review of
Rudy Rucker's As Above, So Below — A Novel of Peter Bruegel
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - August 22, 2019

See entire review here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/1139169-rudy-bruegel

I've read 14 Rudy Rucker bks prior to this one. They've all been SF. I like them. I was delighted to find this, a non-SF bk based around the life of one of my favorite painters. I respect diversity in people's creative outputs & w/ this bk of Rucker's my perception of his diversity goes up a notch (whatever that metaphor may mean here).

""I have to draw this," he told de Vos. He shrugged the strap of his satchel from his shoulder, peeled off his skirted jerkin, and sat down cross-legged upon it. He found ink and pen and a bottle of water in his satchel, and pulled a sheet of paper out of a special flap in his jerkin's lining. All the while he was staring at the mountain. "It's quite unlike what we've seen in paintings back in the Low Lands, Martin. Different than what we've been taught. It's less contorted, more like a living thing. It's saying hello to me."" - p 12

Wch brings me to Hylozoism, an idea that I recall Rucker's writing introducing me to. Prior to that, I thought of myself as more of an Animist. In Hylozoism, everything has life; in Animism, everything has a soul. Hylozoism stays open to philosophies that question the concept of the soul. Does a mountain need a soul to say hello? Maybe a Mountain Dew.

Bruegel lived in a time & place far worse than anything I've had to go through & he managed to tightrope walk his way across the perils. Religious intolerance ruled. It could happen again. Let's hope it doesn't.

"To add to the pomp of the reception, an exemplary heretic had been hung upon a gibbet to one side of the arch, a stocky weaver who'd made so bold as to own a printed copy of the Bible." - p 16

Yes, owning a bible was considered to be a heresy punishable by execution. After all, the church wanted a monopoly. Is it any wonder if greed's involved?

"A sleek priest offered him a fresh-printed indulgence, good for one hundred years off from the time that was owed to Purgatory as a residual "temporal debt" even after a sin was forgiven. The curtained confession booth resembled an outhouse." - p 36

What a racket. Charge people to lessen an imaginary punishment in an imaginary after-death world. In the meantime, make the real world hell for everyone except the racketeers. Fortunately, there was another world competing for conceptual dominance, a world where cartographers were paying attn to reality.

"Ortelius loved maps, he took pride in moving them from city to city, spreading the new God's-eye worldview far and wide. There was a kind of alchemy to a map. First the mapmaker refined the ore of travelers' and surveyors' reports into numbers on an ideal mathematical globe—even if some reports were given only as sun positions and hours of travel. Next came the mysterious algorithmic transformations that projected the curved path of Earth's ideal globe down into a flat rectangle. And then came the illumination of the map." - p 51

""I despise the Church," said Williblad quietly. "I'd like to see it wiped off the face of the earth. There is no God, Abraham." Williblad stopped and smiled oddly, his lively eyes gauging Ortelius's reaction. "I speak these thoughts to keep from bursting. In so doing, I place my life into your hands. But I sense your readiness to be more than a passing friend."" - p 101

Well would ya look at that!: I'm already up to page 101 & I ain't hardly sd nuthin'!

Yes, the church. I think somebody sd something like "Thou Shalt Not Kill" a long time ago but they didn't really mean it. The Church's true precept is "I don't practice what I preach because I'm not who I'm preaching to."

"on the left was a gallows with three dark, ragged shapes suspended beneath it. Crows circled the gibbets, cawing and feeding. And on the other side of the road, red-shirted soldiers sat drinking before the inn. Seeing them filled Bruegel with a visceral fear. Thanks to the Blood Edicts of the foreign tyrant King Philip, the crime of heresy was to be punished only by death, with no lesser penalties to be contemplated. Out here in the country there were no limits upon what the occupying soldiers might do.

""I heard about these hangings earlier this week," said Franckert. "Two women and a man. They preached that all property should be held in common, but in the end, these three rebels couldn't share things any better than the rest of us. It seems the two women came to a falling-out over the man, and one of them set the Inquisitors upon the other two.["]" - pp 114-115

Never collaborate w/ an Inquisitor. What we need instead of Inquisitors are Councils of Talking-to-Yourself.. no, that's not right.

