Per “. . . John Drake (who, incidentally, may actually be the same character as Number 6) . . . ,” this piece by my friend Roderick may be of interest:
My kids and I have watched the original series multiple times. Their late father introduced us to it and we absolutely loved it. I never watched the remake, even though Ian McKellan was in it. I didn't realize that Jim Caviezel played number six in the remake. That's kind of bizarre, since I think of him as the Jesus who gets beaten to a pulp in the Passion of the Mel (as I call it). After reading your review, I'm glad we never even attempted to watch.
in terms of Gnostic fiction, how about Phillip K Dick's VALIS trilogy or Ubik? I don't know how much you care about PKD, but PKD has often been described as a "Gnostic sci fi" writer
The opening song for the American version of Dangerman/Secret Agent had the lyric "Secret agent man, secret agent man, they're givin' you a number, and takin' 'way your name." Interesting coincidence with The Prisoner.
Greetings, have you ever written about the fiction of William Gaddis or Thomas Pynchon? The Recognitions and Gravity's Rainbow were my first encounters with strands of Gnosticism at an all too impressionable age and, perhaps embarrassingly, I can't quite say I ever recovered. Thank you.
That the soul is restless until it rests in God would militate against conformity to the world, I would think, except under conditions of extreme exhaustion in trying to find that transcendent rest. I have no doubt that extreme spiritual exhaustion is a malaise of modernity; so could you speak to the path forward, that is, toward salvation for those who might be tempted to simply conform?
If this comment is too egregious a violation of blog etiquette I won't be offended if you delete/suppress it (I just figure that perhaps it's not so bad to ask here seeing as it's a repost):
The academic consensus is that you (DBH) have read every important book worth reading, so I was just curious if you ever read once in passing - or even seriously studied - Hitler's "Mein Kampf?" And if so did you read the original German or a translation? I have a hunch that you must have read it at some point: Insofar as it was the "sacred text" of the Third Reich and insofar as understanding Modern History requires engagement with the legacy of the Nazis, I would be surprised if you hadn't given it serious attention at some point. Big reason that I ask is that I've read maybe 90-95% of your public/published writings and I can't recall you ever mentioning the book.
As a last ditch attempt to keep this comment somewhat on topic: I haven't actually read MK myself, but if you have, are there any "gnostic connections" in it? From my limited understanding, Hitler had aspirations to "force the eschaton" but his gizmo for judging between what constitutes a Utopia versus a Dystopia was out of tune. Bit different to that classic gnostic "transcendental liberation" I suppose, but there might be some comparison to be made
Speaking of gnostic fiction, my favourite short story of yours is probably A Voice From the Emerald World. But I only just considered that The Ivory Gate might also have gnostic themes in the journey through the layers of dreams and the relationship between eternity and time. It's been a year since I read the book but I recall that it was an early story of yours, did you have gnosticism in mind when you wrote it?
Although, the dreams do seem have a participatory relationship with the higher levels of reality so orthodoxy and Platonism might line up better in some sense.
It is remarkable how a dull programme may illicit such an interesting reaction. Perhaps there is a deeper lesson here.
I was thinking that TV series like this one, movies like The Matrix, Nick Bostrom’s simulation argument, virtual reality games – they all help people realise the viability and indeed plausibility of metaphysical idealism. As a matter of plain fact we don’t live in a physical world but in a world of conscious acts. Physical objects are just stable patterns present in our field of experiences. What this fact says about the metaphysical nature of such objects and in particular what causes their orderly permanence is an open philosophical question which transcends physics.
As for Origen’s picture of the world as a place of therapy for fallen souls there is also Irenaeus’s idea of the world as a place of growth for immature souls. There is a significant difference. Unfortunately theological imagination has been dominated by the former idea. For no better reason, it seems, than to absolve God from responsibility for how his creation is.
Though I am certainly *d’un certain âge,* I don't recall *The Prisoner* at all, and really wasn't sure what it was about until I read this essay.
But the inability of the reboot to find anything interesting to say does strike me as a subset of what has turned the contemporary Anglo-American novel into something mostly dull and incoherent. When struggles with faith are something like struggles to choose a hobby; marriage is not an arrangement into which one is thrust unwillingly *or* the fugitive discovery of love under otherwise impossible constraints; when finding oneself is mostly unconnected to anyone else's claims or concerns -- we might have literature in a few cases, but not *novels*. It's striking how vibrant the form is, by contrast, in contemporary India and Africa.
I don't mean to suggest, of course, that we should recreate the social and political conditions of the Regency or Tsarist Russia in order to have good novels, but as in the case above, it is striking that any attempt to revisit the concerns that animated the great age of the novel winds up being inept mostly because the author can no longer imagine anyone actually believing in or caring about the things that sustained its narrative logic. One can't even write an "anti-novel" (Flaubert, Lawrence), but only . . . well, something else yet to be determined, I suppose. Do you think *The Prisoner* reboot might have found a way to be interesting and provocative (or at least fun), or is the entire premise part of an unrecoverable past?
