271. The metaphysics of The Immortalists

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The Immortalists

by Chloe Benjamin

No, I'm not really blogging another novel. What I am blogging is the central premise of the novel. I keep coming back to it in my mind, so I may as well get it down... if I can convince Blogger to retain it.

Here's the premise: When they are still kids the four Gold siblings encounter the rishika, a fortune telling lady who tells them when they are going to die. The exact date. As a premise this is pretty clever. I'm still only on the story of the third sibling, but I am enjoying the book. But what I really like is making sense of the rishika.

So far at least, we don't really know any more about her except that she's a sort of outcast of a large Roma fortunetelling family. But her gift is similar to Cassandra's, and I love Cassandra. The difference is that Cassandra's gift is described in the context of the ribald world of the Greek gods -- she is both gifted and cursed by Apollo. (Though there is no indication that Apollo has this ability himself.) Since we are given no context for the rishika, we have to make sense of it on our own... my favorite thing.

It would be impossible to over emphasize the hardness of the determinism required to tell a person the date of her death seventy years in advance. For this to happen, our reality has to be like a book, already written, that we only experience in time. Except for the rishika.

For the rishika reality must be similar to that of a person with an eidetic memory, someone who can see every moment of their past but also every moment of their future even to their death. And beyond that, she can see into other chapters, where she is not a character, even after her own death. This is either Divine or knowing the mind of God. Take your pick.

The Dream of Devi pantheistic view of metaphysics has no problem with this ability of the reshiki -- though I would like to keep quantum uncertainty in the picture and this premise is the death of quantum uncertainty. There can be no superposition if the outcome is knowable. And for this degree of determinism to exist, the outcome of every wave function has to be knowable. (Except, perhaps, that what is knowable outside time -- the rishika's perspective -- and what is knowable in time could be different.) 

Still, I would prefer if the story, even from the perspective of the dreamer, was dynamic, taking place in real time with the outcome unknowable. But then I've never understood people who read the endings of books first.

Finished the book. I'm disappointed that the author is going in the direction of self-fulfilling prophecy. I think she probably started with the same thought experiment I knew in college and went with the angle of how this knowledge would change you. It's a valid perspective, of course, but I prefer the metaphysical perspective. Also, she has the rishika not being able to see her own fate. This is a narrative necessity, but, I think, logically nonsensical. Not that this undermines the determinism I wrote about. Yes, you could argue that it was all self-fulfilling prophesy, that there is a dark placebo effect, almost like a voodoo curse, but that really gives the rishika even more power.

I still prefer my interpretation. And what I liked best about the author's thought were the parts about Judaism. I'm going to have to read the book a second time and pay more attention to what the author is interested in, the power of words and the history and substance of Judaism.