Thursday Night Bar Fight #13: Even In A Perfect World, Where Everyone Was Equal…
Good news, everyone! NASA has just confirmed that we will soon be welcoming a new type of aliens to into our neighborhoods and workplaces. And by aliens, they mean actual, honest-to-God, extra-terrestrial aliens. They will arrive in exactly one month and will immediately begin to integrate into our society.
The aliens own rules dictate that they must disrupt our own society as little as possible. Even though our leaders have asked doggedly for them to share at least of their advanced technology, they have refused. (Thanks a lot, Obama!) In fact, those aliens that will live among us have no special training in any kind of science that is not already commonly known here on Earth. If the aliens at any time decide that they simply cannot understand humanity enough to live among us, they will leave an never contact us again.
In order to best prepare them, we have been asked to send them a book. The book should be one that says the most about humanity itself and the society we have built. From this one kernel will come the prism from which they understand their new home and us.
The question, of course, is what should that one, single book be?
Do we send them fiction or non-fiction? Or poetry? Do we emphasize our history, or our current state of affairs? Our sciences, or our philosophies? Those parts of us that convey our grace, or our corruption – or both? When making this choice, you must both determine what elements best convey the human condition, and then decide which single book most effectively communicates those elements.
As always, there are some rules:
- The aliens have an inherent and otherworldly knack for comprehension. Any phrase, use of idiom, or reference (no matter how obscure!) will be understood be the aliens as easily as we ourselves understand them.
- The aliens have stipulated that under no circumstances will they accept anthologies. They are willing to make an exception for poetry, but only collections of poetry by a single poet as originally published in book form. That is to say, the poetry collection Questions About Angels by Billy Collins would be acceptable; The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats would not.
- The book may be a religious text, but the rules on anthology still apply. The Bible, therefore, would not be acceptable. However, Genesis, The Book of Job, or Paul’s Letter to Corinthians would be.
- If you wish, you may nominate more than one book, but you may nominate no more than three.
- If you do decide to nominate more than one, you must identify your top choice.
- There will be no up or down voting tallied with the bar fight, but you should feel free to both defend your own choice and challenge the choices of others.
- If there are enough entries – and if those entries are diverse enough – we will publish an Ordinary Times Library of Humanity over the weekend. (Perhaps in Ordinary Tales?)
Bonus Question: If it turns out the aliens are a bunch of slackers, which movie should we send them to accomplish the same goal?
Ready? Go!
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What kind of book best defines us? Easy. The phone book. Next question.Report
The aliens have an inherent and otherworldly knack for comprehension.
I say we send them some Hegel to see if that’s really true.Report
Heh, now that thar’s funny.Report
If I’m going to have some aliens eat me under the guise of “helping”, I want to be properly prepared.
Julia Child – Mastering the Art of French Cooking.Report
Ironic, considering my choice.Report
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, Her LoverReport
*opens mouth to reply*
*thinks better of it*
*shuts mouth*
(I do, for the record, love that movie. But…)Report
” If the aliens at any time decide that they simply cannot understand humanity enough to live among us, they will leave an never contact us again.”
Do you think, given that movie, that they’d leave and never contact us again?Report
Huckleberry Finn immediately came to mind. It shows the real human race. Most people will lie, steal, murder and be just plain stupid while, if you are lucky, you will get to meet someone who will defy god and society to free a good man.Report
Book: Cat in the Hat
Movie: Casablanca
TV Show: The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson
Painting: Guernica
Poem: To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time
Architecture: Eiffel Tower
Location: Grand Central Station at 5:15 pm
The real problem is that it’s near impossible to do this without a Western (and moreover American) bias.Report
Nitpick: Grand Central is a Terminal, not a Station.
Also subject to this poem by Robert Penn Warren:
“Caleb Winthrop, Harvard ’53, crew, Porcellian,
Sits in the bar car of the 5:02, Grand Central, and
Shuts his eyes, and
Shudders. He has just downed two highballs,
And he wishes he had not has that Martini at lunch…”
The poem is much longer and this comes from section three but I love the imagery even if it is very quaint especially someone being on the 5:02 train home.Report
Never mind, it is a much shorter poem. The full poem is:
Caleb Winthrop, Harvard ’53, crew, Porcellian,
Sits in the bar car of the 5:02, Grand Central, and
Shuts his eyes, and
Shudders. He has just downed two highballs,
And he wishes he had not has that Martini at lunch
He will take a cold bath, no matter
What his wife says about getting ready to go out
Suddenly, he feels very old.
