Review of Clockwork Angels: The Novel by Kevin J. Anderson

As a long-time fan of Rush, I was excited when I heard that the progressive rock group’s new album, Clockwork Angels, would be a concept album. Then came word that fantasy and science-fiction author Kevin J. Anderson was writing a novel based on the album’s lyrics, which spin a steampunk odyssey conceived by Rush lyricist and drummer Neil Peart. I pre-ordered a copy and when it arrived, quickly read it from cover to cover.

Clockwork Angels: The Novel, tells the story of Owen Hardy, an apprentice apple farmer in the land of Albion. A ruler called the Watchmaker organizes every aspect of life in Albion with mechanical order and regularity, so that each citizen need merely follow the path laid out before him or her. This is the Stability, according to which “Everything has its place, and every place has its thing.”  Owen Hardy fully expects to settle into his predetermined course, but he also dreams of life outside his village, and upon an invitation from a mysterious stranger, he runs away, runs afoul of the Watchmaker’s law, and travels to other lands, encountering carnies, thieves, wreckers and the Watchmaker’s antithesis, the Anarchist.

Anderson’s prose is uninspired but possesses a simple elegance perfect for a story that is essentially a long parable. He puts just the right amount of flesh on the lyrics to highlight the concept of free will steering a course between Order and Chaos. Summaries of the novel make it sound like the typical Bildungsroman of which the fantasy genre has way too many, but despite my low tolerance for dreamy-boy-goes-out-into-a-world-of-adventure stories, this one never struck me as cliché and I was never bored. 

In part, the conceptual work of Peart is to thank for that. More than once as I read, I caught myself thinking that I was grateful that a musician (and a drummer, no less), rather than a novelist, had created this story and its setting. Rush’s music and Peart’s lyrics have always had their own distinct taste, and that comes across in the novel. Fans of the music will recognize the philosophical motifs Peart has woven into Rush’s lyrics over the years--and many of those lyrics are sprinkled throughout the text. (On first reading, I caught quotes from as far back as 1975’s Fly by Night.)

I can’t help but relate the novel to my other recent reading. The Watchmaker’s Stability can be described as a “totally administered society,” a phrase that appears often in Critical Theory: A Very Short Introduction. The Frankfurt School of philosophers believed that in a totally administered society, whether that of Stalinist Russia or capitalist America, there is little room for true individuality. The totally administered society has ways of keeping us in our place. 

The Anarchist of Clockwork Angels represents the exact opposite--total lawlessness--although with his wild appetite for destruction, he is more of a nihilist of the negative sort portrayed in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed (The Devils). While he possesses a certain evil charm at first, in the end he is no more likeable than Pyotr Stepanovich Verkhovensky, the slimy catalyst for ill deeds in The Possessed. In their crusade against the strictures of society, both are perfectly willing to destroy lives, but they have nothing positive to offer in place of what they tear down.

The beauty of Clockwork Angels is that Owen Hardy chooses neither the Watchmaker nor the Anarchist. In the words of the old Rush song “Freewill,” he chooses not to decide. He chooses to make his own way through life, with all the uncertainty, mistakes, suffering, and joy, that such a messy pilgrim’s progress entails. Owen's life with the Magnusson Carnival Extravaganza is one apart from the ideologies of the Watchmaker and Anarchist, who would impose themselves upon him and use him for their own purposes.

A final word about the book itself apart from the story. Clockwork Angels: The Novel is full of perks for the bibliophile. It has numerous full-color illustrations by long-time Rush album artist Hugh Syme, and they are among the most impressive I have encountered since I was in the sixth grade poring over the illustrations by the Brothers Hildebrandt in The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks. The back of the book includes the lyrics to Clockwork Angels: The Album and an afterword by Neil Peart, with photos from a hiking trip on which he and Anderson, friends even before this collaboration, brainstormed for the novel. 

