The Theory of Knowledge by Maurice Cornforth

Twice I’ve tried to read this book. The first time I attempted it, I set it aside because my first year of university started and I had no time to devote any time to extra reading. The second attempt, which I’ve made recently, has come to an end because I find the subject no longer interests me. Seventy pages in, I feel as though I have the main idea of the text and feel no great desire to finish it. I think it’s time to pass this dusty book on and let someone have a go at it.

The book in question is a 1983 printing of a work first published in 1955 titled, The Theory of Knowledge. It literally deals with knowledge and ideas, specifically where ideas come from. The writer relies on a materialist perspective, explaining that nothing can exist outside of the material. Without the physical trappings of the mind, there is no mind, Cornforth says, before going on to deny the existence of both the soul and of God. From my religious perspective, I find this view problematic.

Along with materialism, the main lens through which Cornforth views the subject of knowledge is Marxism. Marx, Engels and Lenin are frequently quoted. Also, great emphasis is put on the role of labour in the development of ideas. To throw a few key subjects out there, Cornforth touches on abstract ideas, ideologies, science, truth and human freedom.

Make no mistake, despite being only about two-hundred pages, there is nothing light about this read. Although it is designed for the average reader, written in “non-technical terms,” it is by no means an easy read. If you wish to understand the concepts, you cannot rush through it.  

I should probably note that it is the third volume of a three book set on Dialectical Materialism, but it is designed to be able to stand with or without the first two books. I have never seen, or read the first two volumes.

 I congratulate anyone who can make it through this volume without skimming even just a little. 

Circus, By Alistair Maclean

No one can write a spy thriller like Alistair Maclean could. His ability to weave any idea or circumstance into a workable, believable story was spectacular. This particular novel, Circus, follows a travelling circus to communist East Europe where the star trapeze artist, under orders from the CIA, schemes to steal plans for a deadly weapon.

 In true Alistair Maclean style, there are plenty of murders and a few surprising plot twists just when  the reader thinks they’ve finally got everything figured out. Circus also contains a touch of romance. Star trapeze artist Bruno Wildermann and CIA agent, Maria, who poses as a circus secretary, pretend to be in love, but wind up spending so much time together that pretending is no longer necessary. Complicating matters, Bruno is haunted by the memory of his late wife and by the disappearance of his family. 

First published in 1975, a number of reprinting have been made. My copy contains a map of the prison and laboratory compound where the plans for the weapon are kept.  

Village in Crisis by Peter R. Sinclair and Kenneth Westhues

This book, written in the mid 1970s, tackles the issues encountered by villages on the fringes of cities as they face urbanization and expansion. The authors use a southern Ontario town, referred to only as Fringetown to examine what makes a village and the challenges villages encounter in the modern, industrial and heavily capitalist world.

Fringetown is described as being “on the fringe of Toronto.” This description along with talk of a gorge, the first apartment buildings and other notable landmarks, clued me into the real identity of Fringetown quite early. The town examined in this small volume is in fact Elora, a tourist trap not far from my own town.

Whatever the town may have been in 1974 when this book was printed, the town is not that anymore. I call it a tourist trap, because that’s what it is. Old buildings are picturesquely restored and kept up, small shops sell tea and you don’t have to walk far in the downtown to stumble upon an antique or craft shop. It’s the kind of stifling place that on a Saturday in August you would have trouble walking down the sidewalk without finding a crowd of tourists. It’s one of those pretend small towns. In a pretend small town, if a general store exists it is for the benefit of the tourists, not the locals.

Village in Crisis does not touch much on tourism. The authors in their research are more concerned with the friction between what they call old-timers (those who have lived in Fringetown 7+ years) and new-timers. Ideology, value of religion, class differences and age are all considered.

 In Fringetown, it seems, part of the population wanted to preserve the town as it was, keeping out apartment buildings and anything that appeared too urban, like a plain car wash. The other part of the population hungered for the material prosperity of the cities that had been denied to them over the past decades because they lacked urbanization. It was mostly the new-timers that sought to preserve and the old-timers that sought urbanization and economic prosperity. Few of the old-timers had any problem with the apartment buildings that were proposed and then built.

The authors propose one theory that attributes the split in opinion to a split in the value of the village to the two groups. The new-timers arrived in the village looking for a physical setting that they did not wish to change. They valued the village for its aesthetics, while the old-timers valued the village for the sense of community it created. The authors suggest that the old-timers were more urbanized then the new-timers who had fled the city, because the old-timers saw urbanization as something that would economically benefit the community. They had no problem with things like apartment building because they did not see a building as a threat against the sense of community. While this theory has sense, I’m sure it was and is not quite so black and white.

