Mini-Reviews 2024
These are books that I read last year (plus one or two non-books) that didn't fit into my theme on Industry/Technology/Supply Chains—for which a similar collection of reviews is still pending. I've done similar posts in prior years.
Eunoia
Eunoia by Christian Bök, is a literary experiment of sorts. Each chapter is named after a vowel, and only has vocabulary that contains that vowel and no others. The chapters are only united by this common constraint; there isn't a unifying plot (and even within chapters it drifts around a bit). Eunoia was enjoyable to read for the linguistic mastery on display, in the same way some poetry is. The main drawback was that it was needlessly crude in places.
My favourite part was the retelling of the Iliad (which at the time of writing this post I'm currently reading) in the E chapter. Here's an excerpt:
Mermen help these helmsmen berth the wrecked vessels; then the Greek crews erect well-defended shelters wherever the fleet gets berthed. Men erect mess tents, then feed sheds. The settlers dredge the kelp beds, then extend the levees. The wreckers heft sledges; then the hewers hew the evergreens when the evergreens get felled. The trestlemen erect trestles; the smeltermen erect smelters. Men smelt the steel; then the deftest welders weld the tempered sheet steel wherever men screw the screws. The best sled ever hewn gets erected. The shell, when welded, resembles the fleetest steed.
This selection from the I chapter also displays Bök's wordsmithing skills:
Pilgrims, digging in shifts, dig till midnight in mining pits, chipping flint with picks, drilling schist with drills, striking it rich mining zinc. Irish firms, hiring micks whilst firing Brits, bring in smiths with mining skills: kilnwrights grilling brick in brickkilns, millwrights grinding grist in gristmills. Irish tinsmiths, fiddling with widgits, fix this rig, driving its drills which spin whirring drillbits. I pitch in, fixing things. I rig this winch with its wiring; I fit this drill with its piping. I dig this ditch, filling bins with dirt, piling it high, sifting it, till I find bright prisms twinkling with glitz.
Chesterton
I've read and enjoyed some works by G.K. Chesterton in the past, and last year I read a couple of more: Orthodoxy and Heretics. I also listened to an audiobook version of the Ballad of the White Horse. Because Chesterton's works are out of copyright, you can pick up free ebooks of any of these and many of his other books.
Orthodoxy
Orthodoxy was written in 1908, but comes across as timeless. In comparison, Heretics, which was written 3 or 4 years earlier, deals with specific figures and ideas that were current in Chesterton's day. So Orthodoxy is the one I'd most recommend. It is about Chesterton's intellectual journey. On it, he found that Christian orthodoxy matched his moral intuitions about stuff like suicide, equality and hierarchy, optimism and pessimism, fallenness. And that it makes sense of the world—not only of straightforward stuff, but that it has mysteries and paradoxes matching complexities in the world.
Compared to my more developed review posts, in mini-reviews, I mainly share some quotes and points that stood out to me. So that's what the remainder of this section will be.
Virtues should stand together, not in isolation (this is relevant for current debates about empathy, for example):
The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.
These excerpts were one of the key points of the book in my opinion:
But the modern critics of religious authority are like men who should attack the police without ever having heard of burglars. For there is a great and possible peril to the human mind: a peril as practical as burglary. Against it religious authority was reared, rightly or wrongly, as a barrier.
That peril is that the human intellect is free to destroy itself. Just as one generation could prevent the very existence of the next generation, by all entering a monastery or jumping into the sea, so one set of thinkers can in some degree prevent further thinking by teaching the next generation that there is no validity in any human thought. It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.
Regarding solipsism and the self-destroying nature of skepticism, he goes on to write "It has no more questions to ask; it has questioned itself. You cannot call up any wilder vision than a city in which men ask themselves if they have any selves. You cannot fancy a more sceptical world than that in which men doubt if there is a world."
The quote about democracy at the end of this post comes from Orthodoxy.
His intuition against suicide, and its contrast with martyrs:
Christianity had also felt this opposition of the martyr to the suicide: had it perhaps felt it for the same reason? Had Christianity felt what I felt, but could not (and cannot) express—this need for a first loyalty to things, and then for a ruinous reform of things? Then I remembered that it was actually the charge against Christianity that it combined these two things which I was wildly trying to combine. Christianity was accused, at one and the same time, of being too optimistic about the universe and of being too pessimistic about the world. The coincidence made me suddenly stand still.
