MemeMachineGo!

I read Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff recently. I lauded his previous novel, Set This House in Order, a while back.

As with that book, Bad Monkeys totally sucked me in. It was clear that Ruff was screwing with the reader — the unreliable narrator was narrating an unreliable landscape filled with unreliable characters. It was clear enough that much of what we were being told was wrong, but which things, in what way? How many levels deep were the lies and ruses? What could the reality beneath it all be?

In the end, I found the book disappointing, but I still had some fun getting there.

It did add a couple of phrases to my personal vocabulary, which is more than I can say for most books. Most usefully, a “Land of Nod argument.”

The narrator relates an atheist arguing with her Christian brother. Genesis says that Cain was banished to the Land of Nod, where he took a wife. But how was there a woman there to be his wife when Genesis hadn’t accounted for the existence of any humans besides Adam, Eve, and Cain?

The atheist thought this was an inconsistency that proved the Bible’s falsehood and irrelevancy. Her brother couldn’t satisfactorily account for Cain’s wife, but rejected the atheist’s conclusion.

The narrator referred to this is a Land of Nod argument. An argument that’s fundamentally pointless because the arguers have their minds made up already, and there’s no possible outcome that will change anyone’s mind.

I used to spend a lot of time arguing with people. The older I get, the more I’m resigned to the fact that a rational argument pretty much doesn’t persuade anyone. Does the mainstream media have a liberal bias? Is there white privilege? Is anthropogenic climate change occurring? Has Bush made America safer or more dangerous?

Nod arguments, all the way down.

In conclusion, if you haven’t read Set This House in Order, go get it. I originally read a copy from the Berkeley Public Library, but bought it subsequently because it’s one I know I’ll reread.