A review by euphorix
A Short Stay in Hell by Steven L. Peck
dark
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.75
Although this is the story of a man presented with a new religion in his death, and we follow along on his journey as he seeks out salvation so to speak, this is not a religious book. The characters learn little, if anything, about the one true religion. Instead, I would say this is speculative fiction toying with solitude, monotony, purpose/drive, and change. It’s interesting how a story of what comes after death could incite so many thought-provoking questions regarding life. In the beginning, I would say the novel began with an air of levity even in covering the crisis and feelings of panic that must come with dying and learning everything is a lie. With time, however, we began a steady decent into existential dread. With a rather unsatisfying ending, I can say I felt the tiniest fraction of desperation and hopelessness that the inhabitants of that hell must have felt after countless lifetimes of unwavering failure. And it’s unsettling. I think the idea of death is already unsettling. The act of of book raising such grand questions regarding life and death with no resolution is dissatisfying. Though perhaps, it is the most fitting to leave what we don’t know and can’t understand unresolved. Personally though, I enjoy reading books, even fictional books, to learn something about life (ideally something that comforts or reassures me even if it’s just a story about how no one else knows what they’re doing so you don’t feel so alone). And while this certainly relates to that feeling of aimlessness, it’s not comforting. We’re presented with the idea that nothing means anything, not in life and not in death. While it immediately seems that life’s meaning is wasted in the sense that nothing can follow you in death, the afterlife lacks meaning because it lacks context. I do feel this way in life too, though. Like all of the things that we do, all of the structures that we abide by lack true meaning because they’re nothing but a manifestation of our boredom and imagination. Our stressors aren’t real and more than our motivations, because where does it all leave us in the end?
It’s hard to imagine a quiet eternity in what feels like an endless library could be more torturous than burning in the fiery pits of hell. My grandma has always said that although pain is an unenjoyable feeling, she appreciates that it grants her the ability to experience joy. Without pain, there is no joy. We cannot understand what we have if we are never exposed to or confronted with the alternative. Hell is unbearable because it lacks the context to grant meaning. There is no way of things being any better or any worse, or at least it’s an extremely slim chance of things being better (finding your life’s story and moving on), there’s nothing to fear and nothing to look forward to, nothing to compare because the setting and the people are all the same. Which is interesting to me. Historically, and currently, groups of people are being targeted, subjected to subhuman treatment, and eliminated in the name of homogeneity. But now that these inhabitants of this particular hell have that, they crave any sort of difference.
I think the question of what makes you you is a question that plagues our formerly Mormon protagonist. We have a number of signifiers we use to convey the kind of person we are to others and to ourselves even, but what remains when you address the inherent meaninglessness of those signifiers. Are we just a collection of beliefs and practices, religious or not? The novel not only explores who we become when no one is around, but who we become when everything we’ve known is revealed to be a lie. Could this also be a testament to the true nature of humanity?
In a society that operates and thrives off of the concept of the individual rather than a collective/community, I think it’s interesting how these inhabitants of hell find hope in the accomplishment of others. Perhaps there might be some jealously that remains, but a win for the individual largely seems to be a win for everyone. It’s reassuring that someone may find words that exist or sentences that make sense. The same seems to be said looking at the other end of things. Be it hope or sadness, they feel it as a collective.
I find it so strange how things that seem so human, or rather so ingrained engrained in modern society that it is the furthest thing from human or heavenly or other-worldly, are so prevalent in the afterlife. I suppose there was no way around it when the basis of the story is the Library of Babel, but I’d never expect any spiritual location — heaven or hell — to be littered with such earthly structures and objects. Even time seems to be such a human concern. Although I must say having a clock in a place that doesn’t really in my mind exist within the confines of time (if time is a human invention - things exist, things happen, but the measuring of it i.e., time, is limited only by what is understandable by the human brain) still helped me to understand, as best as I could, just how long eternity is.
QUOTES:
“Strange, how a moment of existence can cut so deeply into our being that while ages pass unnoticed, a brief love can structure and define the very topology of our consciousness ever after”
“I was flying by the seat of my pants, always with a feeling I was not doing things right”
“How do you do things you thought you’d never do? Where do all the things you believed go, when all the supporting structure is found to be a myth? How do you know how or on what to take a moral stand, how do you behave when it turns out there are no cosmic rules, no categorical imperatives?”