Another key point that he makes is one that I mentioned in the first paragraph of this section: that complexities in the world are matched by paradoxes in Christian orthodoxy.
The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite. Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is;
Now, this is exactly the claim which I have since come to propound for Christianity. Not merely that it deduces logical truths, but that when it suddenly becomes illogical, it has found, so to speak, an illogical truth. It not only goes right about things, but it goes wrong (if one may say so) exactly where the things go wrong. Its plan suits the secret irregularities, and expects the unexpected.
I really liked this passage about complexity:
If snowflakes fell in the shape, say, of the heart of Midlothian, it might be an accident. But if snowflakes fell in the exact shape of the maze at Hampton Court, I think one might call it a miracle. It is exactly as of such a miracle that I have since come to feel of the philosophy of Christianity.
Mazes are fractal-like but not regular. Not compressible in an information sense. This is a topic I've been thinking about in the context of my series on industry (see the discussion of fractals in the past two links posts, for example). "A stick might fit a hole or a stone a hollow by accident. But a key and a lock are both complex. And if a key fits a lock, you know it is the right key."
In one spot he makes the point that, from an orthodox perspective, nature is not our mother but our sister.
I also thought this part was profound, contrasting maintenance with conservatism. Preservation takes active work. This is a major theme of The Ballad of the White Horse, as well.
But all conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change. If you leave a white post alone it will soon be a black post. If you particularly want it to be white you must be always painting it again; that is, you must be always having a revolution. Briefly, if you want the old white post you must have a new white post. But this which is true even of inanimate things is in a quite special and terrible sense true of all human things. An almost unnatural vigilance is really required of the citizen because of the horrible rapidity with which human institutions grow old.
(Emphasis added)
This next quote I thought was remarkable for having been written not only before the Second World War, but before the First World War.
In fact, it is a remarkable circumstance (indeed not so very remarkable when one comes to think of it) that most things are the allies of oppression. There is only one thing that can never go past a certain point in its alliance with oppression—and that is orthodoxy. I may, it is true, twist orthodoxy so as partly to justify a tyrant. But I can easily make up a German philosophy to justify him entirely.
Lastly, here's a good reminder of the historical context in which orthodoxy is rooted:
If any one says that the faith arose in ignorance and savagery the answer is simple: it didn't. It arose in the Mediterranean civilisation in the full summer of the Roman Empire. The world was swarming with sceptics, and pantheism was as plain as the sun, when Constantine nailed the cross to the mast. It is perfectly true that afterwards the ship sank; but it is far more extraordinary that the ship came up again: repainted and glittering, with the cross still at the top.
Heretics
As I mentioned in the previous subsection, Heretics deals with specific figures and ideas that were current in Chesterton's day. For example, Ibsen, Shaw, H.G. Wells, Lowes Dickinson, McCabe, George Moore. Some are still well known, but many are now far less remembered than Chesterton himself. It can be read as a view into the debates happening at the end of the Victorian era, even if half the people he argues against are no longer relevant, but this is definitely not the book I'd steer people towards who are just getting into Chesterton's works. In this subsection I'll include a few things that stood out to me, but won't try to organize it much or add more than minimal commentary.
When the old Liberals removed the gags from all the heresies, their idea was that religious and philosophical discoveries might thus be made. Their view was that cosmic truth was so important that every one ought to bear independent testimony. The modern idea is that cosmic truth is so unimportant that it cannot matter what any one says.
Talk of progress is meaningless if you don't clearly define a goal you're progressing towards:
As enunciated today, "progress" is simply a comparative of which we have not settled the superlative.
Great line!
On Kipling, whom I have a fondness for, Chesterton says his main theme was discipline (not only military):
Kipling's subject is not that valour which properly belongs to war, but that interdependence and efficiency which belongs quite as much to engineers, or sailors, or mules, or railway engines. And thus it is that when he writes of engineers, or sailors, or mules, or steam-engines, he writes at his best. The real poetry, the "true romance" which Mr. Kipling has taught, is the romance of the division of labour and the discipline of all the trades.