"Present for the Landjuweel were more than a dozen amateur theatrical groups—the so-called Chambers of Rhetoric." - pp 136-137

"The Cornflowers fully lived up to their reputation for irreverance. Their play was about a young man name Strotkop who wants to be an artist but whose father makes him become a priest. Nevertheless Strontkop keeps on drawing. His bishop tells that art is permissible only if he will paint religious scenes that the church can sell to pilgrims. But Strontkop wants to paint naked women. Unable to think of a way to find models, he hits upon the expedient of getting sinful women to undress for him inside the confession booth.

"On the stage, the women an Strontkop were mostly hidden by the mock confession booth, but the priest's arm motions were clearly not those of a man drawing. He was pulling himself off. Complications followed, and at the finale, one of the women's boyfriends showed up in the confession booth and farted in the priest's face, the fart stimulated by a great blast of bagpipe music. The audience became riotous with glee." - p 141

It's nice to know that they respected the most important thing of all: the spirit of Rabelais. Personally, the last time I tried to pull myself off it was like trying to pull myself up by my bootstraps, I just fell off the chair. Strotkop's mistake was in not hiring models to pose as the Virgin Mary getting impregnated by God. No matter how far she split her beaver the hymen wd still be there so what's to complain about? What I want to know is: is it true that Mary got the clap from God? That might just be a matter of his orgasm being confused w/ a clap of thunder.

Alas, Bruegel, too, is a blasphemer & he gets BUSTED b/c his girlfriend snitches on him. Gotta watch those girlfriends, they have no sense of proportion. He slighted me, I think I'll have him tortured! Fortunately for our pal Bruegie, his talent as a painter was recognized enough for him to become penalized by exploitation.

""Do you mean a dungeon, Your Worship?"

""An artist needs light," said Granvelle. "And a bit of comfort. No, my fine fowl, you'll have a gilded cage. I'll give you a room at the Regent Margaret's provincial palace in Mechelen, halfway between Antwerp and Brussels. I'm there regularly to visit the Regent. I'll keep a close eye on your progress."

""I'm to leave Antwerp?" This seemed to disturb Bruegel more than anything that Gravelle had said so far. Anja knew him as a creature of habit who hated to break his rituals of work. "For how long?"

""Let's try something like a year to start with," said Granvelle. "And then—who knows. We might send you into exile, or keep you on as Margaret's court painter, or mayhap hang you by the neck until dead. It depends on your actions."" - p 147

Yes, our boy Pieter gets spirited away by the naughty people. Further intrigue happens in wch Bruegel gets forced into an assassination intrigue against an aristocrat who's been good to him but not necessarily to others.

"Lazare brushed past Bruegel and pressed forward towards William, speaking rapidly in a low penetrating voice. "A word with you, Prince," said the Walloon. "Do you know that your tax assessor took my father's farm? And that one of your soldiers dishonored my sister? Eh? Do you know how many you've ruined in Luxembourg?" Matters were coming to a head." - p 203

Alas, it appears that Lazare's desire for vengeance was justified but Bruegel had managed to forewarn William so poor Lazare bit the dust instead. I don't blame him, Bruegel had his own problems.

"He poured a few inches of apple vinegar in each of the pots, and then had Bengt and Mayken put a number of beaten sheets of lead into each vessel. The sheets, pounded to the thinness of paper, were separated by pebbles so that the vinegar would touch all the surfaces. They covered the stack of pots back up with rotting compost and household dung."

[..]

"According to Peter, the decay of the offal released a fire element, which over the period of a few weeks would combine with the fire within lead and vinegar to turn the earthen elements of lead into an air element of fine, flaking white." - pp 217-218

Seem like a professional hazard to you? It does to me, these paints can be toxic & Bruegel's using them constantly. I remember once being stopped by a State Trooper for speeding. He explained that more people died in road accidents than they had in the Vietnam War. I've pointed out elsewhere that he must've been excluding the Vietnamese casulaties. Anyway, imagine a similar authority figure who stops you & informs you that more people died from falling afoul of the Catholic Church than from excessive exposure to lead paints.

