person or any group or government of people can do to bring that about on Earth. It’s just something that, can only be found in the next life.

These are things that I try to believe and, uh, try to tell myself. It’s a hard thing to believe, don’t take me for, like, some sort of, fundamentalist, like, oh, well, God only gives you the problems you can handle, or whatever it is, what other, other platitudes that people spout, that’s not actually what the Catholic Church teaches.

RS: we all know that’s bullshit. God totally gives you more than you can handle.

Stephen: Well, somebody does. [01:14:00] Oh, the other thing that I feel like Okay, that I felt was an odd thing for Russell to do in the novel. She name drops, I don’t know if you remember, but there’s a certain point where she name drops and references a, uh, a Jesuit named, uh, Isaac Jogues, who, uh, went to the New World and was martyred by, um, the, uh, the Mohawk, uh, Native Americans.

RS: Mm.

Stephen: So, it’s kind of in passing and it’s, it’s somewhere in the first half of the novel. It’s just sort of like, it’s a reference and then we move on. But I felt that was an odd thing for her to do in a novel where she’s, where she’s setting up that like, Look at all these horrible things that God either lets happen or like, or, or authors, or rather what I should try and say.

So, The Sparrow is a novel about a Jesuit priest who, on a mission, [01:15:00] undergoes all these horrible emotional and physical tortures, including the permanent maiming of his hands. In which the novel name drops a real life Jesuit, he was a French Jesuit from the 1600s went to New France, you know, to Canada and like Northern New York in the 1600s to minister to the Native American tribes there, and he was there for, you know, several years.

Eventually he was, he and, uh, a couple of other Europeans and a party of, of, of Christian Huron Native Americans were captured by a Mohawk war party, and he was held in captivity for a year, and his, like, specifically, like, his hands were maimed. I was reading on Wikipedia about him. And they, like, uh, a woman cut off his thumb, and, Some people gnawed on the ends of his fingers until, like, they got down to the bone.

Like, a lot of horrible things happened [01:16:00] to him. He lost two fingers. He was, like, in captivity for a year in the cold. So just, like, a lot, like, I don’t think he was, um, sexually abused, Wikipedia didn’t say so. But, you know, anyway, a Jesuit in real life who all these

RS: Yeah, he went through a lot of the same stuff

Stephen: Yeah, he Exactly, but he didn’t lose his faith, he didn’t despair, uh, he eventually escaped and went back to France, but then after about a year and a half, he went back to the New World.

Yeah, because, you know, he, it was what he wanted to do, he had a lot of zeal to, to, to minister and, and to, to live with these people, and the second time he went back, he got a tomahawk to the head from the, the same group of people, so I just feel like it’s an odd choice to, set up this Jesu this fake Jesuit Jesuit.

Who loses his faith because of all these tribulations he undergoes when at the same time Like like you’re trying to make some kind of point [01:17:00] But then at the same time you reference a real life Jesuit who undergoes a lot of the same stuff doesn’t so I just I don’t know what the answer is to the the Questioning tone of voice that I’m that I have right now.

It just seemed like an odd choice

RS: Yeah. Yeah, Yeah, I, I don’t know. I mean, I can’t, I can’t, really comment on that because I’m, I’m not Catholic and I have a, a different viewpoint on, on religion, definitely. I would immediately lose faith. I don’t have any. I would despair super hard. I would, I would just despair so hard, dude.

I’d be all about it. I

Stephen: Honestly, I probably would, too.

RS: Yeah, yeah, totally. I would, I would, that’s me. I would immediately sink into despair.

Stephen: Yeah,

RS: be like, Oh man, we only got instant coffee. I’m despairing. I’m not

Stephen: to be Yeah, I’m not looking to be tested by any of

RS: I would not. I’d get a fucking hangnail and immediately [01:18:00] despair.

Stephen: Although that Just to bring it quickly back to Silence, that’s There’s a character in the book who is, like, just constantly breaking faith, and the narrator, who’s a character in the novel, things to himself more than once, that like, you know, if this guy lived in a different time, in a different context, that wasn’t in the age of persecution, he’d probably, like, he’d live his life, as a good Catholic, and, you know, so it’s all just, I guess all I’m just saying is like, yeah, I’m, uh, I am not looking to be tested whatsoever.

Uh,

RS: fuck that. It’s terrible. It’s not great. I don’t recommend it.

Stephen: I, I could blather on forever, I want, I want you to, to guide what we do, because like I said, I have more notes than would be prudent to reference. Yeah,

RS: book. I, I have mixed feelings, and in some way I appreciate the fact that it doesn’t point to one very easy thing you can say about, Ah, this is what the book is saying. Because the book would be a lot [01:19:00] weaker, I think, if it had a very obvious, blatant thesis.

