MacGuffins All the Way Down — The Future Upbeat

A review of “The Revelations” by Erik Hoel

[Obligatory note: SPOILERS! Since this was released on April 6, I feel that enough time has passed to warrant spoilers. If you haven’t read—or finished—this novel, please do so first.]

Erik Hoel’s debut novel The Revelations is, at heart, a Bildungsroman where the way the main character tries to unveil the workings of consciousness closely resembles the workings of consciousness itself. Where, almost literally, the dancer becomes the dance and the performer becomes indistinguishable from the performance.

While The Revelations portrays itself in a myriad of ways—literary novel (in particular the aforementioned Bildungsroman), mystery, and romance topped up with large helpings of dread and horror—it is, at its core, an effort to depict a young scientist’s research into consciousness using the way consciousness constantly adjusts our perception[1] and behaviour. On top of that, Hoel likes to subvert common literary memes to fit into this all-encompassing vision.

It starts with every chapter (one day per chapter) describing how the main character—Kierk Suren—wakes up. This is one of the oldest clichés in literature, but Hoel subverts this trope by using all the different awakenings of his main character—and these waking moments are different every time—as an insight of how consciousness re-establishes itself after being put in a lower activity mode, even if the brain’s sleeping patterns—nightmares, REM sleep, deep sleep with slow waves, and more—are disturbed. Some of these daily beginnings also demonstrate Hoel’s hypothesis of ‘the overfitted brain[2]’ which—amongst other things—sees dreams as instrumental in generalising the data that the brain has been gathering throughout the day. This is also what Kierk is doing in almost every spare moment he has: trying to generalise all the ideas, concepts, research results and what-have-you (including art, philosophy and literature) into a cohesive theory of consciousness. As such, Kierk’s daydreams mirror our mind’s dreams at night.

Down on his luck—thanks in no small part to his own obstinacy fuelled by his obsession—ex-student Kierk gets a second chance as he’s invited to be one of the Crick scholarships—co-financed by DARPA—at New York University. He accepts and joins his eight fellow scholars at the campus in New York, but then his problems only begin. Kierk is extremely stubborn, single-minded and often very rude, to boot. He’s not exactly popular with his fellow scholars and the tutors around him. Things take a turn for the darker as—after a drunken night out—one of the scholars called Atif Tomalin is found dead after being hit by an oncoming train at Bleecker Station. Overcome with grief, some of the scholars suspect foul play.

Similar to the way consciousness is—possibly—a constant hallucination[3]; that is, it predicts and projects reality to its best estimations, the murder mystery part of the novel is a constant projection of the genre’s most common memes. However, as our sleuth Carmen Green—fellow Crick scholar and Kierk’s love interest—tries to distinguish patterns in the mysterious circumstances around Atif ’s death, all her leads are MacGuffins.

To wit: while the animal rights activists protesting against the animal trials[4] taking place at NYU—and they do have people infiltrating the campus—they did not murder Atif. Similarly, while DARPA does co-finance the Crick scholarship, it does not have dark intentions—as the next MacGuffin suggests—performing lobotomies on actual humans. In reality, the homeless people hired for research are part of a non-intrusive set of tests for bona fide research. Also, Antonio Moretti—Kierk’s old mentor whose presence hangs over him like a dark cloud—is not some mastermind behind a conspiracy to oust competing consciousness research (of the kind Kierk would perform), but merely an eminent scientist truly believing in his own work.

As such, Atif’s death appears to be an accident, and all attempts to search for ill intent are like the patterns our consciousness tries to project on reality that are, in fact, slightly off, and need to be corrected, or refined, along the way. Simultaneously, the meme of MacGuffins is playfully subverted (everything is a MacGuffin, there is no true lead).

The reader might even take the consciousness metaphor to the logical end (for this novel), namely that Kierk Suren represents consciousness. Examples abound: when others use or propose approaches to explain consciousness that do not mesh with his vision, Kierk forcefully rejects or subverts them, arguing with extreme force and rudeness, imposing his expected patterns on those who disagree with him, similar in the way our consciousness imposes predicted patterns our sensory input before it reaches the brain. Analogous to the way consciousness tries to predict reality every step of the way (and tweaks its predictions if they prove to be off), Kierk tries to prescribe the way consciousness works and woe to all who disagree with him, as he will enforce his predictions onto them with all his might.