"There was hardly a man or a woman in the Low Lands who wasn't technically subject to execution, and where facts were lacking, they could easily be made up. The Spanish rulers and their clergy were free to kill whomseover they chose. Not only did they seek out the rebellious, the wealthy people and landowners were also being executed so that Spain could claim their goods." - p 235

Williblad Cheroo, a man of Native American origin who's been whisked away & forced to live in European culture, proposes painting an abstraction to Bruegel. Since Rucker's source material is sd to be sparse, I have to wonder whther he has any basis for this at all other than knowledge that Native American culture had abstract art long before the Europeans did.

""Religion's in those panels, just the same," said Bruegel, "Nature is God's body."

""And men the lice upon her," said Cheroo, "Why not leave us vermin out of your next picture entirely? Paint the land alone, and, once you've mastered that, paint a landscape with no land at all."

""How do you mean?" said Bruegel, smiling a little at Cheroo's fantasy.

""Paint something with no human name on it. Paint a color or a shape . . . something that's not a picture of anything. When I was a boy, there was an elder of our tribe who'd pour out different-colored sands to make wonderful patterns. Sunbursts and stars and whorls and zigzags."" - p 246

One of the things I particularly like about this bk is the way that Rucker manages to bring in major historical elements via his characters's connection to them. I'm glad to have Mercator placed in time w/ Bruegel & the Inquisition.

""Are you the first to think of a book of maps, Abraham?" said Mayken, sidestepping the quarrel that Williblad perversely sought.

""The Italians have made some attempts at such a thing," said Ortelius. "But they mix everything into a jumble with no two images laid out the same way. I discussed the idea of a uniform map book with Mercator not so long ago, and he said he'd been considering something like the same idea. He'd wanted to call his book an Atlas, after the mythical Greek giant who carried the earth upon his back. Be that as it may, he's being good enough to let me finish my version first." - p 257

"The first world atlas to be published was the Theatrum orbis terrarum (Theatre of the world) in 1570. The Flemish cartographer, Abraham Ortelius' orig[i]nal collection was in Latin and contained 70 maps on 53 pages. Between 1570-1612, numerous updated editions were published including those in six other languages: German, Dutch, French, Spanish, English and Italian.

"Although the word 'atlas' here is retrospective (i.e it did not exist as a term in Ortelius' time), the collection was the first time maps had been presented in this way." - https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/first-published-atlas/

Uh, oh! Is Rucker busted here w/ his use of the word "Atlas"? Or is the Guiness Book of World Records wrong? They misspelled "original" (I corrected it) so that's one strike against them.

Now it seems that back in them thar days there were Christian ICONCLASTS.

""It will be a small matter to destroy these graven images, which are only a species of idolatry," the Swiss preacher shouted. "For think, my Brethren, the Romish Church has done us a thousand times more hurt and hindrance through their persecutions. We propose to burn paintings and to smash stone statues, but the ecclesiastics have burnt and broken those 'statues' which God Himself has made, namely our dearest friends, fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers."" - p 260

It's always something, right? You've got the religious nuts who're killing people & then you've got the religious nuts who're destroying the things the people make. If more people concentrated on making interesting things & stopping the nuts from killing people then most people wd be much better off.

"With a wild shout, the crowd dragged the Madonna's effigy out onto the floor, tore off her vestments and hacked her to pieces—yes, some of the men turned out to be carrying axes, sledgehammers, and crowbars beneath their loose gray Beggar robes. More image breakers came streaming in the cathedral's side doors, several of them bearing ladders." - p 263

Now breaking art instead of killing people is an improvement but I have a respect for the skill of the makers & hate to see it disrespected. But, HEY!, that was the 16th century, not NOW, eh?!

See entire review here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/1139169-rudy-bruegel ( )

Made me want to look at color reproduction's of Peter Bruegel's works. The ones in the book weren't very good. ( )

Made me want to look at color reproduction's of Peter Bruegel's works. The ones in the book weren't very good. ( )

http://www.schlaikjer.net/reviews/118.htm ( )

http://www.fast-forward.tv/bookreviews/bookreview_165.html ( )