It seems like more of just thinking about it without necessarily coming to a conclusion, which I, which I respect a great deal. And there’s a lot in this book that I think is really, really terrific. I, I, I dread the term world building, but it’s good. It’s solid, it fucking works, I really like how it’s handled. Both Future Earth and Rakat. I really love the way she, the author, portrays things with a real economy of details.

Stephen: yeah,

RS: That you get a sense of what things look like generally, but without Here, 5, 000 words to describe what the lizards look like. There are a lot of really wonderful, funny moments in it.

There are some really phenomenally powerful, horrifying images. For me, the image that grossed me out and bothered, upset me the most, like, I say this as a compliment, was Father Emilio in 2060, [01:20:00] lounging across the bed in this mock sexy pose with his fucked up hands draped across, like, the bed frame.

Stephen: oh,

RS: Just like, hey, come here,

Stephen: heh

RS: Like, it was so upsetting and gross and grotesque and horrifying. I thought it was great. It was incredibly effective. And a lot of the way that he handles things after what he’s gone through do feel very truthful to me in terms of someone who has really, really serious PTSD from a series of just horrific experiences.

Cheers. Like, that did strike me as very truthful, and I do appreciate the fact that this novel starts off in Puerto Rico and that the main character is Puerto Rican, as, well, this is a story about missionaries and first contact and clash of cultures. Like, well, that’s a fucking perfect place to put it. You know, I feel like a lot of first contact alien stories, Should happen in Latin America. Should happen in the Caribbean, because that’s where it [01:21:00] happened, and Puerto Rico especially is a place where a long series of empires have left their footprints. This is a Puerto Rican character written by a non Puerto Rican writer, to the best of my knowledge.

I don’t think she does a bad job of it. There is a little bit of like, “Ah, he’s this, he’s this angry, scrappy, little Puerto Rican guy in there,” but it’s not bad. I’ve certainly seen it handled worse. I, I fucking loved the fact that the Runa immediately assumed he is a child because he is of average Puerto Rican height. That is very true to life.

Stephen: Yes, I was, I was curious to know your, your thoughts on, um, on the, the Puerto Rican aspects of, of, of the novel.

RS: Yeah, I think, I think it was, uh, well handled from what I could see. It’s, it’s not, you know, he’s had a rough life, but again, this is also implied. 2019, there’s this implication that poverty is even more rampant and [01:22:00] just horrific in the future 2019 of this novel. I mean, we’ve got the character Sophia, who was a trafficked child and is now basically a kind of computer slave. Oh God, the bit about AI stealing everyone’s jobs. We didn’t even talk about

Stephen: Oh, yeah. Well, like that, that’s what I meant about like,

RS: Fuck!

Stephen: You know, it’s just like, I noted it, and I really do, like you said, there are a lot of great science fiction y world building details that, she puts in there, and they’re true to the novel, and it’s, um, Very authentically placed. I just sort of passed over it though because like I could you know, it’s like okay.

Okay. She’s a slave I know that that’s not like it but but that’s not what the book is about. It’s not about AI. It’s not about You the you know that that fun Science fiction books written in the 80s and 90s like oh the Japanese have replaced the America as the preeminent economic power. Like I I know it’s this is about good and evil like let me get [01:23:00] to the theological parts. But they’re great parts of the book and they and they make it they make it a better richer reading experience. Like you I I also have Conflicting thoughts about the novel. Looking back through all my notes, I feel like I was harder on it than the novel deserved, and I really wish that I didn’t have, I wish that I didn’t come to it with like a preconceived, uh, well I guess you could say prejudice about the novel.

I, you know, I came to it with, I started off with like an antagonistic reading, like, you know, I was like looking for things to, to fight over. And, uh, like I said, I don’t know where I got that idea about the book, but it’s, uh, I was wrong. It’s not really that kind of a book. I wish I’d come to it with somewhat more, uh, open reading experience, cause the, the novel does have a lot of good things going for it. And I did like it, but yeah, so just all those, uh, fun little, I, I felt like, uh, Sando’s,

RS: are picking at it a lot,

Stephen: I felt

RS: that we’ve been [01:24:00] talking about it this long, I think, says that it’s a very compelling book. Yeah. Yeah, right, Harley? Yeah, that’s right. He agrees. Supari. He’s also not allowed to reproduce. He is, he’s also the third of his litter. I suppose, I mean, there were, he had, there were four littermates altogether.

