Thanks. I think I'll pass. I only read Canticle because my older son had read it and had been very much affected by it. He wanted to be able to discuss it more in depth with me, so I read it. Then, in a moment of weakness last autumn, I also agreed to let my 10 year-old son read it, too.
Miller wrote a sequel to Canticle, but I'm made to understand that it was a poor work, marred especially by Miller's encroaching mental illness and ostensible loss of faith. Knowing his end, one can see foreshadowing of it in Canticle. Very sad.
sitetest
Sometimes, as C.S. Lewis's guide George MacDonald says in The Great Divorce, the author doesn't have a clear idea of what he did mean.
I wouldn't read Riddley Walker again, but it was an amazingly well written book. It's written entirely in a hypothetical post-apocalyptic English. The only way to understand it is to read it out loud to yourself. It will drive you nuts for the first chapter or so, then you 'get' it.
Miller ended himself before he could end this pathetic sequel. Other hands finished it. Depression compounded by a priest's refusal to remarry him and his ex-wife, rumor has it.
The original, and worthy, book was written as an act of penance for his role (as a navigator) in the WWII bombing raid that destroyed Monte Casino, the oldest monastery in Europe. May the perpetual light shine upon Walter Miller, and may the souls of this faithful departed through the mercies of God rest in peace.