About book The Philosopher's Apprentice: A Novel (2008)
**Warning:** there are bound to be some gross, and most likely inaccurate, generalizations in here about James Morrow based on my current consumption of only two of his novels. And maybe a few small spoilers. First, let me say that this is the first author in a long time who has engaged me enough that I am working my way through his entire oeuvre. I should probably be doing this in some planned order -- chronologically would make most sense; stylistically could be another option (since he seems to cross genres and styles, although I'm getting a strong sense of a unique and consistent voice). Instead, I am pretty much going at it willy-nilly, based on which book covers attract me the most and which are available in my local bookstore. For example, I picked The Philosopher's Apprentice as my second Morrow, because it was red. I had What Is The What and The Tao Of Pooh in hand, and .... If this sounds nonsensical, or even silly, well it is. And so is Morrow, which is probably why I like his novels so much. The silliness, however, is just a facade for what are much larger concerns and weightier thoughts. In The Last Witchfinder, it was religious hypocrisy and the triumph of rationalism and science over superstition and barbaric cruelty. In The Philosopher's Apprentice, nothing less than the foundations of human morality and ethical decision-making, encompassing a review of pretty much the entirety of Western philosophical thought, are hoisted up like the Jolly Roger on the Titanic to see who will salute, and who (or what) will be left standing. Morrow used the device of Newton's Principia Mathematica as the narrator to voice his big questions and themes in The Last Witchfinder. His narrator was not just any book, then, but one of the most irrefutable foundations of modern scientific thought. Hard to argue with gravity, isn't it? Here, in The Philosopher's Apprentice, we have Mason Ambrose, the former Ph.D. candidate who has tried and failed to wrestle an ethics framework from another foundational treatise of science, Darwin's On The Origin Of Species. Keep that in mind: one of the broad themes here is how we are, or whether we are, maintaining any kind of just, compassionate, ethical or moral framework as our evolution as a species escalates -- spurred on by our own self-made technologies.Here, in a novel that is centrally about what is universally acceptable ethical behaviour, Morrow gives us a narrator who is less reliable, more prone to errors of judgement and more inherently biased. That said, Morrow gives Ambrose an apolitical, amoral voice in some ways, enough that there are times when I found myself annoyed by this character who was not behaving at all psychologically realistically when faced with some fairly significant ethical dilemmas of his own. Consider: you've just encountered a brilliant but mad scientist cloning herself for personal gain. Do you: a) call the authorities; b) take matters into your own hands and destroy the tools of reproduction and/or the scientist herself; c) accept $100K to tutor the cloned spawn, Londa, of aforesaid mad scientist, and hope to instill a more just and compassionate ethic in her because, well, if you don't, who else will? If you chose c), you're the head Philosopher, Mason Ambrose himself, and there will be three more of you -- a psychologist, an artist and a kids' TV show host (haha), tutoring two more ethically-challenged "vatlings," "beaker freaks" or, if you insist on being PC, cloned offspring, destined to wreak all sorts of havoc and bring to light all sorts of ethical dilemmas for them, for yourself and for the readers. And while the outcome is positive, in that the novel's plot gallops along through set-piece scenes that have, underlying them, a Big Philosophical Question or Ethical Dilemma to be solved, the flimsiness of the set-up always threatens to bring the plot down like a house of cards. Morrow barely holds on to the reins of his plot, or his themes, but it sure is an exciting ride. I could swear there were points in The Philosopher's Apprentice where I could hear the author saying to himself, I can't believe I just wrote that. I think Ambrose himself voiced it after enjoying a lusty romp on stage with the cloned Joan of Arc. Creating an army of revivified aborted fetuses, including Ambrose's and his former gf's own, to stage an end-of-the-world battle royale between right-to-lifers and feminists is another case in point. The thing is exponentially more complex than The Last Witchfinder, in which good and evil were pretty clear. The Philosopher's Apprentice is more ambitious, and has more room for slippage in the sensibility and logic of plot and character, but these flaws -- and they are definite flaws -- are easily overlooked when there is so much going on, and when the satire is this delicious.Of the big questions raised here, whether the ends justify the means is a doozy. Another is whether choosing the lesser of two evils can be an ethical choice. And let's not forget the Dr. Frankenstein parallels brought into a contemporary setting, and ask ourselves: under what circumstances is it ethically right for humans to create and end life? This latter question is explored in a dozen different ways, each one possibly leading to a different conclusion. Corollary: when does sentience begin -- in a fetus, or in a genetically-modified mumquat tree? No one said this was going to be easy, did they?So again, while good-and-evil; right-and-wrong was clear in The Last Witchfinder, here the very point is to show that ethical questions and behaving in line with their answers, if you can even arrive at them, is complicated, and growing more so in a world where philosophy and those who practice it with discipline and depth have been replaced by right-wing zealots; and where scientists who pursue knowledge and discovery as ends in themselves have become pawns to greedy, immoral capitalists (a dynamic that Morrow takes delight in reversing on the inaugural voyage of the new-and-improved Titanic -- wanna take a guess at how that turns out? ;-p )Morrow's plots are nothing if not disjointed, utterly absurd, heady mixes of the fantastic and the earthy. Yet, while the situations in which he places his characters are extreme and surreal, and his allusions far-reaching, the themes he explores are contemporary, enduring, important and pretty basic. New reproductive technologies and human cloning. Stem cell research. Abortion. What a fun book this would be to teach in an undergrad class somewhere in middle America.What appears to me most Morrowesque, thus far, is his ability to use a science/speculative fiction-y paradigm to explore what are huge, all-encompassing themes and make it extremely palatable and accessible to 'the average reader.' (I am not patronizing the average reader. I count myself among that group.) You don't have to have an advanced degree in mathematics or physics to enjoy and get a lot out of The Last Witchfinder in the same way that you don't need an advanced degree in philosophy to enjoy The Philosopher's Apprentice.The best comparison is to Vonnegut: there is the same 'of the people' tone; the same politics; the same humour and satire; the use of fantastic plots, characters and settings, where necessary, to convey theme (you'd not call Morrow science fiction any more than you'd call Vonnegut that, would you?). But most of all, there is the same deep compassion for humanity, coupled with a realistic but almost despairing sense of humanity's flaws and future unless we shape up and start behaving much better than we have in the past. Raising this to a mid-4 star level, from what was a high 3.
