My Life With Leibowitz

A Canticle for Leibowitz is just a great book, one of a kind.

That’s the cover of the 1964 4th reprint of the 1961 Bantam edition. I think I got it at a garage sale in 1972 or 73, or maybe at the Old Thresher’s Reunion in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, about that same time.

My Personal Lens

I am the descendant of 400 years of Mennonites, radical reformation protestants. I grew up in a town dominated by Southern Baptists, in a state dominated by Southern Baptists. I absolutely did not understand Catholicism. I thought Roman Catholic was a minority denomination. I did not know what a “canticle” was, I did not notice the oddness of the title.

The Story

The story looks like three pulp magazine stories stitched together, which was pretty common in that period. The story tracks monks of the abbey of Saint Leibowitz over the centuries, as North America recovers from a nuclear war. That nuclear war happened between 1965 and 1980. Here and now, 2025, it’s another of those yesterday’s tomorrows stories.

The most memorable character is the protagonist of the first section, Brother Francis. I imagine that’s Brother Francis depicted on the cover of my copy, with the note written by I.E. Leibowitz that Francis finds in the remains of a fallout shelter clutched in his hand.

I think the environs of Sanly Bowitz, the abbey of the Order of Leibowitz, is just south of where Albuquerque is.

There is some vague mysticism. The (same?) apparently Jewish goat herder shows up in all three parts of the story. It’s not enough to spoil things, but enough to spice them up a bit.

The Fallout

Some time during the mid 1970s, when I was about in 6th grade, I heard some news story on the radio about how the government estimated a nuclear war would put the world back to stone age technology. That made me think that Walter Miller had based his story on a serious evaluation of the after effects of a nuclear war. Apparently, it’s actually based on Miller’s WW2 experiences.

In 9th grade, circa 1975, I had to suffer through a state-mandated “health” class, although my report card says “Emergency Preparedness”. This class, taught by an unmotivated PE “coach”, consisted of watching black-and-white “civil defense” flicks. I learned how to stay in a basement with covered windows for two weeks while fallout radioactivity died down. I learned to duck and cover when I saw the flash of a nearby atomic or thermonuclear blast. This seemed extra useless to me, because I read A Canticle for Leibowitz. The day of the final, the only test, probably the only gradable artifact for the class, I had a blinding headache, which I now recognize as a migraine. I scored 100% on the final.

The typography of the report card is execrable. It looks manually typed on an inferior typewriter. The letters are mono spaced, and not uniformly aligned with the baseline. Some of the letters have the lumpy, non-uniform inking that manual typewriters produced.

Adair County R-III schools used E-S-M-I-F instead of A-B-C-D-F letter grades. I cannot imagine why they chose that. If this is the quality and category of material that ends up in your “permanent record”, we have nothing to fear.

I was pretty concerned about nuclear warfare as a minor. I actually wrote my senator at the time, Thomas Eagleton about the issue.

I hypothesize that I wrote Sen. Eagleton in order to meet a requirement of one of the Boy Scouts’ “citizenship” merit badges, probably Citizenship in the Nation. I have no recollection of writing the letter that got me a reply from Eagleton.

Senator Eagleton’s letter reads:

Dear Mr. Ediger:

Thank you for taking time to write and share your views with me.

It is extremely difficult at the present negotiating stage on SALT II to make a firm judgment on any arms limitation proposal that ultimately is agreed to by the United States and the Soviet Union. I prefer to deal with specific aspects of any negotiated agreement at the appropriate time, and in a way where public debate can focus on the specifics of the agreement in concrete terms.

The United States continues to develop the necessary technology for various new strategic systems and in conducting the SALT II negotiations in the context of the current strategic balance. I can assure you that the Administration and the Congress will make sure that any final agreement clearly reflects the best interest of the United States.

Sincerely,

Tom Eagleton

Thomas F. Eagleton
United States Senator