Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar

Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar, by Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein

Questions beget questions, and those questions beget another whole generation of questions. We may start with basic ones like, "What is the meaning of it all?" and, "Does God exist?" and, "How can I be true to myself?" and, "Am I in the wrong classroom?" but very quickly we discover we need to ask other questions in order to answer our original questions. This process has given rise to an array of philosophical disciplines, each delving into particular Big Questions by asking and attempting to answer the questions that underlie them.

What's so neat is that a whole bunch of jokes just happen to occupy the identical conceptual territory as these disciplines. Pure chance? Or is there an Intelligent Designer after all?

Although I have, in my time, taken actual philosophy courses from actual philosophy professors, I feel like I've learned more about Deep Thoughts from Terry Pratchett and my tax law professor. Terry Pratchett, because, well, duh, and the later mostly because I find the ramifications and implications of taxation absolutely fascinating. That's not a joke, by the way, and I'm not embarrassed about it. Booyah.

Luckily, Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar is more Feet of Clay than On the Social Contract, so I had a lot of fun reading it. The book is thin, and broken up into ten short chapters, which are then broken further by small topics and interspersed with jokes. Plato also won me over very early on by telling this joke, which I heard for the first time about a month ago and have been enamoured of ever since:

S: If Atlas holds up the world, what holds up Atlas?
D: Atlas stands on the back of a turtle.
S: But what does the turtle stand on?
D: Another turtle.
S: But what does that turtle stand on?
D: My dear, it's turtles all the way down!

I mean, "it's turtles all the way down" ranks right up there with my other favorite enigmatic, turtle-related phrase, from Stephen King's It: "The Turtle couldn't help us," which is where I'm stopping, both because I could go on for awhile, and also because every time I try to type out the word turtle, I misspell it.

It's a good format for talking about heavy stuff, although I did lie down on the couch for about 40 minutes in the middle of reading it, because I was struggling with "Logic". Oh, logic, why must you always defeat me? Anyway, you can't judge me until you read the section on the heterological paradox. AND THEN EXPLAIN IT TO ME, BECAUSE I STILL DON'T GET IT. I mean, I get the joke, about the barber, but the concept itself is kinda painful. For those of you who, for one reason or another, refuse to pick up the book yourself to see, the heterological problem is summarized as follows:

• A word that refers to (describes?) itself is autological. zB: Short. Polysyllabic. Seventeen-lettered.
• A word that doesn't refer to itself is heterological, i.e., monosyllabic, long, bonkers.
• If the word 'heterological' is autological, then it's heterological. If the word 'heterological' is heterological, then it's autological.

I mean, I kinda get it, but only in a really awkward way. Hence, the nap. Oh, and in case you were wondering, the barber version is: "I cut the hair of everyone who doesn't cut their own hair. Do I cut my own hair?"

But Plato manages to make this kind of strenuous concept (paradoxes make me anxious) palatable, and squishes a bunch of other highfalutin' talk in as well. In some ways, I wanted there to be more of certain topics, since this is necessarily a shallow dip in the philosophical pool. I don't have a ton of knowledge about a lot of philosophy (although most of the jokes were familiar, which I guess is good?) so it's hard to judge the quality of the discussion on those topics, but the two areas in which I have the most experience and knowledge (feminism and jurisprudence, both in the "Social and Political Philosophy" chapter) were treated pretty fairly, even if I could have wished that feminism had a higher ratio of explanation-to-jokes than it does.

I also found some things out about myself, such as the fact that I would be a really terrible philosopher, unless there is a philosophy for Detailists, who ignore the big picture because they're hung up on a joke about Mormons in Ireland. And for your information, there are Mormons in Ireland. I had to look it up because I was offended that the joke would place a Mormon in Ireland rather than Utah, because, like turtles, I prefer my stereotypes to go all the way down.

I am also clearly more of the Eastern philosophical persuasion rather than the Western. Though Cathcart and Klein do not spend a whole lot of time on the various Eastern philosophies (a ratio of . . . ennh, 90:10?) I did enjoy what I read about Zen Buddhism, which involves koans, questions like, what is the sound of one hand clapping? Which is meant to (as I understood it) briefly disrupt your thinking and upheave your world before you settle back down. I can totally get behind that. Getting my mind blown is one of my favorite feelings in the whole world. And whereas I amply demonstrated above that sustained philosophical thinking compels me to lie down and nap until it wears off, short sharp bursts of enlightenment are perfect.

All in all, I really liked this book: it doesn't pretend to much other than what it is, which is a basic philosophy primer, with jokes. I certainly felt smarter after I read it, which is always pleasant. One caution though - it may mislead you into thinking that since you enjoyed this book, studying philosophy is something you might enjoy, to which I want to reply that philosophy classes are the worst, and they really only serve to make you absolutely hate everyone who doesn't agree with you, including Rousseau, that wily fucker.

Chime

Chime, by Franny Billingsley

Briony has a secret. She believes her secret killed her stepmother, destroyed her twin sister's mind, and threatens all the children in the Swampsea. She yearns to be rid of her terrible secret, but risks being hanged if she tells a soul. That's what happens to witches: They're hanged by the neck until dead.

Then Eldric arrives - Eldric with his golden mane and lion eyes and electric energy - and he refuses to believe anything dark about Briony. But he wonders what's been buried beneath her self-hatred, hidden in Rose's mangled thoughts, and whispered about by the Old Ones. And Briony wonders how Eldric can make her want to cry. Especially when everyone knows that witches can't cry.

