Adams still can’t stay away from plotlines that parallel the Bible in one way or another in this former-Dr.-Who-script-turned-into-a-book. Of course, where they do parallel Biblical narratives, the Biblical stories are treated routinely as deserving of scorn. This proves annoying. However, once one gets beyond the annoyance of “Boy, the Bible sure is dumb!”, this book tells a story that stands up to the test of time better than The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
It stands to reason that since this book was written well after The Guide that there was time for Adams to mature as a writer. In this book, he tackles matters that are not, as a matter of fact, rational. Ghosts are here. Ideas concerning parts being connected to the whole are here. Even Quantum Physics makes some appearances. The point of the book appears to be that nothing much rational is present and so one must begin to lean on those things which are not inherently rational to understand and solve the highly irrational cases that the protagonist, Dirk Gently, solves.
Possession and hypnotism play major roles in the story, although the way by which they do is not beyond the believability of how such mechanisms might work. The discussion of fractal music appears here too, which was well ahead of the curve. The technological acumen of Adams is distinct and in-depth in the work which makes sense as he would have been moving in the kinds of crowds positioned at the technological forefronts. It is somewhat amusing, though, to note that aliens and ghosts appear to be, at least in the written style of Adams, more rational and less subject to scorn than Biblical stories like Revelation.
The plot device of the Electric Monk whose entire job is to believe whatever is put in front of him and finds a door called “The Way” is, it seems, supposed to be a poke at those who maintain faith. The caricature is that they are an unthinking lot who never have to concern themselves with either consequence or logic. Indeed, this is mitigated one supposes somewhat by the idea that the monk was created to be this way, and so Adams gets some distance on the subject instead of stating “religion is dumb and especially monks are dumb” in a glaring way.
A time machine that concerns a pot made in Greece at an earlier date and a salt shaker which finds itself embedded in the pot in an impossible way also make appearances, which has a distinctly “last supper somebody needs to fix some mistake they made” sci-fi twist. The reader again discovers that the time machine is still a better bet in that it is not ridiculed as much as all the other bits and pieces which are written to be interpreted as religious nonsense.
The other troubling concern in the book is the fixation on pizza. The meal features in the plotline oddly and unnecessarily. One wonders if Adams was not trying to signal something with all the anti-religion pro-pizza rhetoric. The reliance on the poem Kubla Kahn is also telling. Certainly the allusion is clever as it was written allegedly during an opium high or shortly after one and was interrupted which features as a later plot device via the aforementioned time travel. There are also heavy doses of murder present in the plot which stands to reason as it is, after all, a detective novel.
Yet, despite all these things, the plot is well-executed, and one is forced to wonder about certain questions concerning humanity and where it features. Maybe Adams was a kind of “elite” of his time and it serves as a snapshot of where a lot of Sci-Fi writers who got their start in the 70’s began to tarry. Certainly, he died early, unexpectedly, and tragically just after having an asteroid named after a main character from his previous work. If the fruit for being a famous author that scorned religion was to die early due to high blood pressure and heart problems, maybe there are additional layers of cautionary tales this work presents. While Gordon Way frets about his last words appearing on an answering machine seem to come true in the sense that they are his last words to appear on an answering machine, eventually the British Telecom people fix the phone for Professor Chronotis which breaks his time machine. Adams would die a short six years later, from a heart attack resting after his workout after his Doctor warned him about having high blood pressure. Three months later, September 11th would take place. Sometimes, one supposes the end is closer than we might like to believe. For Adams, he really did not want to believe at all and yet, there the end was anyway. Dirk Gently then might just be the author grappling with what he cannot explain against the madness of the end of the 20th century. If for no other reason, the work shines for this.
The Oracle is probably one of Cahn’s best works. While the book says it discusses the mystery of the Jubilees, which is true, it might be better to say it explains how YHVH puts His kingdom back in order. The answer, not surprisingly, is that this is done with an eerie level of precision–right down to the names of the people involved and what they are and where their feet tread. This is especially true, as one might expect, where the restoration of Israel is involved.
On the theme of the land of Israel being restored, Cahn makes the forceful point that the entire nation was resurrected. Each piece was restored in a way that no nation has ever experienced and each person was working to restore it in ways they did not entirely understand. The first resource that was utilized according to Cahn, was none other than Mark Twain who went to the land of Israel to testify of its bareness and lack of desirability. This witness was Prophetic Fulfillment of a stranger coming to the land of Israel and remarking how not a single blade of grass would be present. At the same time, the city and the main old gate was being discovered by the British and the unearthing of the city of Jerusalem had begun.
