review of
Ian Watson's The Flies of Memory
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - November 21, 2015

For my full review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/409695-the-memory-of-memory

I don't remember when I 1st read something by Watson. Ever on the look-out for SF writers that I might like enuf to add them to my pantheon of greats, I do remember thinking Watson showed potential. I think I read his The Embedding, Alien Embassy, The Very Slow Time Machine, Chekhov's Journey, The Martian Inca, The Books of the Black Current, & The Book of Being. Somewhere along the line I became unimpressed, part of it was that he used "anarchy" in the usual derogatory malevolent-chaos-that-cd've-been-averted-if-only-we-had-strong-government sort of way, a real turn-off. I don't really remember any of those bks, maybe I was completely plastered when I read them all.

Anyway, I gave him another chance here w/ The Flies of Memory. It was ok, it didn't really stir my "t". It's got things like a tourist guide nun going off w/ large fly-like extraterrestrial beings. That cd be inspired, that cd be fun, I reckon it cd even be.. profound.. but.. somehow.. for me.. it didn't really end up being much of anything.

""No, listen, Charlie, that restaurant L'Eau Vive is where all the Vatican bigwigs dine out. It's staffed by stunning young nuns with a special dispensation to wear sexy dresses."" - p 25

Naturally, I have to wonder whether such a restaurant & such a dispensation has ever existed. The bk was copyrighted in 1990 & set in the future so maybe that touch is Watson's futuristic imagining. According to that (NOT) all-knowing oracle The Internet there is a L'Eau Vive restaurant in Rome (& elsewhere) that's been around since 1960. As for the sexy dresses dispensation? There's a website called "Adherents.com" that researches "Religious Groups in Literature" that quotes the above passage from The Flies of Memory & more. Hey! They quote P. K. Dick too I didn't bother to pursue this further.

"Borromini, the odd man out, was in charge of the Apostolic Penitentiary.

""That sounds like the Vatican Jail." Olivia's tone was relaxed, as if she owned Tarini's office.

""It handles questions of conscience–"

""It's the Inquisition!"

Tarini shook his head. "No that's the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith—and it deals with heresy. You got to be a Christian first before you can be a heretic. The Penitentiary covers sorcery, black magic, demons, forces of darkness. The boss didn't invite the Flies, but he's in on the act when they turn up.""

[..]

""The Pope's at Castel Gandolfo," said Lew. "His summer palace. That's usual. Got an observatory there. Maybe he's consulting his astronomers."

"Tarini dangled a red herring. "Jesuits, those are. Jesuits aren't too popular with the hierarchy. Excessive support for Reds in Latin America." - p 34

A little dab of Liberation Theology, anyone? The idea of a Vatican Jail tickles my researcher's fancy: "The Vatican has no prison system, apart from a few detention cells for pre-trial detention. People sentenced to imprisonment by the Vatican serve time in Italian prisons, with costs covered by the Vatican." [..] "In 1969, the Vatican state abolished capital punishment. It had been envisaged in legislation the Vatican adopted in 1929 based on Italian law, but the power was never exercised." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Vatican_City)

"The promoter of justice has a lot on his plate, because Vatican City’s crime rate is astonishingly high. In some years, he has had to prosecute one crime for every person in the country, even though the Vatican boasts nearly as many police officers as citizens. (Vatican security duties are carried out by the Swiss Guard.) By comparison, the United States suffered around 10.6 million reported crimes in 2009, which amounts to just one crime for every 29 persons. Of course, these numbers are a little unfair to the tiny religious state, because most crimes in Vatican City are committed by foreign tourists and pilgrims. In addition, violent crime is exceedingly rare. There has been only one murder case in Vatican City’s 83-year history—the 1998 killing of a Swiss guard and his wife by a subordinate officer named Cedric Tornay, who subsequently killed himself. (Claims have persisted that Vatican insiders murdered and framed Tornay as part of a struggle to control the Swiss Guard, then conducted a show investigation in an effort to put the matter to bed. The controversy underlines another difference between the Vatican justice system and those of other countries—the government is not democratic.)" - http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2012/05/paolo_gabriele...

That little tangent makes me want to read about the Vatican banking scandal. & what about all those gestures for warding off curses or for inflicting them? Personally, I prefer to be as devoid of malevolence as possible but that sure doesn't seem to be the case w/ much of the rest of humanity.