But he complains that Kipling was too cosmopolitan.
The chapter on H.G. Wells was the best one in the book, in my view. Chesterton effectively criticizes "scientific marriage" and other utopian ideas:
The one objection to scientific marriage which is worthy of final attention is simply that such a thing could only be imposed on unthinkable slaves and cowards. I do not know whether the scientific marriage-mongers are right (as they say) or wrong (as Mr. Wells says) in saying that medical supervision would produce strong and healthy men. I am only certain that if it did, the first act of the strong and healthy men would be to smash the medical supervision.
And the weakness of all Utopias is this, that they take the greatest difficulty of man and assume it to be overcome, and then give an elaborate account of the overcoming of the smaller ones. They first assume that no man will want more than his share, and then are very ingenious in explaining whether his share will be delivered by motor-car or balloon. And an even stronger example of Mr. Wells's indifference to the human psychology can be found in his cosmopolitanism, the abolition in his Utopia of all patriotic boundaries. He says in his innocent way that Utopia must be a world-state, or else people might make war on it. It does not seem to occur to him that, for a good many of us, if it were a world-state we should still make war on it to the end of the world.
This part made a profound philosophical point:
the fact of two things being different implies that they are similar. The hare and the tortoise may differ in the quality of swiftness, but they must agree in the quality of motion. The swiftest hare cannot be swifter than an isosceles triangle or the idea of pinkness. When we say the hare moves faster, we say that the tortoise moves.
And when we say of a thing that it moves, we say, without need of other words, that there are things that do not move. And even in the act of saying that things change, we say that there is something unchangeable.
As I mentioned in my notes on Orthodoxy, Chesteron was writing against Nietzsche and eugenics before the First World War:
Nietszche summed up all that is interesting in the Superman idea when he said, "Man is a thing which has to be surpassed." But the very word "surpass" implies the existence of a standard common to us and the thing surpassing us. If the Superman is more manly than men are, of course they will ultimately deify him, even if they happen to kill him first. But if he is simply more supermanly, they may be quite indifferent to him as they would be to another seemingly aimless monstrosity. He must submit to our test even in order to overawe us.
A couple of points about paganism fit in pretty well with the last quote from Orthodoxy I shared above:
Let me set about making the matter clear. There is one broad fact about the relations of Christianity and Paganism which is so simple that many will smile at it, but which is so important that all moderns forget it. The primary fact about Christianity and Paganism is that one came after the other.
The first evident fact (in marked contrast to the delusion of the dancing pagan)—the first evident fact, I say, is that the pagan virtues, such as justice and temperance, are the sad virtues, and that the mystical virtues of faith, hope, and charity are the gay and exuberant virtues. And the second evident fact, which is even more evident, is the fact that the pagan virtues are the reasonable virtues, and that the Christian virtues of faith, hope, and charity are in their essence as unreasonable as they can be.
We cannot go back to an ideal of reason and sanity. For mankind has discovered that reason does not lead to sanity. We cannot go back to an ideal of pride and enjoyment. For mankind has discovered that pride does not lead to enjoyment.
This point fits in well with a few of the initial quotes I shared above from Orthodoxy:
Mr. McCabe is in error in supposing that the danger which I anticipate from the disappearance of religion is the increase of sensuality. On the contrary, I should be inclined to anticipate a decrease in sensuality, because I anticipate a decrease in life. I do not think that under modern Western materialism we should have anarchy. I doubt whether we should have enough individual valour and spirit even to have liberty. It is quite an old-fashioned fallacy to suppose that our objection to scepticism is that it removes the discipline from life. Our objection to scepticism is that it removes the motive power. Materialism is not a thing which destroys mere restraint. Materialism itself is the great restraint.
Here's a good quote to wrap up this subsection.
The vice of the modern notion of mental progress is that it is always something concerned with the breaking of bonds, the effacing of boundaries, the casting away of dogmas. But if there be such a thing as mental growth, it must mean the growth into more and more definite convictions, into more and more dogmas. The human brain is a machine for coming to conclusions; if it cannot come to conclusions it is rusty.