It was not a perfect restoration, however, as the UN elected not to recognize the capital of Israel as Jerusalem. Here Cahn begins to build the case for how the presidency of Donald Trump did this, and how the timing was exact in relation to the establishing of the land of Israel. This recognition of Jerusalem being the capital marks the effective end of the land of Israel being restored back to its former existence and the end of the miraculous resurrection of the country–at least in terms of the physical landmass being a political entity.
There are other subplots that Cahn also explores such as how the father of the political movement of Zionism–the idea that Israel should have an actual physical existence or country–factors into these large “turnings of the wheel” particularly as to how the land was bought from the Ottoman’s through a series of events that converged to allow the process to begin.
Another point of interest involves something called a “Dark Jubilee” in the verbiage of Cahn. This is a kind of “shadow Jubilee” process that is a kind of pagan version of the sequence. This exists, Cahn argues, because the Jubilee is simply how creation is ordered and so, it makes senses that there cannot be other blueprints–only a light one and a dark one. Rather like a flashlight, there are things the beam illuminates, and things that casts shadows from the things that are being illuminated.
The way these events are told is also novel as it involves a person having a series of visions and needed to seek out a person called “The Oracle” to help the person having the vision determine the meaning of the vision. This process involves a series of seven doors, and a person typically on a mountain that sends down a Ram that represents what is about to take place for the nation of Israel in one way or another. Each of these visions involves fulfillment that either did happen or is happening and each story shows how the mortal instruments are used to bring about the purposes of the Heavens. If understanding Prophetic Fulfillment is important, it would be hard to find a better primer than this work.
The Confusion is a hard-to-characterize work. One can say, as many have, that it is the follow-up to Stephenson’s Quicksilver, and that is factually true. However, it does not adequately convey the scope and type of work that is put into play in this sequel.
It is probably easiest to say that The Confusion is about a long chain of transactions that are devised as a way for slaves, namely the episodic anti-hero Jack Shaftoe, to become rich. The way in which this richness is to occur snakes through the corridors of Alchemy and into the gold of King Solomon who is thought to be, at least for the sake of the novel, the Greatest Alchemist.
Whereas Quicksilver establishes the philosophical Mercury that becomes the Royal College, The Confusion becomes the domain of Elizabeth from the first novel. The Alchemy has shifted from a type of philosophy to types of currencies and markets. The literal quicksliver, that is to say liquid mercury, is used to mint coins and no less of a personage is called to the Royal Mint in London than Issac Newton. His new job is to run the mint itself and to make sure the currency looks the best that it can.
In the meantime, Jack Shaftoe, who was taken as a slave in the previous work, forms a cabal with his fellow slaves to begin an ambitious type of piracy that they hope will culminate in their mutual enrichment. These piracy trades which touch against the networks that Elizabeth knows all too well eventually culminate in paths intersecting in unexpected ways. At each interval, one is reminded of the quicksilver in one way or another, what it heralds and how it has transformed not only the hard currency but those involved with it following its trail whether through esoteric understanding or avaricious understanding.
The amount of trade discussion in this book is overkill even for a seasoned economist. Generally speaking, one can subdivide the activity into "has gold, loses gold, devises some other partnership or trade to get gold back, loses gold, someone else gets gold that is involved in a trade that Elizabeth is making and very occasionally despises or does not understand the significance of the Solomonic Gold. This goes on for nearly a thousand pages. The history is researched well, and the story has many other activities interspersed such as the various French and British tensions and battles that happen in their respective time periods. There is no doubt that Stephenson lived the writing of this trilogy since the kind of writing done is only the kind that comes from going out and experiencing the world firsthand that one wishes to describe.
If there is a failing, it might be that Stephenson is perhaps too clever at times for his own good. The novel sometimes reads like he is trying to prove something about his own understanding of the subject but the way in which he chooses to do so is heavy-handed. An Oxford professor who uses obscure words to a class of Freshman might be a fitting description. It could also be that he has identified the audience most likely to read this work, and so he has written for those who are of a more academic inclination who are more likely to run across some of the recondite information he has accrued and crafted a story around. It is at times a grinding, irritating read, but resolves into areas that are worth the wait.