As ever, spoilers, my dears.

I have many Complicated Feelings about Chime. One, naturally, is that sometimes Ms. Billingsley's style of writing drives me absolutely batshit. It's very distinctive, and not always welcome. I've read both Well Wished and The Folk Keeper, and both of them contained the same odd mix of no-nonsense grammar and fantastical words. For example:

"I have here a ladies' hatpin," said Eldric. "I know you are wondering what this superb specimen of masculinity would want with a hatpin. But what you don't know is that Tiddy Rex and I are building a castle, and of course, every castle needs a catapult, and what every catapult must have is something to pult. Even as I speak, this hatpin is being transformed into an enormous medieval stone."

Eldric's voice was hush-time, but a catapult is not a hush-time pursuit, and neither was the smell. It was a roar-time smell: wood smoke, mixed with a warm, brownish spice, mixed with a whiff of the fruited soaps sold at the Christmas fair.

and

The moonlight slipped and shifted beneath my feet; my legs dissolved into mud. The swamp has no beginning, it has no end, it's all fringes and wisps and foreverness.

I was porous. I had my own fringes - my ten fingers, my fringe of mucky toes.

It was September 29, it was Blackberry Night, and I dissolved into the swamp. My naked foot merged with iris and orchid and lily. My frock of moonbeams purred against my legs. The earth quivered as I ran, I quivered as I ran, as I ran on spider legs of moonlight, in an ecstasy of fear, in a fear of ecstasy.

All the speeches use the same mix of coy and sly, and it's all very atmospheric, to be sure, but sometimes you just wish for a breath of fresh air. Most of my favorite heroines are plain-talkers, who, when given a situation like the one Briony is placed in would wade in with both hands and fix this goddamn mess without wallowing in it like Briony is doing and bemoaning her own terrible, terrible deeds. In Kate Sutton's immortal words to a wannabe martyr: "I am utterly at squares with this childish dealing."*

Briony, on the other hand, refuses to listen to anyone else about her supposed misdeeds, blaming herself for just about every ill chance that happens to occur in Swampsea, including those that are only tangentially related to her, such as a guest's death in the swamp (after he refused protection) and Eldric's illness. Even when one of the Old Ones, the Boggy Mun, tells her flat out she didn't break her Step-Mother's back (not by stepping on a crack, aha) she's all, "Don't tell me what I can't do! This is the skin of a killer!" And meanwhile, we're all on the sidelines going, "You're a vampire that sparkles in the sunlight. Get a fucking grip on yourself."

It's just odd that this one area is one in which she entertains absolutely no self-doubt whatsoever. Maybe it's just been too long since I was a teenager, but I feel like there's a reasonable teenager level of emo level and then there's like, Briony levels of emo. Like, Briony, if you really feel so bad about killing your step-mother and retarding your sister, why don't you just toddle off to jail, huh? Or maybe, like, join some twelve step anti-witch program. Or get a damn clue, because it's completely obvious to every other damn person in town that you are not a witch.

The pacing was a bit off - the beginning moves very slowly, and because of Mopey, the eighth dwarf's narration, it feels repetitive and uninformative. We rehash again and again the fact that Briony killed her step-mother and ruined her sister, but the actual facts are not told to us until the very end of the book. I guess it's meant to feel like a revelation when Briony finally comes out with the story, but since we've all guessed what actually went down about a hundred and fifty pages ago, it just makes you want to throw your hands up and go, "FINALLY."

Obviously, I had a lot of negative feelings, but there were some positive ones too. Although the language can be needlessly abstruse, it can also be rewarding, and there is a lot of dark humor in the story. It can be a little difficult to follow at times, as time passes sometimes very abruptly, and other times very slowly. Actually, I think the story as a whole could have been tightened, because even though everything did sort of connect, some elements felt very unrelated to other parts of the storyline.

Also, and you guys know this drives me crazy, Briony and/or Billingsley never flipping tells us about the Old Ones. We know there are witches, and a Boggy Mun, and a Dark Muse, and a Dead Hand and Wykes, but there's very little description of them, like, what they do, and who they are, and how they operate in relation to each other, etc. etc. So I have all these questions, like, if they're immortal, do they age? Are they connected to the Swamp? And if so, after a while, wouldn't you recognize them, especially the Dark Muses, who apparently wander around town marrying people and attending trials?

I liked The Folk Keeper more than Chime, although the same problems here drove me crazy there, too. The stories themselves are interesting and unique though, and the settings are always very evocative, if not always easy to pin down. It's like looking at a Monet versus Edward Hopper. Both are great artists, but stylistically, I just can't get behind impressionism. Not that I love Edward Hopper, either, but at least you can see what's going on in there. Actually, if you really want my suggestion for an awesome painting, you should check out Carravaggio's Judith Beheading Holofernes, because the expression on her face is priceless.



*Not only is this said by one of my all-time great heroines, Kate Sutton from The Perilous Gard, by Elizabeth Marie Pope, according to Google, Queen Elizabeth I also wrote it in a letter, after one of her generals ignored her orders, which is a hilariously awesome thing for her to have actually said in real life. In the book, Kate is a handmaiden of then-princess Elizabeth, so you can make up a totally plausible, if imaginary, scenario in which the young soon-to-be Queen uses this phrase over and over again, even in circumstances which do not really warrant such strong words, just because she likes the way it sounds, and Kate picks it up because it's just like if your friends say something often enough, you'll start doing it too, because people are highly suggestible. Not that I've given this any thought, naturally.