I read quite a few books this summer and had intended to write a blog post about each. Well, that never happened, and I don’t have the time (or memory) to do that now, but I still wanted to at least post a little something about a few of them. Most of these are “classics” that I figured I should be familiar with as a future English teacher.
1984 – George Orwell, 1949
This book is probably most known for the Big Brother concept, which has been brought up a bit now and then due to all the talk about wiretapping and other tracking of citizens that the US government has been doing. The society is basically kept in complete fear all the time in order to allow the government to get away with just about anything (gee, sounds familiar…). When the main character starts to violate the rules, he uncovers new possibilities. The first third of this book was pretty interesting to me, but it really started to lose my interest after that. The final third was frustrating, because I expected a lot more to be done with the concepts in the book. It’s a pretty good book and one of the better classic novels, but it’s thicker than it needs to be.
Brave New World – Aldous Huxley, 1932
This book takes place about five hundred years in the future, when all of society is controlled through genetic modifications and “sleep learning” (the 1932′s equivalent of neural programming). It’s always interesting to see how a particular author predicts the future and I was entertained by some of the ideas which aren’t entirely far off. The overall society is controlled by genetic modifications so that people are created with specific attributes (dumb and strong, smart and good looking, etc.), depending on their future occupations. The described dystopia seems to largely criticize the projected future of America and various utopias from other novels. When a “savage” who did not grow up in this world is brought into it, we start to see the stark contrasts. Overall, I think this book was decent.
Slaughterhouse-Five – Kurt Vonnegut, 1969
I’m not really sure how to do a reasonable mini-review of this book. The story follows Billy Pilgrim whose life is told in random sections, jumping throughout his life in a seemingly random manner. There is still a sense of chronology, but it’s continuously broken up by various bits of Billy’s life. The good thing about all this is that there are section breaks every page or two, so it’s an easy novel to read in your spare time. The bad thing is that if someone else is reading it, you can’t really ask, “How far are you?” When events aren’t in a clear sequence, it’s tough to say what part you are at. This is an entertaining novel and it brings up quite a few issues (fate, free will, death/war, etc.); it also breaks a lot of conventions. Check it out if it sounds interesting to you, but be prepared to say, “And so it goes…” much more in your life…
The Catcher in the Rye – J. D. Salinger, 1951
Of the books I read this summer, this one is my favorite. The main character, Holden Caulfield, is a teenager who is trying to figure out his life. There isn’t any big event that the book is building up to, rather, it’s a journey for Holden to discover who he is and what he wants in life. Holden is such a compelling and realistically entertaining character, that he really drives the novel. I would have liked to have read this book in high school and think it’s worth picking up if you haven’t read it, especially if you know some teenagers whom you might be able to recommend it to.
The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925
If I had to summarize this book in three words, I would simply rename it “The Mediocre Gatsby.” It takes place in the 1920′s and is essentially the story of one man trying to fit in with the upper class, while suspending his judgment. The normal narrative arc isn’t very clear, so you have to read quite a bit into it before you really know what it’s building up to. The climax nearly hits you before you figure out what the whole point of the novel is (or maybe I’m just slow…). This book is okay, but definitely not “great.”
The Religion War – Scott Adams, 2004
Yes, this book was written by Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert. It’s a follow-up to the novel God’s Debris (which I previously blogged about), though it’s not really a sequel in the traditional sense (ideas are carried forward more so than characters). This book takes place a little bit in the future when tensions between “terrorists” and Christians have built up to the point of serious global threat. This is a really fast read (you can finish it in just a few hours) and you’ll have to do a bit of belief suspension, but it was entertaining for me. I’d recommend reading God’s Debris first, not because it is really vital to understanding this novel, but because I think GD was more thought-provoking and thus more entertaining. The writing styles are someone similar, though GD is described as a “thought experiment” and TRW is a narrative, so reading GD first will give you heads-up as to whether you might want to read TRW. Besides, God’s Debris is available for free online!
Most of these books can be found in used book stores for only a few dollars, but they’re not that much new either. Please leave comments if you have any additional thoughts about these books or if you have any suggestions for future reading.
Ian,
I was working in an outlet bookstore and picked up The Religion War and read right on through it. But you know what? I don’t really remember just what it said. I was impressed at the time but all has faded away.
I started The Great Gatsby but didn’t get very far. I have visited the Fitzgeralds’ apartment in Montgomery, Alabama, which is a small museum.
Thanks for the reviews.
Robert
I love dystopian stories, so I really enjoyed 1984 since it is the proto-distopia on which most other stories were based. I thought the ending was fitting.
I thought that the concept of “newspeak” was very intriguing as it illustrated that you could control the population by controlling the language. This theme shows up in many other places in literature.
Also, consider how the sort of censorship that was perpetuated by the Ministry Information could be implemented in a society that is mostly paperless. Fast forward to 2084 and imagine a world where no one prints paper magazines, newspapers or books because everyone has a little neural implant that allows them to browse the web and read news/books while walking around or sitting it the park. How easy would it be for government officials to go back and redact archives of major news agencies, photoshop pictures, and edit archival video footage to prove that Oceania was always at war with Eurasia.
Brave New World was also good – in fact it almost predicts the dangers of genetic engineering before it was even remotely feasible.
Good or bad, I believe these books are important to read because you can clearly see their echoes in many works created after them.
@Robert: If you enjoyed The Religion War, you should definitely check out God’s Debris. It attempts to answer various human questions in the simplest means possible as a sort of thought experiment. The proposed answers are interesting and really make one think.
@Luke: Politics is definitely one place where you can find language manipulated quite a bit, though not (yet) to the point of Newspeak. For example, Republicans have used the phrase “time horizon” in order to avoid “timetable” when talking about withdrawal from Iraq. We also see it in the naming of position choices (e.g., pro-life vs. pro-choice).
The censorship would definitely be much easier further into the future. We’ve already seen news agencies modify transcripts to TV programs in order to try to change what people think was said. And, of course, we’ve seen plenty of instances of manipulating photos and images for various purposes, many of which made it onto news sites and into newspapers.
More than once I double-checked the publication date of Brave New World while reading it. Huxley definitely had some very interesting ideas and many weren’t far off from the realm of possibility.
A more recent example of the same basic concept was the movie Gattaca (1997). In it, people weren’t specifically created for a particular class, but the genetic difference between people who were born naturally and people who were born “scientifically” (i.e., with significant genetic modification) results in genetic discrimination. It’s definitely worth watching if you haven’t seen it yet.
Yeah, I was going to mention Gattaca in reference to Huxley.
Also from more recent language manipulations – the current government had quite a few of those. More memorable was the “Clear Skies Act” which ironically relaxed many of the emission regulations and extended most of the implementation deadlines set forth in the Clean Air Act. You vote against the act and you look like anti-environmentalist. You vote for it and you are doing disservice to the environmentalist cause.