His wife, not yet dressed, thank God, is talking to the new baby-sitter.
His dinner jacket is dutifully laid out, he sees,
As he heads to the bathroom.
He lies in the icy water, shudders, shuts his eyes.Report
If I when my wife is sleeping
and the baby and Kathleen
are sleeping
and the sun is a flame-white disc
in silken mists
above shining trees,–
if I in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt round my head
and singing softly to myself:
“I am lonely, lonely.
I was born to be lonely,
I am best so!”
If I admire my arms, my face,
my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
again the yellow drawn shades,–
Who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household?
(W.C.W.)Report
The real problem is that it’s near impossible to do this without a Western (and moreover American) bias.
Romance of the Three Kingdoms, then?Report
Like hell it is, Kolohe,
1) Book: The End of Sexual Instinct and the Hydrogen Bomb War
2) Movie: Tenkousei: Sayonara Anata
3) TV: Panty Stocking and Garter Belt
4) Painting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Wave_off_Kanagawa
5) Poem: (no, not by ebichu. tempting, but…)
6) Architecture: http://ci13.cmoa.org/artists/tezuka-architects (choose something)
7) Location: Tokyo Tower, looking towards Mt. FujiReport
Yeah, that’s my point. I’m familiar with 36 views of Fuji, and have been near Tokyo Tower, but the rest is completely Greek to me.Report
The World of Our Fathers: The Journey of Eastern European Jews to America and the Life they Found and Made by Irving Howe.
This should teach them about an immigrant experience, escaping prejudice to find another, assimilation, separate media, and going up the socio-economic ladder potentially.
So far I seem to be the only serious answer.Report
I was serious as a heart attack.Report
If I could be convinced that the aliens did not, in fact, want to eat us, I might be tempted to send them something else.
Would Lord Of The Rings in the single volume edition be counted as an “anthology”?Report
It’s three books. Any single combing would be an anthology.Report
These aliens are a real PITA.Report
Actually, it’s six.Report
Okay, so I was thinking that I had to pretty much hit all of the high notes. But what would that *MEAN*?
If we gave them, say, Moby Dick, they’d get here and then be surprised that we have females.
Hamlet? Lear? They’d get here and be surprised that we carve time out to watch “Pimp My RV, Starring Poison’s Brett Michaels”.
I’d want to give them something that would give them more or less everything they need to know, cover the whole “crazy” thing but also the whole “hey, sometimes stuff is worth it” thing and hope that if they come down, they’ll know which of the characters are the ones we’re supposed to emulate and which ones are the ones we’re (they’re) supposed to help us fight against.
Catch 22 by Joseph Heller.Report
Other books that could work:
Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut (pretty much anything by Vonnegut)
Books that flashed up as if they were mocking me for thinking about it included “Catcher in the Rye” by Salinger and “Ham on Rye” by Bukowski.
There’s that Proust book but… I think we can just get them to say “oh, yeah, I read that” but they won’t actually read it. Maybe that’s the one we can use to cheat.Report
There’s that Proust book but… I think we can just get them to say “oh, yeah, I read that” but they won’t actually read it. Maybe that’s the one we can use to cheat.
Or Finnegans Wake, so that they can explain it to us.Report
No, it’s one book which was published in three volumes. Seriously. Authors trump publishers.Report
No, Lord of the Rings is a single book. It was published in 3 parts due to post-WWII paper shortages and the resulting costs (if it was published in one volume not enough people could have afforded it), but Tolkien always regarded it as a single book.Report
Mike,
within reason. if GRRM decides ASOIAF is one long book, I’m just gonna go ahead and call bullshit. Tolkien had intended it (until it actually hit the publisher) as one book…Report
I think a cookbook (and Julia Child is not a bad choice) is an ideal one to send them. Even if they’re not going to eat us, they’ll still be eating with us. I don’t want a bunch of extraterrestrials showing up to my potlucks with hummus and chips and grocery store fruit trays.Report
A River Runs Through It (book, not film, although the film is excellent).Report
I was surprised that they set the movie ten years earlier than the book. The implication from the book is the time was the 1930s, not the 1920s.Report
Well, I hate to throw water on this thread, but we live in the real world with real decision makers. We wouldn’t actually have any say over which single book our government gives to the aliens, but we can perhaps urge a choice between the only two possibilities.