I have actually never been much of a fan of Kevin J. Anderson, but this book has made me reconsider. On his website, AnderZone, he says that Neil Peart’s favorite work of his is The Saga of Seven Suns series, so I have placed the first book, Hidden Empire, on my Long List of Books to Read.

Final Comments on Slavoj Žižek's In Defense of Lost Causes

A year after starting it, I have finally finished reading Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek’s In Defense of Lost Causes, which looks for something of value in revolutionary terror. The book held much more than I could grasp, so rather than attempt an in-depth analysis of it, I will merely post a third, and perhaps final, note (first one, second one) by commenting on Žižek’s program for reinventing “the ‘eternal Idea’ of egalitarian terror.”

In Defense of Lost Causes is a long and involved philosophical, psychoanalytical, political and cultural critique of the ideologies, methods, successes and failures of revolutionary movements from the French Revolution up through today’s Leftist thought. As such, it touches on a wide range of issues, but in its final pages it comes to focus on “the threat of ecological catastrophe.” The last page of the first edition lists four points with regard to addressing this challenge, with the suggestion that they may be of use in other areas as well.

The first of the four points is egalitarian justice. Žižek gives as an example of this all nations, whether developed or developing, being made to obey the same rules with regard to environmental regulations (carbon emissions, etc.). I agree. Developing nations are sometimes allowed laxer standards and some developed nations like the U.S. simply do as they please without regard for international protocols while other nations vigorously tackle environmental challenges.

The second point is terror, which Žižek describes as “ruthless punishment of all who violate the imposed protective measures.” This is the most problematic of the four points. For many, the whole premise of the book--finding what is good about some of the worst scenes in human history--is disturbing. For Žižek openly to recommend terror would seem to confirm their worst suspicions, especially when he includes in his recommended terror “severe limitations on liberal ‘freedoms.’” 

While it is clear, however, from examples throughout the book that for Žižek not all terror must be violent, he does speak almost approvingly of an execution committed by Che Guevara for the cause of revolution. It is hard to pin Žižek down on exactly what specific actions he recommends as defensible terror, and it occurs to me as I write this that this is a flaw of the book. Its analysis is endless, but precise prescriptions are fleeting and vague.

The third point is voluntarism:

“(the only way to confront the ecological catastrophe is by means of large-scale collective decisions which run counter to the ‘spontaneous’ immanent logic of capitalist development.”

This returns to a theme that Žižek and others like French philosopher Alain Badiou, to whom In Defense of Lost Causes is dedicated, develop fascinatingly and convincingly. Capitalism is the enemy and we have, to our detriment, all accepted its logic. Some of Žižek’s passages explain how even capitalism’s opponents must speak its language, thereby acknowledging its victory.

Is capitalism the enemy? This is not something I have made up my mind about. The evils of capitalism are plain to see, but there are forms other than the no-holds-barred capitalism that holds sway in the U.S. and is quickly claiming souls the globe over. There is French economist Michel Albert’s Rhine capitalism, Bill Gates’s creative capitalism and China’s state capitalism. Žižek expresses skepticism about such halfway measures, and perhaps he is right. Perhaps only a radically new order has any real emancipatory potential.

The fourth and final point is trust in the people: “the wager that a large majority of the people supports these severe measures, sees them as its own, and is ready to participate in their enforcement.” He even goes so far as to say we should welcome the reinstitution of informers. The language is inflammatory, but his example is the corporate whistle-blower, indeed an informer of sorts. 

The world does not need a citizens’ thought police such as neighbors turning on neighbors and children reporting their parents as in George Orwell’s 1984, but it does need more gutsy vigilance committed to obedience to just law. The BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 would not have happened if more government watchdogs had taken their jobs seriously and more employees of BP had been willing to turn on their employer and coworkers.

In Defense of Lost Causes is a cornucopia of ideas that encouraged me to review Heidegger, learn about the Cultural Revolution, rewatch Casablanca, listen more to Shostakovich and Prokofiev, and start reading about Critical Theory. It’s a book I will be thinking about for some time, and while I should reread it, I am more likely to dig into Žižek's other books first.