Books to Love: Nameless
Certain authors become like family. Their books are trusted friends. They are the ones we reach for when we seek solace, comfort, encouragement. For me, that author is Dean Koontz.
I have written at length about the different books, series, and reasons why Koontz is such a favorite. You can see those posts here:
This summer I’ve had the great pleasure of powering through Dean Koontz’s Nameless Series. I read the first series last year while my son was still only a handful of months old. With the recent release of the second and concluding series, I have revisited both and I cannot recommend them highly enough.
Unfolding over the course of twelve short stories, we delve deeper and deeper into who Nameless, the protagonist, is. When we meet him, he is a mystery to himself. He knows neither his name nor anything about his past. What he does know is that he is part of an extensive organization that plans out missions with the supreme purpose of getting to those individuals who have circumvented the true wheels of Justice. He has no name, he has no fingerprints. But he does possess a set of skills that uniquely qualifies him for each task he undertakes.
However, with the completion of each mission, fragments of dreams and sometimes visions leave him shaken. He is sure that these manifestations are moments from his past. He also is certain that he does not want to know they signify.
You see, Nameless’ amnesia is scientifically engineered. It was accomplished at his behest. And the only reason he can think that he would want to have him mind erased is because what was there was too terrible with which to live.
However, science is not infallible (particularly when it is experimental) and memories will not be repressed.
As Nameless moves from mission to mission, balancing the scales of Justice by brandishing the sword of Truth, his memories eek away at the bulwark erected against them.
At the conclusion of the first series, we are left with enough information to somewhat formulate what could have been the reason he wanted his mind erased. However, all is revealed in heart shattering detail in the second series. And with the revelation comes a fuller understanding of his unerring quest to bring Truth to light so that Justice can be served.
There are no grey areas here. Koontz is Dickensian in his style, but channels Trollope in his characters which makes him the perfect reading cocktail for a person who wishes to engage their thought process, explore philosophical byways, delve into what Truth (with a capital) truly is, and also be thoroughly entertained. And he does all this with a fluidity and command of language that I can only envy.
Koontz is not a relativist. He knows there is Truth. And only by embracing Truth can we candidly see such weighty virtues as Justice and Liberty achieved. There can be no Justice without Truth. And Truth is so much more than the simple presentation of facts or morality. It has a spiritual weightiness that man in his hubris continues to deny. Yet, it exists, and it withstands that denial and rejection.
Koontz is also a student of history, a man who looks at the horrors committed by mankind and sees all too clearly that because of lack of knowledge, people today can indeed perish by the same means. Perhaps it will have a different name, but it will be the same spirit.
One portion in the second series stood out to me starkly because it highlights this, one of the darkest times in mankind’s history but also one that demonstrated the indefatigable resilience of man’s Godlike spirit. From the book entitled, Light Has Weight, but Darkness Does Not:
“When Nameless asks about the three words that are tattooed on Rainer’s formidable forearm, it isn’t surprising that there’s a story behind them, for the world is a library and every person in it is an entire shelf of stories. When the mall was flourishing, one of its restaurants—not one of the usual chain operations, but a local enterprise—was a deli owned by a man named Sidney Zilberman, with whom Rainer struck up a friendship while taking his lunch there for many years. On Sidney’s right arm were tattooed strange symbols that turned out to be words in the Hebrew alphabet but didn’t look like words at all to Rainer. According to Sidney, his father—Maskil Zilberman—was a survivor of Auschwitz who emigrated to the United States after World War II. The Nazis had tattooed a prisoner number on his arm, by which he was thereafter addressed as if it were his name. He had been declared the property of the Reich. When Maskil arrives in America, using some of the first money he earns in his new life, he has the numbers removed from his arm and replaced with Hebrew words that deny he is anyone’s property and assert his freedom. Years later, when Maskil dies, Sidney has the same words tattooed on his arm as an expression of respect for his beloved father and as a celebration of the old man’s life. Sidney says those words keep his spirits high and give him courage in hard times. When the shopping mall goes bust along with so many other businesses, and Sidney moves to Texas and the world starts turning darker by the week, when withdrawal to the bunker seems a wise move, gentle Rainer figures that those words might keep his spirits high and give him courage, as they had done for Sidney, and no matter that he isn’t Jewish. The tattoo artist who does the work finds Hebrew characters too difficult for his needle. He is willing to render the words in a Romanized translation—yeled shel HaShem. That declaration is many things to Rainer—a remembrance of a friend now gone far away; an expression of hope; an assertion that he, too, is no one’s property; a reminder to have courage even in the face of horror—though what it simply says is child of God.”
In a time when people who prize freedom- true freedom which brings with it the lack of safety net and the potential of danger and even death, true freedom which amounts to self- reliance and self- restraint, where one may make one’s own decisions and must live with the outcome of said decisions- in this age, when true freedom is preyed upon by power hungry politicians and CEOs who wish to strip an individual’s ability to chart their own destiny in favor of bullying said individual into submission and inflicting their will on them, stripping them of bodily autonomy, censoring any thought that strays even minutely from their sanctioned narrative, destroying careers, businesses, lives with the capriciousness of a toddler wielding a magic wand, Dean Koontz’s Nameless series is like a life preserver. Yes, the times are dark. Yes, fascist totalitarianism is running rampant. But there is a glimmer of hope. It may seem like the smallest flicker of light, but, as Koontz himself stated:
“Light is both a wave and a particle, so it is able to exert pressure because it has substance, weight.”
Light; Truth will dispel darkness. Darkness cannot comprehend light. The weightiness of it, the substance of it is beyond its grasp. It is unreceptive to it. It cannot absorb it. And in the end, it will be destroyed by it.
The smallest fragment of light will withstand the hordes of darkness. This is, was ,and will always be.
Truth will prevail. History has taught us this much. Perhaps the times will get darker. Perhaps those who stand and speak out against the fascism and totalitarianism will find themselves not only marginalized and ostracized in society, but selected and removed for the good of all. Perhaps these dire things may happen. The fact that they happened before is testament that they may happen again. Man is not so enlightened to have shirked off the lure and desire for power and control.
Nevertheless, in such times, history has also taught us that the brightest, the most radiant, glorious light has always shown. And because light has weight, substance, it will always overcome and cast out darkness.
The Nameless Series provided me with an idyll filled with hope. It is my desire that it should do the same for you all, dear readers. For we need hope in these time more so than ever.
What books or series have provided that sort of infusion of hope for you?