Per “. . . John Drake (who, incidentally, may actually be the same character as Number 6) . . . ,” this piece by my friend Roderick may be of interest:
http://dangernumber.blogspot.com/2011/12/perhaps-hes-just-decided-to-retire.html
My kids and I have watched the original series multiple times. Their late father introduced us to it and we absolutely loved it. I never watched the remake, even though Ian McKellan was in it. I didn't realize that Jim Caviezel played number six in the remake. That's kind of bizarre, since I think of him as the Jesus who gets beaten to a pulp in the Passion of the Mel (as I call it). After reading your review, I'm glad we never even attempted to watch.
in terms of Gnostic fiction, how about Phillip K Dick's VALIS trilogy or Ubik? I don't know how much you care about PKD, but PKD has often been described as a "Gnostic sci fi" writer
The opening song for the American version of Dangerman/Secret Agent had the lyric "Secret agent man, secret agent man, they're givin' you a number, and takin' 'way your name." Interesting coincidence with The Prisoner.
Greetings, have you ever written about the fiction of William Gaddis or Thomas Pynchon? The Recognitions and Gravity's Rainbow were my first encounters with strands of Gnosticism at an all too impressionable age and, perhaps embarrassingly, I can't quite say I ever recovered. Thank you.
That the soul is restless until it rests in God would militate against conformity to the world, I would think, except under conditions of extreme exhaustion in trying to find that transcendent rest. I have no doubt that extreme spiritual exhaustion is a malaise of modernity; so could you speak to the path forward, that is, toward salvation for those who might be tempted to simply conform?
If this comment is too egregious a violation of blog etiquette I won't be offended if you delete/suppress it (I just figure that perhaps it's not so bad to ask here seeing as it's a repost):
The academic consensus is that you (DBH) have read every important book worth reading, so I was just curious if you ever read once in passing - or even seriously studied - Hitler's "Mein Kampf?" And if so did you read the original German or a translation? I have a hunch that you must have read it at some point: Insofar as it was the "sacred text" of the Third Reich and insofar as understanding Modern History requires engagement with the legacy of the Nazis, I would be surprised if you hadn't given it serious attention at some point. Big reason that I ask is that I've read maybe 90-95% of your public/published writings and I can't recall you ever mentioning the book.
As a last ditch attempt to keep this comment somewhat on topic: I haven't actually read MK myself, but if you have, are there any "gnostic connections" in it? From my limited understanding, Hitler had aspirations to "force the eschaton" but his gizmo for judging between what constitutes a Utopia versus a Dystopia was out of tune. Bit different to that classic gnostic "transcendental liberation" I suppose, but there might be some comparison to be made
Speaking of gnostic fiction, my favourite short story of yours is probably A Voice From the Emerald World. But I only just considered that The Ivory Gate might also have gnostic themes in the journey through the layers of dreams and the relationship between eternity and time. It's been a year since I read the book but I recall that it was an early story of yours, did you have gnosticism in mind when you wrote it?
Although, the dreams do seem have a participatory relationship with the higher levels of reality so orthodoxy and Platonism might line up better in some sense.
Some thoughts:
It is remarkable how a dull programme may illicit such an interesting reaction. Perhaps there is a deeper lesson here.
I was thinking that TV series like this one, movies like The Matrix, Nick Bostrom’s simulation argument, virtual reality games – they all help people realise the viability and indeed plausibility of metaphysical idealism. As a matter of plain fact we don’t live in a physical world but in a world of conscious acts. Physical objects are just stable patterns present in our field of experiences. What this fact says about the metaphysical nature of such objects and in particular what causes their orderly permanence is an open philosophical question which transcends physics.
As for Origen’s picture of the world as a place of therapy for fallen souls there is also Irenaeus’s idea of the world as a place of growth for immature souls. There is a significant difference. Unfortunately theological imagination has been dominated by the former idea. For no better reason, it seems, than to absolve God from responsibility for how his creation is.
Though I am certainly *d’un certain âge,* I don't recall *The Prisoner* at all, and really wasn't sure what it was about until I read this essay.
But the inability of the reboot to find anything interesting to say does strike me as a subset of what has turned the contemporary Anglo-American novel into something mostly dull and incoherent. When struggles with faith are something like struggles to choose a hobby; marriage is not an arrangement into which one is thrust unwillingly *or* the fugitive discovery of love under otherwise impossible constraints; when finding oneself is mostly unconnected to anyone else's claims or concerns -- we might have literature in a few cases, but not *novels*. It's striking how vibrant the form is, by contrast, in contemporary India and Africa.
I don't mean to suggest, of course, that we should recreate the social and political conditions of the Regency or Tsarist Russia in order to have good novels, but as in the case above, it is striking that any attempt to revisit the concerns that animated the great age of the novel winds up being inept mostly because the author can no longer imagine anyone actually believing in or caring about the things that sustained its narrative logic. One can't even write an "anti-novel" (Flaubert, Lawrence), but only . . . well, something else yet to be determined, I suppose. Do you think *The Prisoner* reboot might have found a way to be interesting and provocative (or at least fun), or is the entire premise part of an unrecoverable past?