In the end, though, both reality and common sense win out. Kierk is obsessed with finding out how consciousness works and is aware of his obsession. It’s so strong that he initially tries to estrange the love of his life—Carmen Green—in order to protect her from being destroyed by his obsession.

This is where the Bildungsroman tropes come into focus: Kierk has not really changed, has not really learned from his mistakes. If Hoel wanted to subvert this particular trope—the protagonist makes a spiritual journey towards healing—then he fakes it all the way to the last chapter. Kierk doesn’t seem to learn, doesn’t want to adjust his vision of consciousness despite all the evidence against it. Something must break. . .

But before that happens, there are some estranging parts in this novel. In particular, while Hoel said in his own substack[5] that Kierk Suren is definitely not a Mary Sue character, it is Carmen Green who clearly takes that role. She’s perfect in every way, as she has unreal beauty (has been a professional model) in combination with a very sharp brain, together with the grit to perform a task she’s committed herself to (finding out the true cause of Atif’s death) until the logical conclusion. This might be the other trope that isn’t subverted in The Revelations, as Carmen remains a Mary Sue throughout. The only thing I can think of is that a hyper-obsessed Kierk needs an idealised—not fine-tuned—concept like true love to shake him off his obsession. Or a lerxt into wonderland[6] that has the effect of bringing him down to Earth, of getting him out of the nightmare—which is just a different kind of dream—he’s been living.

Because eventually Kierk does have an overarching vision, but one that’s such an anti-climax[7] that he knows it needs more research. An amount of research he might not be able to complete in his lifetime, so he might as well employ other sources of happiness, meaning Kierk and Carmen leave the Crick scholarship and accept an offer from the Sorbonne University in Paris.

But before that happens, there’s the revelation, that is, Kierk’s final vision. There is an extreme branch of scientific philosophers who take the observer effect to its logical conclusion[8]; that is, the whole chain of events that led to the rise of conscious beings happened because then these conscious beings can observe the Universe into existence. The Revelations turns that around. In a tweet of April 5, 2021, the author said that “the main purpose of the brain is to generate a stream of consciousness”. The big reveal of his novel—or the main delusion of its main character—could be worded as: “the main purpose of reality is to create the conditions for consciousness to arise.” Your average solipsist would agree, and maybe that’s another way to view consciousness: as the ultimate solipsist.

For the final spoiler, The Revelations might be subtitled as “there are no revelations”. It’s MacGuffins all the way down as consciousness tricks us into accepting its view of reality, predicting it and re-adjusting its predictions until they’re indistinguishable from the real thing. As such, consciousness might be the ultimate adapter, changing us until we recognise, then rise above our environment, and become master of our reality[9], filled with delusions of grandeur.

Until we enter a different environment, such as outer space[10].

[1] Some would say consciousness is our perception;

[2] The Overfitted Brain: Dreams evolved to assist generalization, by Erik Hoel, September 25, 2020;

[3] At least, according to Professor Anil Seth in his recent book Being You (released October 1, 2021);

[4] And the way the lab mouse and macacques are treated certainly provides a rationale for their grievances;

[5] “Literary Exorcisms—On finishing my novel The Revelations”, The Intrinsic Perspective, June 15, 2021;

[6] Obligatory Rush reference: see La Villa Strangiato, section IV (and ‘Lerxt’ was one of Alex Lifeson’s nicknames);

[7] This is the biggest problem—and challenge—when writing a novel about consciousness, one of the greatest mysteries known to man: each proposed solution or vision will seem anticlimactic in comparison with the power of the mystery;

[8] John Barrow’s and Frank Tipler’s “Final Anthropic Principle”;

[9] Obligatory Black Sabbath reference;

[10] Obligatory promotional mention of my WiP;