I am very good at what I do. And what I mostly do is procrastinate.
I could give a master class on procrastination. When I have a task to do, or a deadline — even a self-imposed deadline — that’s when my house is clean, there’s a loaf of bread in the oven, and my garden is spotless. I don’t excel at much, but my powers of procrastination are unmatched.
There’s a point to procrastination, of course. It’s a secret shared by every thinker and writer in the world regardless of era or culture: ideas need time to marinate. Whenever you’re kneading bread, or murdering weeds, or reading diversionary books — you know the ones that ambush you when you’re supposed to be serious and focused, and suddenly you find yourself kidnapped and transported to a different world, when you know you should go back to work and be productive and...hell, why not just one more chapter? — even as all that’s going on in the forebrain, all the way in the back of your consciousness, the game’s afoot. Stuff is getting done.
So it is that, even as I’m following the duties and actions of Light Dragoons during the Revolutionary War (and among the officer corps it seems to have been a lot of drinking, dancing, dining, and the occasional fox hunt punctuated by moments of sheer terror plunging into battle with sabers), I’ve been re-reading the front half of Steven Erikson’s The Malazan Book of the Fallen. Which has made for a kind of weird resonance, being as the Malazan books are mostly about war and all.
This series was made for re-reading. Only with a re-read do all the many disparate pieces begin to come into focus, and all the weird asides you skimmed the first time through start to make sense.
The first four novels, Gardens of the Moon, Deadhouse Gates, Memories of Ice, and House of Chains, are all focused on the experience of individual soldiers on campaign. Gardens of the Moon is set in a city about to be besieged, while Deadhouse Gates and House of Chains follow two parts of a populist jihadi-type war, often waged on civilians, through the original uprising and the subsequent retaliation, and Memories of Ice brings former enemies into alliance against a force that threatens both, and its outcome proves the truth of a quotation that Rikon Snow featured in a comment in this morning’s Abbreviated Pundit Roundup:
Wars never ended because one side was defeated. They ended because the enemies were reconciled. Anything else was just a postponement of the next round of violence.
-- James S. A. Corey (pseud.), Tiamat's Wrath
Reconciliation or genocide. That’s the menu. Take your pick.
So far in the series, the Malazan Empire is the only one we’ve seen, an empire that Anomander Rake characterizes as better than average, as empires go:
“Consider, if you will, those cities and territories on Genabackis that are now under Malazan rule. Horror? No more so than mortals must daily face in their normal lives. Oppression? Every government requires laws, and from what I can tell Malazan laws are, if anything, among the least repressive of any empire I have known.
“Now. The Seer is removed, a High Fist and Malazan-style governance replaces it. The result? Peace, reparation, law, order.” He scanned the others, then slowly raised a single eyebrow. “Fifteen years ago, Genabaris was a fetid sore on the northwest coast, and Nathilog even worse. And now, under Malazan rule? Rivals to Darujihistan herself. If you truly wish the best for the common citizens of Pannion, why do you not welcome the Empress?”
— Memories of Ice, p. 561
An enlightened empire Malaz might be, but it’s an empire nontheless. And in Deadhouse Gates and House of Chains we see a continent that has been under Malazan rule rise up in vicious rebellion inspired by a religious prophecy. We see that rebellion marinate as its leaders scheme against each other, and we watch the Malazan army and its allies, with more firmness than viciousness, put it down again.
Now I’m in the fifth volume of the series, Midnight Tides, which is famous for its shift of tone, location, and cast of characters. What’s less remarked is its shift of focus because, although we still follow individuals, it’s only now that we start to take the wider view of Imperialism and conquest. We encounter the Letherii Empire, rampantly capitalist and militarily superior, and the tribes of the Tiste Edur, whom the Letherii intend to conquer, subjugate, and culturally destroy. As they have destroyed others.
As you read, it’s impossible to not draw parallels to contemporary culture, and the comparisons are neither comfortable nor comforting. Brys Beddict, an elite professional soldier attached to the King’s retinue, surveys the cultural rot in Lether:
The Letherii military was still strong, yet increasingly it was bound to economics. Every campaign was an opportunity for wealth. And, among the civilian population of traders, merchants and all those who served the innumerable needs of civilization, few were bothering with martial training any longer. An undercurrent of contempt now colored their regard of soldiers.
Until they need us, of course. Or they discover a means to profit by our actions.
— Midnight Tides, p. 373
“Every campaign was an opportunity for wealth.”
A friend of mine was working for the military during the turmoil that followed the attacks on September 11, 2001, and later described the atmosphere at the Pentagon and the newly-formed Department of Homeland Security as one of “catastrophic success,” in that the deluge of money that poured in from Federal coffers was soaked up by contractors. Even today, the Pentagon is audit-proof, and Eisenhower’s warnings about the Military-Industrial Complex sound ever-more prescient, our failure to curb it ever-more devastating.
Even so, everyone who reads here at Daily Kos understands how much the Right has made support for the military a cudgel for beating hippies. Who volunteers for service? The idealist, the would-be careerist, the person who wants to climb out of poverty and up the social scale. Who doesn’t? The wealthy, the well-connected, the children of the powerful.
Who loves the military? Think about that one: as long as the military is a symbol, like the American flag, the armchair patriot loves the military — the flyby’s, the uniforms, the parades. They love the military in the abstract.
What do they not love?
The soldiers, who come home exhausted, traumatized, maimed. They vote down increases to veteran benefits, leave families of the deployed on food stamps, turn away from homeless vets.
“An undercurrent of contempt now colored their regard of soldiers.”
Letheras is relentlessly Capitalist. I can’t believe that it’s serendipity that causes Brys, among the wretched poor of the city, to muse,
For all the explosive growth driving the kingdom, it seemed an ever greater proportion of the population was being left behind, and that was troubling.
At what point in the history of Letheras, he wondered, did rampant greed become a virtue? The level of self-justification required was staggering in its tautological complexity, and it seemed language itself was its greatest armour against common sense.
You can’t leave all these people behind. They’re outside the endless excitement and lost, the frenzied accumulation. They’re outside and can only look on with growing despair and envy. What happens when rage supplants helplessness?
— Midnight Tides, p. 388
Is this not an indictment of unrestrained Capitalism, such as the US knew in the 1890’s and confronts afresh today? Published in 2004, Midnight Tides seems to anticipate the 2008 financial collapse, the Occupy Movement, and the rise of Gingrich-inflected Trumpism, when language itself is its own greatest armor against common sense, when lies become currency, and the pursuit of wealth outstrips everything else.
And it’s time for me to go back to work. Enough procrastination. Next week, I have another aspect of Midnight Tides to explore — the nature of warfare itself, whence it comes, and how it heals. It’s a great series to spend time with, especially when you’re doing anything instead of working.
References
Erikson, Steven. Memories of Ice, NY: Tor, 2001 (paperback edition).
Erikson, Steven. Midnight Tides, NY: Tor, 2004 (paperback edition).
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