A Mollusk Named Eugene

I must agree with the post before me that following the logical progression of this book is seemingly impossible. I mean, I know our minds jump from thought to thought, but if we are reading Square's thoughts, how does he hold all of these statistics of cultures and languages and different species? The only explanation I can think of is that he is doing research for his story and as he is reading all of this information his mind naturally wanders as most do after a while of staring at endless charts and graphs of numbers and figures, his eyes eventually glazing over.

Of course, I can only speculate what he is writing about, though I would guess it is a blend of fiction and non-fiction, similar to Vas about mutation being characteristic of all life forms, a tool of the universe to keep the endless cycles running relatively smoothly. I could be way off, of course. We see many examples of languages mutating and even dying off, like species. They are compared rather well to Darwin's survival of the fittest through clues and direct statements in the text. Also, we see plentiful discussion of the evolution of apes into men and the like.

I found particularly interesting the mutation of the word ape into man, through eight generations as though it somehow relates to the actual evolution, which would be impossible though because it is a mutation of a language we created. Evolution has largely been out of the control of humans, until recently at least with mandatory sterilizations. Also, the discussion of homosexual behavior observed in 437 species caught my eye as it seemed rather unrelated to the rest of the more than 55 pages of seemingly nonsensical rambling. Perhaps that fact was only included to prove the superiority of mollusks as they do not exhibit homosexual behavior, and thus explain the love affair we see with mollusks and Square (or whoever it isthinking what we read).

As always, not sure if this made a whole lot of sense. This time I do have an explanation though, as I was busy and my blog was posted by typing monkeys.