So do we give the aliens “Dreams of My Father” or “The Audacity of Hope”?Report
American Gods.Report
Wind in the Willows I want a tear jerker that makes them feel warm and fuzzy.Report
I don’t. I want something that will tell them about us,
for realsies, so that they can actually make a real decision.Report
First choice: The American Red Cross First Aid and Safety Handbook.
At first blush one might think that this doesn’t say very much about the nature of our society. Really, though, it does. It will also be very useful if a human ever gets hurt and only aliens are around.
Second choice: Darwin’s Dangerous Idea by Daniel Dennett. It will show that humans are making progress toward understanding who and what they are. It would be my hope that aliens would see this and appreciate it, thereby generating mutual understanding.
A distant third choice: Go: A Complete Introduction to the Game by Chikun Cho. Playing games together is a way to build friendship and understanding, and go is probably the best game we humans have ever invented.
I’d rank this book higher, but, as Edward Lasker once said, “the rules of go are so elegant, organic, and rigorously logical that if intelligent life forms exist elsewhere in the universe they almost certainly play go.” So they probably know all about the game already.Report
“Here is a book explaining how best to kill (or incapacitate) us.”
I tell ya, if I ever invade, I’m invading earth.Report
You’re such a cynic, Jaybird. There’s no resources on Earth that it isn’t easier for an advanced interstellar civilization to get somewhere else (asteroids, uninhabited planets) or manufacture.Report
Kat,
Even humans?Report
Human Resources.Report
Why? Why assume that an alien race would find us, in particular, sufficiently tasty to be worth the trouble of conquest? (Really, if their technology is at the point where they’re capable of interstellar travel, they’ve probably figured out how to synthesize meat, too.)Report
Maybe they want really interesting pets. Maybe they’re looking for opening bands. Maybe they need domestic help.
“We have mastered interstellar travel but we still have no idea what to do with our window treatments.”Report
They don’t want the galaxy…they just want our half.Report
Maybe they want really interesting pets.
http://youtu.be/H833o5lnB2EReport
Oh, come on.
Chicago Mobs of the Twenties.Report
Won’t play this game if LOTR or Collected Tales of Gogol are out of the running. The very idea, that my red leather bound copy of LOTR is not a single book. Preposterous.Report
If tolkien wanted it one book — which he did, and it’s probably a pinch shorter than martin’s tomes (certainly with a trifle editing)… it ought to count as one book.Report
The entire genre of Swords ‘n Sorcery ‘n Suchlike which sprang up in the wake of LOTR varies between merely bad to terrifically awful. Were every book in the entire genre thrust into the flames, the world would be a better place, by far, with anything written by GRRM used for kindling, lest any of it escape. Deus ex Muck.Report
If you read a bit more, and spoke a bit less, I might listen to you more.
Do check out ShadowWorld.
They say an author puts his heart into the world he builds…Report
Like El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha, who went mad from reading too many books, I read too much already, Kim. Swords ‘n Sorcery is useless twaddle. Same goes for most SciFi, most of which is neither good science nor good fiction. Both genres feature a few fine authors who do some original thinking — the rest are all cud chewers who ought to be crucified in the hot sun for plagiarism. Were most of these folks to fire enough neurons to have an original thought, they would spontaneously combust.Report
Blaise,
“The fool and his money…”
Naturally, so long as you’re willing to say that there
are indeed some (1%?) people who do decent writing,
you are correct.
I have noticed you prone to large and sweeping generalities
that verge on stereotyping.
Allow me to at least suggest some reading.
Who knows? Someone else might read it.Report
If you read a bit more, and spoke a bit less, I might listen to you more.
When Kimmi chooses to be intelligible, she’s pretty deadly.Report
Whatever the book is, shouldn’t it be in Chinese?Report
By the way, this is an impossible question to ask for largely tautological reasons. If there were one book that could adequately capture the human experience, it would be so obvious that there would be no need to pose the question in the first place.Report
Why would it be Chinese? That assumes that the human condition isn’t universal, that people are more like their race than their fellow man, that the human condition is the condition which best explains the most people, rather than explains what we have in common. Statistically, it may be more likely that it was written in China, but even that is questionable given world history and world literacy rates.
