I just finished reading a novel by Penn Jillette--magician, atheist, provocateur and storyteller-- who possesses one of the liveliest minds operating in a public space. Just-published "Random" is about a man who makes chance his god and rolls a pair of dice to decide most of his life's important decisions. And while the book is more a thought experiment than a novel, it's interesting, clever and ultimately humane.
The setup is pretty straightforward: just before his 21st birthday Bobby, a malleable Las Vegas native, finds himself in an untenable position. His father owes a debt he cannot pay to a mobster who's more interested in sending his debtors a message about what will happen to them if they cannot pay than he is in setting up a reasonable payment plan.
If the debt is not paid in full by the deadline, Bobby and his family--father, mother and sister-- will be killed by the mobster's henchman.
Bobby correctly reasons that his father is worthless in this situation, so he takes it upon himself to raise the unraisable sum. Since he lives in Las Vegas, there is the slightest chance that he can. Luck delivers him a stake sufficient to risk on a roll of dice to come up with several times what he owes. And because in this universe the author is god, it pays off; he can save the lives of his family and is, as Bobby Axelrod of "Billions" would say, "a little rich."
If this happened to another protagonist, they might declare their faith in a higher power, give (almost) all their money to the poor, and dedicate themselves to a life of spreading the good word. This is sort of what happens here, only Bobby pledges himself to "Random," a philosophy where his major life choices will be determined by the roll of a pair of dice.
"The Dice now owned Bobby," Jillette writes. "He owed his life to Chance. He had a superpower under our yellow sun. Bobby knew and accepted that life was Random. Bobby was enlightened. Siddhartha was dead. Bobby was Buddha."
Jillette, in a statement about the writing of the book. says he got the idea from a woman he worked with who, after the suicide of her brother, began living her life by the dice. He doesn't follow the philosophy, but understands the allure of abdicating one's free will.
I don't think Jillette will get too mad at me for saying that everything that follows in his (very funny, gleefully profane) book is subordinate to that striking central idea. Jillette is a good-natured atheist who believes that a lot of people who consider themselves believers share many of his ideas.
What he's done with Bobby and the dice is set up his own limited-purpose religion drained of moralistic cant and opportunities for hypocrisy. Bobby has (partially) given up his own agency.
But the dice don't make every decision; if he clearly wants to make a choice, he simply makes it. And the dice will not make him do anything he doesn't want to do; he assigns options he only likes a little bit the least probable rolls (snake eyes and double sixes) while the more palatable options get better odds. If 80 percent of Bobby really wants to make a particular choice, he might assign that choice to multiple possible outcomes; if he rolls a six, seven or eight, he'll make himself a flutternutter sandwich, say.
There exists the possibility that the dice will tell him to do something extreme or dangerous, but only because Bobby has put these possibilities in play. And having programmed and weighted the possible outcomes, Bobby religiously follows the edicts of the dice. He does what his god tells him.
And we could go deep into the philosophical weeds here. Most of us might agree that we all ought to be free to follow the dictates of our conscience, but what if our conscience is telling us we have a duty to behead the infidel or to blow up the family planning clinic? No doubt a lot of murderers are sincere in their beliefs that they have been chosen by some supernatural power to avenge the offended dignity of their god, which probably isn't called Random but might produce the same outcomes.
As a friend observes, one way to look at the various rituals of faith that human beings sometimes engage in is to see them as the result of intermittent reinforcement. (Once the big chief stubbed his toe on a rock and the skies opened up and quenched the parched island, so now whenever they perceive a need for rain, the island folk hop around on one foot.)
The nature of faith is such that it invites ridicule, which is one reason why it is so hard for most of us to hold onto it. It's easy to ridicule Bobby's faith in the dice--almost everyone he meets in the novel makes fun of him for his beliefs--but it's also easy to admire his commitment.
One clever thing Jillette does with "Random" is casting as its protagonist a feckless chameleon of a kid. Bobby doesn't really have an identity outside of a deep-seated aversion to hurting people. He's sexually fluid and not particularly interested in anything beyond his next Starbucks drink. So early on in the novel, after he's secured his family's safety and his own fortune, he uses the dice to decide what kind of person he would be.
He didn't want more freedom, Jillette observes, he wanted less.
So Bobby assigns identities to the various rolls of the dice--among the 11 choices, each assigned to a possible numerical outcome, were such possibilities as metal head, Buddhist, stereotypical gay man and beatnik. The two longest shots are liberal American/MSNBC and Conservative American/Fox News.
Sure enough, Bobby rolls snake eyes, and therefore decides to become a consumer of politics as entertainment. He buys the T-shirts and the bumper stickers and seeks out the milieu of the team the dice has chosen, and finds he fits right in. He's comfortable as part of the tribe, he feels himself slowly expanding to fit the mold. Had this not been a novel by Penn Jillette, he might have decided he'd found himself.
Many will disagree, but I think this is exactly what a lot of us do. We simply decide on an identity, acquire the necessary accessories, and learn to live the part. Having outfitted ourselves with the externals, we--like British actors--establish a character from the outside in.
That hardly seems stranger--or more authentic--than letting the dice choose your path.
pmartin@adgnewsroom.com