Ballad of the White Horse
The Ballad of the White Horse is amazing. I listened to the audiobook version of it three times last year. It made me want to raise the flag of Wessex and pledge allegiance to King Alfred.
I decided to check out The Ballad of the White Horse after reading this book review (which I also robustly recommend reading) and already being in a bit of a Chesterton mood. Rather than reading it, I decided to listen to the audiobook (freely available here) because it is an epic poem, and those are best enjoyed by hearing them recited.
It is loosely based on King Alfred defending his kingdom from the heathen Danes, but acknowledges right in the foreword or introduction that it is striving to tell an epic legend over being historically accurate.
It opens with the situation looking pretty bleak. This stanza comes from the first book and has a really arresting line (emphasis added):
And there was death on the Emperor
And night upon the Pope:
And Alfred, hiding in deep grass,
Hardened his heart with hope.
He has a vision and rather than receiving any guarantee of victory, it simply shows him the need for fighting:
"I tell you naught for your comfort,
Yea, naught for your desire,
Save that the sky grows darker yet
And the sea rises higher.
So he musters some allies and goes to the battle.
The title refers to this white horse and the final book makes the theme explicit. Each generation must rise to the challenge that is before them (this theme and some of the ways it was expressed made me wonder in places if Tolkien drew some inspiration from this poem).
"And though skies alter and empires melt,
This word shall still be true:
If we would have the horse of old,
Scour ye the horse anew.
Bhagavad Gita
The Bhagavad Gita is a section of the longer Hindu epic Mahabharata. It is an extended discourse between Prince Arjuna and his chariot driver on the eve of a battle. The chariot driver is Krishna (an avatar of Vishnu) and part of the conversation involves him revealing himself. But they talk about other stuff, too, including the tension between duty and seeking a life of meditation/piety/withdrawal. Early in the book, Krishna expounds on the eternal existence and transmigration of the soul—in the context of telling a warrior that it's okay to kill (which is not the context I was expecting for this teaching).
Arjuna is encouraged in chapters 2 and 3 to a unity of meditation and action. He's also exhorted to what struck me as an almost-Stoic "equability". Along with shunning desire, he should also distance himself from the external sense-world—but still act in it somehow:
He who shall draw as the wise tortoise draws its four feet safe under its shield, his five frail senses back under the spirit's buckler from the world which assails them, such an one, my prince! hath wisdom's mark.
But,
Therefore, thy task prescribed with spirit unattached gladly perform, since in performance of plain duty man mounts to his highest bliss
The synthesis here, as near as I can figure it out, is to "stand aloof" from your own acts; what's called for is to combine meditation and action, in unselfconscious deeds without desire; perhaps it isn't too much of a stretch to say that you shouldn't have a rooting interest in yourself?
After a discussion and vision of Krishna's true identity, the conversation turns back to earth with guidance on how to practically serve him. I liked this part:
Who hateth nought of all which lives, living himself benign, compassionate, from arrogance exempt, exempt from love of self, unchangeable by good or ill
…
Who unto friend or foe keeping an equal heart with equal mind bears shame and glory; with an equal peace takes heat and cold, pleasure and pain; abides quit of desires, hears praise or calumny in passionless restraint, unmoved by each; linked by no ties to earth, steadfast in me, that man I love!
And similarly this part:
Fearlessness, singleness of soul, the will always to strive for wisdom; opened hand and governed appetites; and piety, and love of lonely study; humbleness, uprightness, heed to injure nought which lives, truthfulness, slowness unto wrath, a mind that lightly letteth go what others prize; and equanimity, and charity which spieth no man’s faults; and tenderness towards all that suffer; a contented heart, fluttered by no desires; a bearing mild, modest, and grave, with manhood nobly mixed with patience, fortitude, and purity; an unrevengeful spirit, never given to rate itself too high—such be the signs, O Indian Prince! of him whose feet are set on that fair path which leads to heavenly birth
It’s notable how much practical morality and good character overlap, even between religions with vastly different worldviews. What C.S. Lewis called the Tao.
