The Marriages between Zones Three, Four, and Five (Canopus in Argos--Archives)

I first read this book many years ago, and had a happy memory of it. I was very pleased that a fresh reading lived up to that memory. On its surface, it examines the roles of men and women, represented by two estranged, neighboring Zones. The first is pastoral, prosperous, and ineffective. The second is harsh, militaristic, and also ineffective. The two are not really reunited, but they break their polarization and isolation. Peaceful exchange between them is restored, and both are healthier for it. Saying anything more would be saying too much. I was interested, though, that the nations seemed to imitate the mating of their ambassadors. One nation was archetypically male, the other female. The ambassadors, like germ cells, are living things that pass from one nation to the other, and are united. I never though about it before, but fertilization is destructive both sperm and ovum, even if somthing new comes from the fusion. The protagonists, the envoys of the two Zones, similarly suffer for the greater future. Other metaphors emerge from the story, too, and some may have strong personal meaning for you. I really can't do justice to the elegance and peaceful pace of Lessing's writing. That, you'll have experience for yourself. Although this book is second in a series of five, they can be read in any order. Each book's story is unrelated to the others, but the set as a whole is far more than the concatenation of its parts. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do, and eventually enjoy coming back to it again. //wiredweird

As I write this, Jessica Lynch is in the news, and analyses of the strange un-truths that led to George W's war, and legislation (by men) of medical practices (applicable only to women), and ... Maybe today isn't really different from all the other days in all the other years. As I read this book today, though, it speaks directly to today's triumphs of self-serving word-play over honesty and sanity.Lessing's point is scarcely exaggeration: the intangible faculty of reason is subject to contagious disease, just as the physical body is. The first part of this book is a case study of a particularly acute and severe attack of rhetoric. Though not scientific, it gives enough detail for you to recognize the ailment when you see it yourself (and you will). Except for the details of topic, that poor sufferer's rantings could have come from yesterday's TV news. Although I found the first half of this book very strong and clear, I felt that it weakened towards the end. The trial, prosecution of a culture instead of a person, barely sustained the thesis. I found the final passages of the book frankly disappointing, given its promising start.In spite of the book's weaknesses, I find it very worthwhile. I will probably find it worthwhile and up to date when I read it again, years from now - although timely, this topic is timeless. Even more, it makes a satisfying companion to Lessing's other 'Canopus' books. I recommend it.

I first read this book many years ago, and had a happy memory of it. I was very pleased that a fresh reading lived up to that memory.On its surface, it examines the roles of men and women, represented by two estranged, neighboring Zones. The first is pastoral, prosperous, and ineffective. The second is harsh, militaristic, and also ineffective. The two are not really reunited, but they break their polarization and isolation. Peaceful exchange between them is restored, and both are healthier for it.Saying anything more would be saying too much. I was interested, though, that the nations seemed to imitate the mating of their ambassadors. One nation was archetypically male, the other female. The ambassadors, like germ cells, are living things that pass from one nation to the other, and are united. I never though about it before, but fertilization is destructive both sperm and ovum, even if somthing new comes from the fusion. The protagonists, the envoys of the two Zones, similarly suffer for the greater future. Other metaphors emerge from the story, too, and some may have strong personal meaning for you.I really can't do justice to the elegance and peaceful pace of Lessing's writing. That, you'll have experience for yourself. Although this book is second in a series of five, they can be read in any order. Each book's story is unrelated to the others, but the set as a whole is far more than the concatenation of its parts. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do, and eventually enjoy coming back to it again.

The final, and funniest, instalment of the Canopus in Argos: Archives quintet finds Klorathy, the Canopean agent who befriended Ambien II in The Sirian Experiments, dispatched to the Volyen Empire to rescue a fellow agent who's fallen victim to the dreaded disease of Rhetoric. The Volyen Empire, until now a minor outpost of the collapsing Sirian Empire, is in the throes of revolutionary independence, and the intense prevalence of rhetorical disorders on all sides has made the inhabitants nearly as crazy as those poor unfortunates on Shikasta. The Canopean victim, Incent, alternates between charging about the system trying to reform everyone, and collapsing into hopeless languor when his efforts go inevitably askew. Klorathy introduces a Hospital for Rhetorical Diseases (tactfully disguised under the name Institute for Historical Research) and, in between chasing Incent around the place and apologising for his own occasional lapses ("Incent, WHAT are we going to do with you?"), manages to bring matters in the Volyen Empire to a fairly satisfactory conclusion. The conclusion to the quintet, however, is more than just fairly satisfactory. The light touch Lessing brings to this work may seem at odds with the epic or lyrical tone of the preceding four, but it enables the author to do two very difficult things. First, she can finish her massive enterprise on a suitably Canopean note - neither triumphalist nor sentimental, nor even, thanks to the satiric style, capable of being interpreted in a triumphalist or sentimental fashion. Second, she can point to a partial solution for some (most?) of the problems she's been talking about all along. It's slightly discomfiting to find that the super-civilised Canopean archivists list Tchaikovsky and Wagner under "Nineteenth-century Emoters and Complainers"; but the discomfiture serves to show how profoundly human beings are addicted to Rhetoric of all kinds - verbal, musical, emotional, physical. Cold turkey in our own case is undoubtedly a very bad idea, but we can at least recognise our condition and try to discipline it into working for us rather than against. The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire shows the kind of perspective we need if we're going to manage that before it's too late.

This second volume of the Canopus in Argos: Archives quintet marks a radical break with the science-fictional style of the first book, Shikasta. Instead, it shares with the fourth, The Making of the Representative for Planet 8, a more mythical, allegorical presentation and an aching lyricism of style. In the Canopean universe, the various Zones correspond to states of spiritual being: in Shikasta, Zone Six is a kind of limbo where people wait to be reborn and where the Canopean agent Johor/George Sherban picks up the two who will join him on Earth as his sister and brother. Zone Three, in this second volume, is a tranquil and apparently untroubled realm where, nonetheless, the birth rate is declining and a certain lassitude has overcome the people. Canopus (named here only as "the Providers" who know what is best and must be obeyed) orders the queen of Zone Three, Al.Ith, to marry Ben Ata, the warrior king of Zone Four - an altogether poorer and cruder place. The bulk of the story follows the progress of this arranged marriage from resentful acceptance on both sides through practical working together to solve their realms' mutual difficulties, to the torments of jealous infatuation and out the other side - whereupon Ben Ata must marry the queen of Zone Five, a realm more primitive and deprived than his own, and Al.Ith has become a stranger to her people. But the Providers really do know best, and the three Zones (and Al.Ith, Ben Ata and the queen of Zone Five) continue to evolve, interpenetrate, and share with each other what is needed from themselves. The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five works equally well as cultural allegory, psychological myth or lyrical love story; it is also a pleasure to read.