Stephen: He gets away with it though,

RS: He does, because he’s so handsome. And he’s dumb and selfish, just like Supari. Yeah. The star of the show. Oh. Yes, my little man. Yes, my little man. Take it easy. Take it easy. Sorry. It’s officially an episode of Rite Gud. He’s, the cat is, is intervening. Hold on. Let me get the toy. Give me the toy so I can throw it.

Ow. That was mean.

Stephen: Yeah, I agree with you. I thought Sandoz’s, um, [01:25:00] his depictions as, as a survivor, you know, especially looking back at the beginning of the novel after we know what happens to him, that, that all felt, that felt true to life. Yeah.

RS: the parts I’m picking at is that the rest of it is so strong. And it’s kind of like when, if you’re a smart kid, your parents yell at you for getting a B. Because they know you can do better, they know you could have gotten an A. Versus, like, if you’re, you’ve got a little brother who’s a fucking dipshit, and they’re happy that he gets a C.

And you’re like, “what the fuck, come on!” And they’re like, “look. This is the best he can do, okay? This is good for him.” It’s kind of like that. I feel, I feel like the staunch parent complaining like, why only a B? Come on, fucking chill. I think that’s probably why I’m being unreasonably harsh on this book. Because so much of this book is like A A A that when it goes down to just, Ugh, this is a B part of the book, I [01:26:00] go, “Ugh. Ugh, I’m so disappointed in you. Why don’t you apply yourself?” Why don’t you apply yourself, Harley? Yeah, that’s right.

Oh,

RS: Okay, we’ve been talking for an hour and 40 minutes so we’d really better wrap it up, I think.

Stephen: Yeah, I’m sorry. I feel like I always make you go long.

RS: No, that’s okay. It’s content. It’s a lot of content. People are getting their money’s worth.

Stephen: The, last, um, two things I’ll, I’ll say is just as like a summation. I feel like the conception of, the Christian conception of God that Russell is arguing against it. is, feels to me more like, uh, kind of like a, an American Protestant fundamentalist [01:27:00] understanding of it. Like, Oh, if I do all these right things and if I’m part of the right denomination or congregation, then like, you know, like God’s got my back.

But that’s,

RS: it does strike me as a very American Protestant y type of religion.

Stephen: yeah. But that’s not Catholic teaching.

RS: yeah,

Stephen: that’s, not, that’s not what we, I mean, like, you might find it there in church just because, that’s just sort of, like, it’s bled into American culture. I feel like that’s kind of what anybody in America thinks about, even if, even if you’re not Christian, right?

It’s just sort of in the water, but, but that’s not Catholic teaching. And then, I’ll once again recommend, uh, Silence, as a book to read if, if you’re, if anybody’s interested, in reading about, uh, a novel that deals with the problem of evil and theodicy and, and losing your faith.

Uh, I think a friend of the, of the Discord, writer and artist Hazel Zorn, has, she likes that book a lot and, and she’s said to, to me that, Silence is a book that, makes people with faith feel broken and people without [01:28:00] faith long for it so they can experience it. And, uh, it’s a really good book.

It’s short too, about half the length of The Sparrow. I feel like a used car salesman now. Um, and just one final book recommendation. If anybody is interested in reading a novel that deals with the examination of being angry at God, then I would recommend Till We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis.

It’s not like his Narnia books. I think it might be the last novel he ever wrote. He wrote, he wrote it in collaboration with his wife, Joy Davidman. And it’s a very mature and very interesting and just a very good fantasy novel. I liked it a lot. I read that earlier this year as well.

Um, so that’s another good one.

And

RS: well.

Stephen: just both [01:29:00] books that, uh. Both books that treat these problems from a more, uh, either Christian or Catholic, uh, perspective. I liked The Sparrow. I was a little too judgy about it in, in, in reading it. And I’m glad we had this conversation about it.

You’ve, uh, made me reconsider a, a few opinions that I had about it. And only her first novel, too.

RS: Yeah, that’s a hell of a first novel. Damn. That’s really ambitious.

Stephen: Won a lot of awards.

RS: Good for her. Alright. Well, I think that’s it. Uh, thank you for coming on. And thank you all for supporting us. Uh, if you like what you heard, think of joining the Discord. You’re already supporting us because you’re in the book club. Until next time, keep reading and keep writing good.

announcer: This has been Rite Gud with RS Benedict. It was hosted by RS Benedict and produced by Matt Keeley for KS Media LLC theme song by Okay Glass. For comments and concerns, please write to us at [01:30:00] ritegud@kittysneezes.com That’s R-I-T-E-G-U d@kittysneezes.com. If you’d like to support us, please visit our Patreon at patreon.com/ritegud This has been a Kitty Sneezes production. KittySneezes. com in color.

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