I also really found these lines thought-provoking:
Where thou shalt see a worshipper, that one to what he worships lives assimilate, {such as the shrine, so is the votary}
The ending (in chapter 18) is back to commending renunciation but still encouraging doing one’s duty, with the synthesis of works without attachment or desire.
Les Fourmis
Les Fourmis ("The Ants") by Bernard Werber is a French novel that is hard to categorize, but fits as sci-fi as well as anywhere. Uniquely (as far as I know), it alternates between human and ant perspectives.
On the human side, Jonathan Wells inherits an apartment from his uncle Edmond. This uncle is a mysterious character. He was a biologist, initially a microbiologist and later an entomologist. He was a troubled child and semi-estranged from his family as an adult. Oh, and his cause of death was from a massive wasp attack. Adding to the mystery, this apartment he left to a nephew he had rarely seen came with strict instructions to never go in the cellar. As the novel continues, we learn that he had spent some time doing research in Africa before returning to France, and that he was working on an encyclopedia about his work (that many of his former academic colleagues covet greatly) before he died.
On the ant side, there is the daily struggle to find enough food and protect the ant hill from other animals as well as rival species of ants. Initially this is mainly through the eyes of a male ant, number 327, but we meet other ants and follow their POV as the novel progresses. There are mysteries in and around the ant hill as well. A foraging party gets wiped out with no sign that they even raised a pheromone alarm or took up defensive postures. Number 327 gets attacked by other ants inside the colony, which shouldn't happen.
Les Fourmis kept me guessing about how these two storylines would manage to come together, but in the last 30 pages or so everything is indeed revealed. Even little things like TV shows that Jonathan's son Nicolas was watching at various points turned out to be relevant. It ends in a way that leaves it set up for a sequel (it's actually the first novel in a trilogy), which I haven't decided if I want to try to read. I enjoyed Les Fourmis, but reading a full-length novel in a foreign language is a lot of work. I found it easier to understand the human scenes than the ant scenes because the vocabulary is more common/everyday.
Here are some excerpts that give the flavour of this novel.
There is a brainteaser that is repeated in several places (eventually the answer is given) on how to make 4 triangles with only 6 matchsticks:
Vous savez comment faire quatre triangles equilateraux avec six allumettes?
The ants have their own way of organizing their societies, and they have their own philosophies:
C'etait en tout cas un concept qui s'accordait bien avec un autre principe de la philosophie globale des fourmis. «L'avenir appartient aux specialistes.»
The ants also have recitations to remind themselves about their roles and duties. Here is one about being an explorer:
Explorateur il a ete la patte,
Sur place il a ete l'oeil,
De retour il est le simulus nerveux.
There are periodic entries from Uncle Edmond's encyclopedia (du savoir relatif et absolu) scattered throughout the novel. Here is part of one as an example:
L'UNIVERS VA: L'univers va vers la complexite. De l'hydrogene a l'helium, de l'helium au carbone. Toujours plus complexe, toujours plus sophistique est le sens d'evolution des choses.
De toutes les planetes connues, la Terre est la plus complexe. Elle se trouve dans une zone ou sa temperature peut varier. Elle est couverte d'oceans et de montagnes. Mais si son eventail de formes de vie est pratiquement inepuisable, il en est deux qui culminent au-dessus des autres par leur intelligence. Les fourmis et les hommes.
On dirait que Dieu a utilise la planete Terre pour faire une experience. Il a lance deux especes, avec deux philosophies completement antinomiques, sur la course de la conscience pour voir laquelle irait le plus vite.
(apologies for missing the accents in these excerpts).
One of the strengths of Les Fourmis is the diversity of ant behaviours it describes/displays. So I can't think of a better way to wrap up this mini-review than to share a video of a war (there is more than one war in the novel!) in an ant farm:
Laapaata Ladies
In this movie from India, a young man is travelling back to his family home with his new wife after their wedding. It's a long train ride and everyone falls asleep. When he wakes at his station, he quickly rouses who he thinks is his bride and disembarks. However, there were multiple newlywed couples on the train and the girls were all wearing similar wedding apparel, complete with veils that obscured their faces. From the combination of the darkness, the veils, and not knowing his wife very well yet (it was an arranged marriage), he takes the wrong girl home with him. This mix-up leads to some humourous as well as poignant moments. Several literal laugh-out-loud instances for sure. The exact circumstances are very cultural-specific, but the formula felt almost Shakespearean. In places it could seem a bit preachy, but on topics that aren't controversial many places outside rural India (e.g. the bride's family shouldn't be compelled to pay a large dowry) so there was nothing that pulled me out of enjoying it as an entertaining story.