That being said, Confucius’s Analects should at least be a contender.Report
How To Win Friends And Influence People.
Next.Report
The Book of BebbReport
I would go with Terry Pratchett, though it is tough to pick just one. “Small Gods” perhaps?Report
Night WatchReport
Or even better, Reaper ManReport
Also, I wonder whether. for those integrating into American society, this might not be a place where Zinn’s flawed work could actually be useful, to give them a sense of how Americans understand their own history that is neither overly institution- or elite based- (though accurate as far as it goes) nor accurate but divorced from popular understanding (basically most of academic American history). Zinn might lead them somewhat astray in terms having an accurate sense of what happened, but give them a good sense of how Americans in fact (often mistakenly) understand themselves (while also offering an alternative account, however dubious). Tocqueville obviously would be pretty good for that too, except it leaves the story off a bit too soon to give them a sense of how the last, oh, couple of centuries played out in the American imagination.
I’d be interested in other candidates for this candidate of a one-volume historical survey of the America that gives a good sense of the people’s self-understanding.Report
We can’t just send them a link to Wikipedia?
More seriously, this is a really good challenge. I wouldn’t send them science fiction or fantasy because it could give them some rather skewed ideas of what the Earth is really like; I don’t want to confuse our visitors by having them show up here expecting Middle-earth; we can introduce them to the concept of speculative fiction once they’re here and have a bit of a better grasp on what humanity is like.
Similarly Les Miserables is an amazing text, but loses something when the reader knows nothing of its historical context, and it’s a little too melancholy to use for first contact.
My New History of Western Philosophy text would give them a decent overview of human ideas on a wide range of subjects (including practical ones like ethics and politics), and as a bonus they could explain it to me when they got here. It’s a single book by a single author, so it fits the requirements, and it’s not limited to a specific point in time so it gets across the idea that we are a species that has undergone a great deal of change both in our world and our ideas over the last few centuries. So off the top of my head, that will be my choice.
A world history text could also do well, but nothing that’s both good and fairly comprehensive springs to mind at the moment, and there are some parts of world history I’d rather not tell them about until they know us better.Report
Want to understand the human condition? Ernest Becker’s The Denial of Death.
Either that or Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – assuming they understand humor.Report
What do we do if we send them THGttG and in response they want to read us their poetry?Report
I like the direction that Jason is going with his first suggestion, but I’d put a slight twist on and send “The Way Things Work”.Report
Screw it. I have tried to come up with an answer other than my usual choice of “Infinite Jest,” and I can’t think of one I like better. Nothing better sums up the human experience of grasping at happiness, and so I’m going with it.Report
I was so sure you were going to say Till We Have Faces.Report
Nah. That would be “book that best illustrates in novel form Russell’s truest hope about God.” If I wanted a book about humanity itself, “Infinite Jest” it still is.Report
Those aliens are going to think everybody writes that way.Report
While they’re occupied with the book, WE’LL GET THEM.Report
I was going to go with “Hamlet” by Shakespeare, but upon reflection, I think a musical would do better. And I have one that does an end-run around the “no anthologies” rule…
“Into the Woods”, Stephen Sondheim, James Lapine.
(And there’s a great filmed version, so we can send THAT if they’re lazy.)Report
(I may be a wee bit biased, but there is NOTHING that sums up human experience better than good theatre.)Report
An eternal family henceforth, we.
Together partnered and equally yoked.
Our contract binding, ne’er to be revoked
Until living stars we no longer see.
Ally, companion, friend
From now until the end.
“Shh! Jersey Shore is on!”Report
There once was a man from Nantucket…Report
I have an issue with rule #1. First off, there are references even I don’t get. Would they get those? Second, if I were to hand them a piece of paper that said, “Thank God for Abe Lincoln,” would they instantly understand “God” as we understand him and Abe Lincoln, including the context under which I might be thanking god for him (e.g., the Civil War, slavery, etc.). And if they understand the Civil War, does that also mean they’ll understand the history of the USA before that to make proper sense of it? And if they do, then do they understand the history of England? Etc, etc, etc. If all that true, and the rule seems to indicate such, than we could simply write a couple pages with as many major figures, events, places, etc. on it and let them work backwards.Report
“If all that true, and the rule seems to indicate such, than we could simply write a couple pages with as many major figures, events, places, etc. on it and let them work backwards.”
