“80-85 percent into this book, I began to feel that no one can stand writing it and then living with an ending --- that the book is crashing towards with an inevitable logic by then --- without holding a certain compromised view of life in general.
So I did a little spadework on the author, Walter M. Miller, and little wonder, he did a euthanasia on himself after years of spiritual coma.
It invites comparison with another classic that problematized the war-mongering during and in the immediate aftermath of WWII, the vastly more popular Catch-22. There's that same satirical tone, though of vastly different magnitudes, the same character-driven undertones of despair, and foregone assumptions about demi-gods with clay feet and putty brains running the world's affairs.
But I find "Canticle..." richer in imagination, plot-wise. In talking about a new Dark Age of Man, one's tendency is to ask 'why not' rather than brace for a suspension of belief, even if the notion seems so farfetched now in this technology-driven age.”