In the opening pages of this novel, I thought I was back in the magic land created by John Fowles in "The Magus." A young philosopher with a rebellious bent is recruited to go to a secluded island and tutor a teenage girl, daughter of a billionairess. He's told his student has lost her memory in a horrific accident. His task: to restore her sense of right and wrong. It's a promising premise and I looked forward to an interesting novel of ideas with some sexual tension thrown in. How wrong I was! It soon becomes clear that this cover story is false and there is more going on than meets the eye. Who for instance is the 5 year-old girl sequestered in a different portion of the island being tutored by two other men? It transpires that the billionairess, stricken by an incurable cancer, has hired a mad scientist to clone three versions of herself -- one aged 16, one 11 and the third 5. Together, they add up to one complete childhood. This first part of the book has a certain interest and narrative thrust. Then we hit Part II and the plot begins to turn bizarre. The billionairess dies, everyone leaves the island and our hero goes back to Boston, starts a second-hand bookstore and gets married. (PLOT SPOILERS AHEAD, BE WARNED)His wife becomes pregnant but has an illness which makes it dangerous for her to have children. They decide on an abortion. But the mad scientist from Part I has now fallen in with crazed anti-abortion activists and they begin to clone thousands of aborted fetuses to form an army. Yes, it's weird; it's also politically questionable and in literary terms quite silly. If Part II is bad, Part III is quite beneath any rational criticism. It revolves around the eldest sister from Part I forming her own feminist army and hijacking a cruise liner carrying some of the world's worst industrialists and polluters and subjecting them to a forcible re-education regime. Just writing these words evokes the utter idiocy to which this novel sinks. Some of the characters in this book come to life through weird science but none of them live convincingly in a literary sense. I simply cannot recommend this book.
Do You like book The Philosopher's Apprentice: A Novel (2008)?
Quirky, sometimes unsettling, and very entertaining, this novel can be a challenge for the average reader, or at any rate, it was for me. A philosophy student (Mason Ambrose) walks out while defending his own doctoral thesis, giving up the future he had imagined. He is offered a job working for a wealthy, eccentric woman who owns an island in the Florida keys where she and a geneticist create such beings as a feathered iguana and a sentient tree. The job is to develop morality, a conscience, for a daughter, Londa, who lost her moral compass when injured in a diving accident. After he has succeeded and left the island, the student and philosopher meet again after several years. The plot was easy to follow but not being a student of philosophy nor of mythology, I found this book had more arcane references and more unknown theories and words than I have encountered in a long time. It also had mad scientists, lesbian security forces, and legions of aborted fetuses brought to life to punish their parents. Morrow insults religion, politics, morality, science, and about every other subject broached, so not a read for those especially sensitive to criticism; there is bound to be something to offend almost everyone. Certainly different, but also thought-provoking and enjoyable.
—Susan
I wasn't familiar with James Morrow's previous work, but grabbed this one at the library upon reading the back cover which had a review of the Last Witchfinder described by USA Today as "A book to delight fans of writers such as John Barth...".This was the only time I can recall a review calling on the fans of Barth (how many of us are really out there?) so I grabbed this one and will probably read the other eventually.I didn't find the Philospher's Apprentice to be as good as I thought it could have been. The opening concept was intriguing and rife with possibilities. The introduction of the immaculoids was also interesting. Yet it seemed the lesson taught on the Titanic Redux was old and uninspired. I also got the feeling that the story got to a "here we are, now what" moment and Morrow wrapped up as tightly and quickly as he could with what he had to work with.I'll try the Last Witchfinder as this book was interesting, but not great.
—Rossrn Nunamaker
The set-up is actually pretty good...a philosophy Phd candidate who has just blown his thesis defense is hired as a tutor for an adolescent without a moral compass...all situated on an idyllic tropical island, complete with mad genetic scientist and even madder clone-mommy. the whole first section of the book develops this idea rather entertainingly, with the tutor gradually acquainting his charge with Western philosophy and ethics. When it turns out there are two other genetically identical sisters cached elsewhere around the island with their own tutors, it begins to get a bit silly, but this only turns ridiculous in the final section...where ethically super-charged Londa (the tutor has done maybe too good of a job) kidnaps a cruise ship full of amoral CEOs and tries to instill consciences in them...it ends in torture and ritual execution, over the top, even as a fable.Anyway, fun premise, sharp, humorous writing, just a little too silly to justify suspending disbelief.
—Jennifer