If you believe that the human condition can best be summed up by a laundry list of famous people and events, then I suppose.Report
Let’s say the list said Joe Blow, who is the protagonist in the great novel “Higgly Piggly”.
Would the aliens see Joe Blow’s name and understand him only as the protagonist in the great novel “Higgly Piggly”? Or would it suddenly be as if they read and understood “Higgly Piggly” and, as necessary, any books that “Higgly Piggly” makes reference to?
Because if you mean the latter, well, a comprehensive list should about do it.
Otherwise… I’m tempted to say we’d be just as likely to pick the “right” book by choosing at random. Else we risk offering them a non-universal (or should I say planetary?) set of norms that would prove of little use once they left our specific context.Report
Ovid’s Metamorphoses. It’s a sampler platter of the whole of human experience, and a condensation and one of the primary capitulations of the myths that transcend individual cultures, from the Great Flood to human apotheosis.Report
Ovid’s Metamorphoses:
“One morning, Ceyx, son of Eosphorus, awoke to find he was had been transformed into a giant cockroach.”Report
The Bible.Report
Won’t fly. It’s an anthology.Report
The book may be a religious text, but the rules on anthology still apply. The Bible, therefore, would not be acceptable. However, Genesis, The Book of Job, or Paul’s Letter to Corinthians would be.Report
We will split the difference and settle for the Torah.Report
Boy, I thought that thing about y’all driving a hard bargain was just a stereotype, but now…;-)Report
The Torah is typically written on a scroll and is considered one work if you follow the Orthodox account of it being handed directly to Moses on Mount Sinai. As such, it should be considered one work. Jews refer to it and treat it as such.Report
In the book of 2nd Kings chapter 22 (Hebrew Sefer M’lakhim) we are told of the High Priest finding the book of the law, sefer haTorah, singular. Then again, you’re as likely to hear sifrei haTorah, plural, the books of the law.
But sefer is just “a scroll”, Hebrew, being a triliteral language, uses samech-pei-reish, SFR, for most things having to do with scribes and written scrolls, sofer a scribe, Sefer Torah, a handwritten Torah.
But the text of the Torah in a regular book is five books, chumash, from five, fully written out: chamishah chumshei Torah, the five books of the law.
Thus endeth the Torah Trivia lesson for today.Report
I’d give them The Bone People by Keri Hulme. Characters with the worst and best aspects of humanity, sometimes both in the same person, and it’s stuffed to the gills with allusions to both Western and Maori canons. Also, it uses more than one language and the characters’ skins aren’t all the same shade.Report
Book: Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas
Movie: Animal HouseReport
Are you trying to drive them away?Report
Nah, I figure after that they’ll be prepared for whatever they find when they get here.Report
I say send them the instructions for putting together bunk beds from Ikea. When they get here, they’ll go after the Swedes first, so we’ll have time to prepare.Report
I suggest someone publish this website in book form. You want them to have a real window on who we as a human species are? Here is a pretty good snap shot.Report
Ooops. I’ve changed my mind. I now vote for The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery.Report
@russell-saunders
Brilliant answer. I read this book every summer before the school year starts. And we had a passage read during our wedding ceremony.Report
It is a book of surpassing wisdom and heartbreaking beauty.Report
Eugene Onegin. I don’t even know what to say in defense of this choice. It’s brutally Russian in its dissection of humanity’s worst traits, but beautiful and whimsical and ennobling. I’d put it up against any other choice.Report
Honest question having nothing to do with the actual intent of the question, but more with the mechanics of it… If these aliens are going to provide no tangible benefit to the human race except more people, why the hell would we want them to stay? Seems like the question, as framed, would require coming up with a completely unsatisfactory example with which to drive them away…. No?Report
Romeo and Juliet. Love, hope, youthful indiscretion, complications, misunderstandings, jealousies, anger, despair, death.
Or heck, just send it for Mercutio’s bad jokes.Report
Especially the movie version…. Hussey was my first love (swoon).Report
I was thinking about that movie as I wrote my comment. As seniors in high school, we watched it in English class. We managed to make it through her very brief nude scene with just a few titters (pun) and some embarrassed shifting in our seats.Report