After death, a man is sentenced to a limited stay in hell before he can go to heaven. Of a multitude of hells, he is sent to a library filled with books of every possible combination of characters on a keyboard, and tasked to find the autobiography of his life among the near infinite number of nonsensical volumes.
A lot of the goodreads reviews complain that at 100 pages it's hardly worth it's price tag. If you've spent more than $2 to see an entertaining, but ultimately superficial superhero movie sometime in the last decade, than Short Stay in Hell is definitely worth the $3 to $12 it takes to get hold of a copy. But I think what the reviewers were really getting at is that while Short Stay if very good for what is, it's incredibly disappointing for what it could have been but wasn't. At 100 pages, it was too long (ironically) to just prove it's main premise--the vast and terrifying quantity of eternity-- but too short to explore the multitude of other themes it brushes against but never delves in.
It was a five-star book if you're looking for a fast, theologically-inspired horror story to keep you up at night. But by the time I reached the closing paragraph I felt so cheated of a much deeper storyline that ultimately I have no idea whether I liked it or not. A great book avoids preaching, but I felt this book avoided making a point at all.
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| Did someone say library of the damned? *my heart hurts* Spoilers below |
I think I felt cheated mostly because the author trespasses the law of Checkov's Gun. He loads three or four guns on the mantle in the first act and they remain unfired after the closing curtain. Maybe it bothers me so much because as a religion-junkie I actually knew something of Zoroastrianism before I picked up the book. But why bother mentioning that Zoroastrianism is the "one true religion" over and over if it was just for a "haha, suckers an obscure Mesopotamian religion is the right one" gag? And when a very short novel makes a point to explain the specifics of Mormon doctrine over several paragraphs, I assume it has plot significance beyond the moral dilemma of a cup of coffee.
I got to the end thinking "crap, eternity is a long time" but ultimately left me unchanged about how I view myself or others on this little blip that is mortality.
So here's how Short Stay in Hell should've ended:
In the opening pages we learn that a book on Zoroastrianism is on every floor (another red-herring, apparently). I understand that even that book would be infinitessimally difficult to find, but one that's also many million times more likely to be found than a book that can only be found on one of the near-infinite number of floors.
So eventually our protagonist learns that Zoroastrinism is a dualistic religion. Good God and the Bad God are perfectly balanced in a cosmic tug-of-war for all eternity and so Zoroastrian Hell does not exist. Of course they are actually are confined to the library , but their Hell is a neutral rather than a negative place. Which they've known from the beginning. Elliot even says it, "I was stationed in the South Pacific in WWII--that was much more of a hell than this." So as Dire Dan's cult of torture made Hell much more Hellish, they discover they can also make from their neutral hell, a heaven.
Our Mormon main character thinks again on his mortal beliefs he previously explained about deification and the innate divinity of all mankind. He realizes that the people in the library, not the books, are the source of their mutual sanctification. Instead of the monotony he thinks is the reason why all the inhabitants of his hell are white Americans from the same period of time-- he realizes that the people most like him are the people most easily understood. The people easiest to work and empathize with.
Working together they could slowly become master sculptors, painters, singers, mathematicians, etc. as they teach each other the skills they learned and the books they read. And with an eternity to practice, everyone becomes a master (can we get pop-culture Dracula reference). If they can actually work together, they could becoming more and more God-like in their combined knowledge and practice. But I don't necessarily need a happy ending.
The food kiosks that they used to exploit to make bone weaponry, could provide seeds to germinate, pigments for paint, spices for scent, materials to carve and hew. And every Mormon guy knows who you work with, you love. What could be better than an eternity among the ones you've grown to love? But they can never get there. What at first seemed a far simpler task than finding the impossible book, is shown to be much more time consuming project. Charity is harder to fathom than eternity.
There's still the matter of free will. So to retain the same ending tone as the original: Eons pass, but factions reset their progress over and over in their attempts to make a heaven of hell. They can never get every one to catch the vision at the same time.
The book ends with our main character repeating the library rules to himself like a prayer.
"Rule #1: Please be kind. Treat others as you would like to be treated. Failure to do this will bring unhappiness and misery to you and your fellow citizens.
Rule #3: Nothing lasts forever. One day this will all just be a distant memory."An epilogue shows a progress report by Xandern on the citizens of the Library of Babel:
The inhabitants of Training Room #487 show no progress towards getting along with each other. I cannot recommend them for promotion to unrestricted eternities. They haven't been able to behave themselves even among their peer group of white, book-reading Americans.
I am encouraged by some of their recent developments, although I estimate the time until they pen their own autobiography, indicating that they see themselves as they are seen is twenty raised to the nine thousandth days away.
I guess that's my Short Stay in Hell fan-fiction.
-Stephanie
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