Clarity,
Office 17622,
PO Box 6945,
London.
W1A 6US
United Kingdom
Phone/ Voicemail:
+44 (0)20 3287 3053 (UK)
+1 (561) 459-4758 (US).
each time I met someone who had read it (almost always a pothead, and often a follower of the I Ching)
If a patient who still had not lost his virginity was plagued by sadistic impulses and said on Rhinehart’s couch that he would like to rape and kill a little girl, his professional ethics obliged him to repeat with a calm voice: “You’d like to rape and kill a little girl?” No judgment. But what he wanted to say was: “Well, go ahead, then! If what really turns you on is raping and killing a little girl, then stop boring me with this fantasy. Do it!”
As this is purely a work of fiction there is no harm in postulating that the 12 rules he follows could equally emanate from 'the gods' and are not just made up solely by himself. Perhaps, even, there is a higher purpose, way beyond his or our ken, embedded in the shocking acts and the crazy consequences that transpire.In general, the hero practices Divination (throwing dice, coins or manipulating stalks of yarrow), but the difference between his consultations and consultations with the I Ching is that the twelve rules he follows are made solely by himself, with all of the crazy consequences that come with it.
(And it's a very old discussion - maybe not quite solved - whether the "rules" given in the I Ching, or better expressed, guidelines, came from a higher consciousness: the received text handed down from gods, having an insight foreign to us today... Far out, I know, I tend to believe in this.)
But the hero in the novel follows his own rules and thus ends up wrong.
As this is purely a work of fiction there is no harm in postulating that the 12 rules he follows could equally emanate from 'the gods' and are not just made up solely by himself. Perhaps, even, there is a higher purpose, way beyond his or our ken, embedded in the shocking acts and the crazy consequences that transpire.
I know from my own life experience that some of the 'shocking' or 'crazy' things I have chosen to do, even when more balanced acts were advocated by wiser people I knew or even suggested in I Ching casts, have at times ended up with a silver lining that I could never have imagined in the first instance. Where I thought, initially, I had ended up wrong turned out eventually to the process concluding with me residing at a place of unexpected rightness.
This is perhaps why I saw the book as being a study in free will and what that really is or means.
Clarity,
Office 17622,
PO Box 6945,
London.
W1A 6US
United Kingdom
Phone/ Voicemail:
+44 (0)20 3287 3053 (UK)
+1 (561) 459-4758 (US).