The Wandering Earth
This is a collection of short stories by Liu Cixin. He is best know for The Three Body Problem. In this collection, I'd say I liked "Sun of China" the best. It has two main threads: a migrant from the impoverished countryside trying to make it in a big city, and a project to improve the climate (especially but not exclusively in arid regions of Western China, such as the protagonist's hometown) using a giant reflector in geosynchronous orbit. Although he's known as a sci-fi author, I find the strongest parts of Liu Cixin's writing are about recent history; the way he draws on the experiences of the Chinese people within living memory is the most compelling aspect of his work. For example, the early portion of The Three Body Problem set during the Cultural Revolution was one of the most memorable parts of that book for me. The arc in "Sun of China" of the son of peasant farmers migrating to Beijing (or another coastal megacity) and trying to find work and housing is something millions of people have lived through in my own lifetime. Having that side of the story added a lot of interest compared to if he had just made it about a geoengineering project.
The final story in the anthology, titled "Cannonball", is about an exotic new material, a megaproject built with it, and intergenerational accountability for crimes.
I also enjoyed the short story "With Her Eyes". And the titular "The Wandering Earth", "Mountain", and "Curse 5.0" were alright. A lot of the others had an interesting idea or two but weren't really that memorable.
Erewhon
Erewhon ("Nowhere" backwards, with the wh treated as a digraph) is a utopian satire akin to Gulliver's Travels. It was written in 1872 by Samuel Butler, although the version I have is a later edition published in 1901 and available from Project Gutenberg. It starts and ends with a framing story and in between is more of an exploration of ideas. The narrator, who is never named, is initially farming sheep in some British colony and wonders what lies beyond the next mountain range. Per Wikipedia, Butler spent time on a sheep station in New Zealand, so this part draws on personal experience. He gets a native guide, crosses a couple of passes (ditching his guide along the way because he's entering a taboo area), and ends up in an unknown country. The frame story of the book very enjoyable to read. The descriptions of travel in the mountains are well-written and detailed enough that you can tell Butler has done it himself (indeed, my understanding is that he did a fair bit of hiking, both in New Zealand and the Italian Alps).
The two things he notices most prominently in this strange land is that everyone is healthy and attractive, and the technology level is several centuries behind England. By the time he has learned the language and made his way to the capital of Erewhon, the book really reaches its utopian satire core. There have been hints of these points in earlier chapters, but they can generally be summarized as the treatment of physical ailments and moral lapses being reversed from the England of Butler's day. Sickness and other bodily afflictions are a criminal offense in Erewhon, while things that would be crimes in England (like embezzlement) are treated as an infirmity. A class of professionals known as straighteners prescribe treatments for these things; the treatments may sound punitive (e.g. monthly floggings for a year) but are accepted willingly and may even make for good stories rather than being a source of shame (much like someone in England might feel about a surgery, even if it was painful). Some implications of this reversal are fleshed out, like Erewhonians covering up colds and other minor illnesses as best as possible (with friends politely turning a blind eye if you make excuses for why you can't go out); and like straighteners dabbling in various vices as part of their education, so that they can understand them better.
Unfortunately, a society where those who aggress against or victimize others are given prescriptions instead of penalties isn't so fantastical as it was in Butler's day.
I can't fully pin down what this criminal approach to sickness/misfortune is supposed to satirize. One possibility is that it is primarily intended to reflect the criminal justice system in England. By transferring some of its features to a different domain, perhaps Butler was expecting people to think more about things they had previously taken for granted. And there's a philosophical question lurking: if you don't believe in free will, isn't any distinction between conditions that should be treated and those that should be punished rather arbitrary? Another possibility is that he's satirizing social darwinism, and just making the punishment of the sick and down-on-their-luck active rather than passive. There could even be some proto-eugenics going on (the argument for this is that all of the Erewhonians aside from prisoners and defendants are healthy and good looking).