"Artificial wings a-flutter–steering wings–both Flies came in to land in the open space, bounding a few paces on their long legs before lowering their little hind legs and furling away those black-membraned wings. How like a pair of devils from a medieval painting of Hell. Borromini's left hand was thrust down by his side, thumb clasping middle and ring fingers, index and little finger sticking out. Charles recognized the Manu Cornuta, the "horned hand" sign for warding off the evil eye, familiar to peasants." - p 38

"The evil eye is believed to harm nursing mothers and their babies, bearing fruit trees, milking animals, and the sperm of men -- the forces of generation. The Neapolitan custom of making mano cornuto charms from silver (formerly sacred to the moon goddess Luna) and blood coral (formerly sacred to the sea goddess Venus) hints at the cultural survival of a link between the horned animal head gesture and ancient worship of a neolithic-era mother- or fertility-goddess whose consort was a male deity sometimes called the Horned God. Some archaeologists have theorized that the ancient belief in the sacredness of the horned animal head -- specifially the bull's head or bucranium -- derives from its coincidental resemblance to the female human genitals, consisting of a vagina, uterus, fallopian tubes, and ovaries. Whether or not this is the case, the mano cornuto is still a popular gesture made by Italian men to protect their genitalia from the evil eye." - http://www.luckymojo.com/manocornuto.html

Interesting. I reckon The Flies of Memory was well-researched & inspired. After all, the idea of how the Vatican wd respond to extraterrestrials who fit demonic imagery is a fascinating one. SO, why doesn't it fit me to a "t"? Dunno. I suspect it seemed to build too much for a sequel (dunno if there is one) or otherwise fell flat as writing for me. A sequel? Check out this ending (don't worry, it won't spoil anything for you):

"So the four women, and their visitor, walk away from God's palatial four-poster bed which is currently unoccupied, and along the nave towards the exit into St Peter's Square . . .

"(A presence stirs, perplexed.)" - p 220

Still, there're details like a reference to "Guilio Camillo's Memory Theatre" (p 38) wch I'd never heard of but was immediately intrigued by:

"Giulio" [note the correct spelling] "Camillo (1480 - 1544) was as well-known in his era as Bill Gates is now. Just like Gates he cherished a vision of a universal Storage and Retrieval System, and just like Microsoft Windows, his 'Theatre of the Memory' was, despite constant revision, never completed. Camillo's legendary Theatre of Memory remained only a fragment, its benefits only an option for the future. When it was finished, the user - so he predicted - would have access to the knowledge of the whole universe. On account of his promising invention, Camillo's contemporaries called him 'the divine'. But he was forgotten immediately after his death. No trace is left of his spectacular databank - except a short treatise which he dictated on his deathbed and which was formulated in the future tense: 'L'Idea del Theatro' (1550).

"It was only in the computer age that Camillo's name reappeared out of oblivion - at first sporadically in a few specialised articles in the fifties, then with increasing intensity and enthusiasm, until Camillo became a real hero of books and congresses, and even of television programmes and Internet appearances. How did the renaissance of this Renaissance encyclopaedist come about?

"The catalyst was a chance occurrence: Ernst Gombrich, the director of the Warburg Institute in London gave Camillo's treatise to his colleague Frances Yates to read. She studied this short work thoroughly and was so fascinated that she not only brought the ‘Theatro' back to life in her mind's eye, but also made a reconstructional drawing of it in accordance with Camillo's instructions. The result formed the basis of a book on the history of the art of memory, which became one of the most influential works of cultural studies of recent decades. Further attempts at a reconstruction followed that of Yates, and their variety demonstrates how little we know about Camillo.

"The objective knowledge we do have can be summarised very briefly. The structure was a wooden building, probably as large as a single room, constructed like a Vitruvian amphitheatre. The visitor stood on the stage and gazed into the auditorium, whose tiered, semicircular construction was particularly suitable for housing the memories in a clearly laid-out fashion - seven sections, each with seven arches spanning seven rising tiers. The seven sections were divided according to the seven planets known at the time - they represented the divine macrocosm of alchemical astrology. The seven tiers that rose up from them, coded by motifs from classical mythology, represented the seven spheres of the sublunary down to the elementary microcosm. On each of these stood emblematic images and signs, next to compartments for scrolls. Using an associative combination of the emblematically coded division of knowledge, it had to be possible to reproduce every imaginable micro and macrocosmic relationship in one's own memory. Exactly how this worked remains a mystery of the hermetic occult sciences on which Camillo based his notion.

"Peter Matussek: The Renaissance of the Theatre of Memory" - http://www2.idehist.uu.se/distans/ilmh/Ren/soc-memory-camillo.htm

Gotta love it. Even if such ambitious imaginings over-reached the practical abilities of their imaginer at least Camillo was a visionary whose goal wasn't to wipe out unbelievers - something I, personally, cd use more of. On the other hand, is this what we have now?:

"He viewed himself as an unappreciated hero, a Prometheus, a Klaus Fuchs, an Oliver North." (p 48) I wasn't familiar w/ Fuchs, so, yes I looked the feller up (not the same as hooking him up): "Klaus Fuchs, the German-born physicist who was imprisoned in the 1950's in Britain after being convicted of passing nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union" (http://www.nytimes.com/1988/01/29/obituaries/klaus-fuchs-physicist-who-gave-atom-secrets-to-soviet-dies-at-76.html).