What caught me off guard in my reading of this volume was the sudden turn to Marxism in the final chapter. Sinclair and Westhues suggest that as Fringetown becomes more and more urban and more a part of mass society, the individual will become alienated. The authors directly quote and refer to Marx’s theory of alienation, in which the worker is alienated from his work because he has no control over the final products of his labour. This is considered, by Marx, an unnatural state.  

Alienation, Sinclair and Westhues suggest, will occur, with the demise of the traditional village. The village, as it urbanizes, becomes less and less of an autonomous economic unit, but despite the urbanization and industrialization, technology has had very little change on the distribution of wealth. In other words, the people of the village will not really be better off.  The book effectively closes with the authors announcing that Canada’s capitalist structure has a tendency to perpetuate this alienation.

As someone who endorses many of the values of socialism and as someone intrigued by the writings of Marx, I find this volume, as a whole, thought provoking and satisfying. It doesn’t matter whether the readers finds themselves agreeing or disagreeing with Sinclair and Westhues, the authors offer, in Village in Crisis, a fascinating and thought provoking study of the effects of urbanization on the small town. 

Arrowsmith by Lewis Sinclair

I bought this title not because of the author, or because of the plot, or even because the name Arrowsmith sounded attractive. I purchased it because of the publisher and the series it is a part of. To most readers the name “Modern Library” means nothing, but to me it means a great deal. The “Modern Library” series, which first began publication in 1917, was the American answer to the British series, “Everyman’s Library”. The goal of both series was to provide quality titles at affordable prices. Today, both “Everyman’s Library” and “Modern Library” have become collectibles. I’ve been in bookstores, where depending on the title and the year of publication, a “Modern,” or “Everyman’s” Library can sell for upwards of $25. The books are even more desirable if they contain the dust jackets they originally came with.

I am lucky enough to own a few “Everyman’s Library” books with the jackets in decent condition, but all of the “Modern Library” books that I have do not have the dust jackets. That is okay though, because I collect the books not for their value in dollars, but for their aesthetic value and for their content.

Buying this title, Arrowsmith, for its aesthetic value was a good move because the content is just as satisfying. The novel follows the life of Martin Arrowsmith, a medical student, a doctor, and a bacteriologist who researches the cures and causes of diseases. From the start the reader understands that Martin is not like the other medical students in his class. He desires more in life than a large paycheck and he’s not the kind who traverses easily in society. With his marriage, he tries to settle down and be a country doctor, but he can’t force himself to focus on the people he’s healing. Martin cares more for the laboratory and for research.

He rides a fine line throughout the book, sometimes being his true self, the man who spends days without sleep tucked away in a laboratory doing careful experiments and rejecting the shallowness of high society, and his false self, a man who seeks fame, fortune and the good opinion of others. In the end, he rejects his false self.

The book, although it took me to the very end to realize it, warns against trading your soul for dollars, rejects capitalism, and endorses introversion, the use of the mind and a dedication to the work that a person loves, regardless of its social implications. It’s, in a way, a study of society and of the introverted intellectual within society.

A few shallow lines by Martin’s soon to be ex-wife near the end of the novel, does leave some things open to discussion, however. The reader is left wondering whether Martin is egotistical in sacrificing the people and the world around him for his work, or whether he is a kind of fighter for freedom, symbolizing that the work we love is worth the sacrifice. I like to see him as a symbol of freedom. Martin is not content until he finally rejects his false self and embraces in full the kind of life and dedication to his work that he desires. 

Source for History of Modern Library: 

Toledano, Henry. "History of the Modern Library." N.p., 2002. Web. Aug. 2013. <http://www.modernlib.com/General/ToleHistroySpeech.html>.

Riders of the Purple Sage, By Zane Grey

Zane Grey; I can’t get enough of his books. I used to hate their slightly cheesy plots and over-emphasized attention to the details of setting and landscape, but these days I find something strangely attractive about the less than perfect prose. Zane Grey had a style all his own that keeps me returning again and again to his western novels.

In this particular novel, Riders of the Purple Sage, an unmarried Mormon woman, Jane Withersteen, is determined to be independent and run her own ranch after the death of her father. Disagreements with the town elders expose her to rustlers and violence. In the midst of her problems, Lassiter, an infamous man of violence comes to the town, searching for the grave of a woman Jane was very close to. Lassiter allies himself with Jane and signs on to her payroll to help her protect her property and the lives of her hired men. Like many of Zane Grey’s novels, Riders of the Purple Sage tackles both romance and the moral dilemmas encountered in both love and violence. It is a prime example of why a hundred years later readers are still picking up the works of Zane Grey.