“In Hell there was no sense of place, because all places were the same. Uniform monotony. A place without place. A place without context. But, here, now, I could rub her hand and she would sigh. She was a difference. Perhaps each person was the only difference in all these halls of unchanging ranks of books, kiosks, clocks, and carpet, and that, and that, at least, we had to hold to”
“Finite does not mean much if you can’t tell any practical difference between it and infinite”
LOB
“The certainty that some bookshelf in some hexagon contained precious books, yet those precious books were forever out of reach, was almost unbearable”
“I pray to the unknown gods that some man — even a single man, tens of centuries ago — has perused and read that book. If the honor and wisdom and joy of such a reading are not to be my own, then let them be for others. Let heaven exist, though my own place be in hell. Let me be tortured and battered and annihilated, but let there be one instant, one creature, wherein thy enormous Library may find its justification”
It’s hard to imagine a quiet eternity in what feels like an endless library could be more torturous than burning in the fiery pits of hell. My grandma has always said that although pain is an unenjoyable feeling, she appreciates that it grants her the ability to experience joy. Without pain, there is no joy. We cannot understand what we have if we are never exposed to or confronted with the alternative. Hell is unbearable because it lacks the context to grant meaning. There is no way of things being any better or any worse, or at least it’s an extremely slim chance of things being better (finding your life’s story and moving on), there’s nothing to fear and nothing to look forward to, nothing to compare because the setting and the people are all the same. Which is interesting to me. Historically, and currently, groups of people are being targeted, subjected to subhuman treatment, and eliminated in the name of homogeneity. But now that these inhabitants of this particular hell have that, they crave any sort of difference.
I think the question of what makes you you is a question that plagues our formerly Mormon protagonist. We have a number of signifiers we use to convey the kind of person we are to others and to ourselves even, but what remains when you address the inherent meaninglessness of those signifiers. Are we just a collection of beliefs and practices, religious or not? The novel not only explores who we become when no one is around, but who we become when everything we’ve known is revealed to be a lie. Could this also be a testament to the true nature of humanity?
In a society that operates and thrives off of the concept of the individual rather than a collective/community, I think it’s interesting how these inhabitants of hell find hope in the accomplishment of others. Perhaps there might be some jealously that remains, but a win for the individual largely seems to be a win for everyone. It’s reassuring that someone may find words that exist or sentences that make sense. The same seems to be said looking at the other end of things. Be it hope or sadness, they feel it as a collective.
I find it so strange how things that seem so human, or rather so ingrained engrained in modern society that it is the furthest thing from human or heavenly or other-worldly, are so prevalent in the afterlife. I suppose there was no way around it when the basis of the story is the Library of Babel, but I’d never expect any spiritual location — heaven or hell — to be littered with such earthly structures and objects. Even time seems to be such a human concern. Although I must say having a clock in a place that doesn’t really in my mind exist within the confines of time (if time is a human invention - things exist, things happen, but the measuring of it i.e., time, is limited only by what is understandable by the human brain) still helped me to understand, as best as I could, just how long eternity is.
QUOTES:
Spoiler
“Strange, how a moment of existence can cut so deeply into our being that while ages pass unnoticed, a brief love can structure and define the very topology of our consciousness ever after”
“I was flying by the seat of my pants, always with a feeling I was not doing things right”
“How do you do things you thought you’d never do? Where do all the things you believed go, when all the supporting structure is found to be a myth? How do you know how or on what to take a moral stand, how do you behave when it turns out there are no cosmic rules, no categorical imperatives?”
“In Hell there was no sense of place, because all places were the same. Uniform monotony. A place without place. A place without context. But, here, now, I could rub her hand and she would sigh. She was a difference. Perhaps each person was the only difference in all these halls of unchanging ranks of books, kiosks, clocks, and carpet, and that, and that, at least, we had to hold to”
“Finite does not mean much if you can’t tell any practical difference between it and infinite”
LOB
“The certainty that some bookshelf in some hexagon contained precious books, yet those precious books were forever out of reach, was almost unbearable”
“I pray to the unknown gods that some man — even a single man, tens of centuries ago — has perused and read that book. If the honor and wisdom and joy of such a reading are not to be my own, then let them be for others. Let heaven exist, though my own place be in hell. Let me be tortured and battered and annihilated, but let there be one instant, one creature, wherein thy enormous Library may find its justification”