Ok, that's an interesting combo of role models.. - I can see the connection between Prometheus & Fuchs but North? His biggest accomplishment in life might've been getting the tax-payer to buy him an expensive security system for his home after something unwanted was stuffed in his mailbox:

Michael Bardoff: "Oliver North was testifying in front of this committee & the committee actually had a "gentlemen's agreement", it was called, to go so far in their questioning of Oliver North & no further. & they were providing him w/ this forum to advance his views & defend himself. Alotof the questions were focusing on this $11,000 security fence at his house. So he had put up a security fence w/ government funds & this was the great scandal that they were working on uncovering at these hearings. It was really quite horrendous.

[tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE:] "[interviewer's note: I have to admit to finding this sickeningly 'hilarious'. Witnessing the hearing footage made public thru the "MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour" of the time reveals former CIA man turned "private security consultant" {much like G. Gordon Liddy perhaps?}, in Washington DC, Glen Robinette speaking about his company's installing of a $16,000 {$5,000 more than what Mike remembers above} security system around North's family home in Virginia:

"Congressman: What were you told about the threats that Colonel North was facing?

"Glen Robinette: There were instances of someone driving along the road paralleling their house, Colonel North's home, & shining their lights at late hours, when Colonel North was not there, wch frightened the wife & the children. There was an instance of sugar or sand in the gas tank, punctured tires, threats by telephone from unknown sources, &, I believe, in several instances there were boxes, bags containing unknown objects found in the mailbox that was external to their property but situated on a public road adjoining the property.

"interviewer's note continued: Whew! To me, this is a microcosm of just how 'sick' this society is! Colonel North commits 'treason' by secretly negotiating illegal arms sales {as if that in itself weren't nasty enuf!} w/ Iran, a country that's officially an 'enemy' of the government that North supposedly represents {the arms being funneled thru, surprise, surprise, Israel}, in order to arrange for the release of hostages {many of whom are probably unaknowledged CIA agents & the like} to help w/ Reagan's public image & so that he can take the money from those sales & funnel it into a CIA sponsored destablization of Nicaragua in the form of the "Contras", mercenaries who terrorize & massacre civilians in order to force compliance w/ their political/business agenda. Furthermore, North arranged for arms to be flown to the Contras in exchange for cocaine to be brought back to the United States wch helps aggravate the drug problems of US citizens (in what the Black Panthers wd call, I think accurately, "chemical warfare") - this latter, of course, during the administration's "Drug War"! Somehow, North is supposedly a "hero". {By the by, then-Congressman Dick Cheney was one of the 'investigating' committee members negotitating North's conditions of testimony. Gee, I wonder why he's made it to where he is today?} To make things even more ridiculous, the taxpayer's money is then illegally funneled into protecting North's home from the "threats" described above in Glen Robinette's testimony. These "threats" sound like average suburban pranks to me. The boxes &/or bags may've contained shit, perhaps? When I was living in Baltimore at the time my daily life was far more threatened than anything described there. These "threats" to North's family occurred before North was outed as an arms & drugs dealer &, by extension, mass murderer! So what I wonder is: were they just typical pranks or were they perpetrated by someone who knew what crimes North was committing? I APPLAUD whoever made these threats if they were doing it to rub North's nose in his own shit! Under those conditions, the 'threatener' is far closer to being a 'hero' than North cd ever be! Here's the "security system" of the US government at work, folks. A heinous war criminal is considered a hero {because he's a 'patriot' in uniform} & the tax dollars go to protecting his family from things that're completely insignificant in contrast to what horrors the war criminal unleashed. &, yet, somehow, the public is supposed to feel sorry(?) for & admire(?) this asshole? Because he's clean-cut & {sortof} polite? Imagine a poor person defending themselves in court: Well, your honor, I killed all those people & sold drugs & stole that poor-box money because someone called my home & breathed hard into the mouthpiece. I mean, I just had to protect myself. Judge: That's alright. I can tell you're a fine upstanding citizen. Please accept this pension as a token of the public's gratitude for your service to your country.]

"t,ac: Even though that was miniscule in contrast to everything else that he was responsible for!

"MB: Right, right. I mean responsible for thousands of deaths & an illegal war & a war carried out in direct disobedience to Congress at times" - http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/InterviewBardoff.html

It's funny, while I'm reviewing this bk I find myself liking it more than I did while I was reading it. Take, eg, this parody of acronyms: "Who was "us" exactly? UNCO? NATO? CIA? ABCDE?" (p 57) Memory being a main subject of the bk, & a personal favorite of mine, I found one character's immersion in Fly memory interesting:

"Everything it experienced remained fully present: in an expanding, continuous, immediate present which swelled to capacity, unless discharged on to rocks, paths, stems of vegetation, where presently it would fade away.

"Encountering all these messages, other Flies experienced their fellows' live almost as intensely as their own." - p 59

For my full review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/409695-the-memory-of-memory ( )

I enjoyed this quite a bit. There are moments where it goes into heavy science, which did lose me a little. However the characters are strong and the story engaging, so it's a hit with me. ( )

Group U