In a section talking about art in Erewhon, I found this excerpt amusing:
I know not why, but all the noblest arts hold in perfection but for a very little moment. They soon reach a height from which they begin to decline, and when they have begun to decline it is a pity that they cannot be knocked on the head; for an art is like a living organism--better dead than dying. There is no way of making an aged art young again; it must be born anew and grow up from infancy as a new thing.
After some sections about Erewhonian religion and attitudes to children, and the narrator's courtship of his hosts' daughter, there's a part about education, that surprised me with how closely it parallels some contemporary debates about the cost of post-secondary education:
I cannot think I am mistaken in believing that the growing tendency to limit families by infanticide--an evil which was causing general alarm throughout the country--was almost entirely due to the way in which education had become a fetish from one end of Erewhon to the other.
Rather than spend years of their lives obtaining credentials of questionable practicality, he thinks they could be sent to apprentice at a trade.
Their education system is big on conformity and agreeableness:
"It is not our business," [the professor] said, "to help students to think for themselves. Surely this is the very last thing which one who wishes them well should encourage them to do. Our duty is to ensure that they shall think as we do, or at any rate, as we hold it expedient to say we do."
While the narrator is in the university town of Erewhon, a professor of antiquity gives him a run-down of the "machinist/anti-machinist war" and a copy of the book—"The Book of the Machines"—that inspired this conflict. It is not called this in Erewhon, but the "Butlerian Jihad" in Dune was named by Frank Herbert in honour of Samuel Butler as an allusion to this conflict. As in Dune, the actual war against the machines takes place off-screen, so to speak.
A few chapters near the end of Erewhon comprise the narrator's translation of "The Book of the Machines". It was the arguments presented in this book that convinced the Erewhonians to purge their country of any advanced machinery. The core thesis is that machines are evolving very rapidly and on a long enough timeline they will surpass biological life.
Here is a representative excerpt or two:
"True, from a low materialistic point of view, it would seem that those thrive best who use machinery wherever its use is possible with profit; but this is the art of the machines--they serve that they may rule. They bear no malice towards man for destroying a whole race of them provided he creates a better instead; on the contrary, they reward him liberally for having hastened their development. It is for neglecting them that he incurs their wrath, or for using inferior machines, or for not making sufficient exertions to invent new ones, or for destroying them without replacing them; yet these are the very things we ought to do, and do quickly; for though our rebellion against their infant power will cause infinite suffering, what will not things come to, if that rebellion is delayed?"
Consider also the colliers and pitmen and coal merchants and coal trains, and the men who drive them, and the ships that carry coals--what an army of servants do the machines thus employ! Are there not probably more men engaged in tending machinery than in tending men?
The final couple of chapters return to more of a narrative as opposed to an exploration of ideas. The narrator and his lover escape from Erewhon on a hot air balloon that he proposed to demonstrate to the Queen and King (not having much in the way of moving parts it didn't count as forbidden machinery). They are rescued by a passing ship, married by a clergyman aboard, and make their way to London. Back in London, the narrator comes up with a plan for what to do with his knowledge of Erewhon. He wants to achieve the conversion of the people there (still believing them to be the 10 Lost Tribes), and also wants to make a profit. His plan is to raise capital by selling shares, then do a bit of gunboat evangelism. This expedition would pay for itself by recruiting Erewhonians as indentured labour for Queensland. I assume their is some continued satirical social commentary going on here.
Some parts of Erewhon have aged better than others. I think the main reason it is still known and discussed is "The Book of the Machines" (chapters 22-25). Note that this part (i.e. the namesake of the Butlerian Jihad) is not an incidental digression; even looking at it structurally it's in the place of the climax of the story, with everything coming after serving as denouement. Erewhon's also decent as an adventure story in the vein of The Lost World, Gulliver's Travels, or Lost Horizon. The writing is quite good; whether he's describing travel through the mountains or some philosophical ideas, Butler has turns of phrase that are frequently evocative. Also, it's a fast read.