The Passage: post 2 of many

85% of the way through the book is a far more respectable point at which to review a book. Or so I tell myself, as twinges of guilt twinge my fingers. The Passage. Yes. I am not prone to the heeby jeebies. But I have the heeby jeebies. (Or guilt has found a chink in my very tattered armour.) You know, that sense that someone is in the room watching you. (I promise, they are not. No one has entered my apartment in at least two months.) Yikes. Yes. I said that.

The vampires in The Passage are called Virals (for obvious reasons - we imagine a pathogen is a more plausible explanation than a homicidal maniac or evolutionary cannibal or humanoid with hollow teeth containing venom). (Really, aren't we excusing cretins like Vlad the Impaler and Dexter by suggesting a sudden impulse to kill people is excusable - provided they wear a mouth guard, of course, and have some glimmer of humanity in their eyes - how do you even see that?)

Moving on, crab-style from that rant, because you want to keep these ferals in sight at all times.

One character realises quite soon in the book that if you can see a Viral, you are for all intents and purposes dead, unless you have the reflexes of Clint Eastwood or Jason Bourne. Which is, as it turns out, true. And those who aren't killed by the Virals are killed by their fellow uncontaminated humans, which apocalyptic movies, Vlad the Impaler, war and the tardiness of the UN tell us, too.

These things are like Darkwing Duck but without the duck; Batman without the ridiculous outfit; Riddick without a single chink of humanity in his eyes (the glimmer in his eyes I can see, but I don't think that's humanity). The undead, whose souls presumably dispersed upon death, as generally happens. I hope. The undead moving so fast I can't tell you whether they walk, glide, fly or drop. But you know where they have been. Because these dead people aint ever going to walk again, soul or not.

Are you creeped out? Good. So am I. Because people are still worse.

I am projecting now. This book isn't The Road or Blindness by a long shot. I would slot it onto a shelf next to Wool. There is progressively less horror and philosophy as the protagonists walk the long road, and more human drama. But as you may have noticed, projections of these 'smokes' are snuggled in the rooms around my apartment, watching me. So I am walking around crab-like - metaphorically. Really, I think my walk is more of an amble, as I wander from room to room forgetting why I am there.

I can't tell you what these things represent to me because I have no idea. And as you can imagine, because choosing a brand of coffee is an existential crisis that takes me at least 15 minutes, I have thought long and hard about it. My unconscious is moot on this one. Maybe - and bear with me here - they aren't a metaphor for anything. Maybe they are just awful and my brain can't let chaos be. Maybe I am being unfair, because I want to find that humanity in their eyes, but I can't (partly because someone else wrote this and he's not saying; partly because, seriously, how would one do that?).

There is another reason I am annoyed with this great book: there is a sequel. I imagine the author was halfway through this book and bagged a publisher, who said, let's draw this out so people will pay more because George RR Martin and every other author since JR Tolkien figured that their landscape was broad enough to justify more than 1 000 pages. To which I say, have you read that original trilogy? Tolkien invented new languages and peoples, and wrote detailed back stories that no one who hasn't read Ulysses will ever read.

This great book has plot holes so big you'd need a canoe to cross them. For example (and these aren't spoilers because they smack you in the first ten pages) 100 years after the fall of humanity, people are using original batteries and rifles, and eating canned food. This is a plot hole the size of the one (one of the ones) in The Walking Dead: no one knows what a zombie is. Robert Kirkman (one of the creators) says that there is no zombie literature in Rick's world. Which suggests it is an alternative universe, which opens up another can of worms (as rank as the 100-year-old ones).

The author, Justin Cronin

Whatever excuse the author comes up with - and it will be an excuse - I may not want to canoe that divide, however great this book. My brain wants to expel these Virals from my dusty corners - it wants closure.

The next book is called The Twelve. Again, no spoilers: the title refers to the 12 original Virals, who were developed by the US as a weapon (they have a habit of destroying the world - first the internet, now this). But it's not what you think - just read it - because I am terrible at summarising plots, people. There was a specific sub-plot that was picked out at the beginning of the story, which has petered out, no doubt to appear in the second book, but the main plot is losing momentum now without it. Or maybe not. I am only 85% of the way and maybe the book will dislocate my brain the way The Road did.

Hopefully the smokes will get bored with my reclusiveness and go peeping Tom someone else. Although, do I want them to? And this is why it takes me 30 minutes to make breakfast.

Anthem

Everyone has an opinion about Ayn Rand. Hordes of people have opinions about those opinions. The poles of these opinions are like the US and USSR during the Cold War, except that the Cold War was important. I even had an opinion before I read anything by her. (No, I’m not going to tell you yet. I want to keep you on this page for longer to make my analytics look good.) Chances are you're rooting for the US, right? Spoiler alert: So was Rand.

To make up for trying to reduce your loyal following of my blog to mere stats, I will tell you that Rand made me very angry when reading Anthem. This is a novella about a boy who lives in a future where education and progress is dictated by 'process'. Teenagers are allocated jobs that determine where they live and how they spend their time - for their whole lives.

And here I was ready to start ranting (say it with a soft and extended sound, like 'A' in 'Arthur'). Then I realised I was about to drop a spoiler. Which is not a bad thing, I contemplated, because then you won't have to read it and risk a blood pressure spike. But we live in a free society (well, I do and if you don't, chances are the entire internet is banned anyway).

Without revealing important plot points (blood pressure spike), Rand is very obviously pitting communism and socialism against democracy and capitalism. Because obviously those pairs are blood siblings. Like Sigourney Weaver and aliens. Wherever Ms Weaver is, an insect-like alien slobbering all over itself is preparing to rear in uncharacteristic silence behind her. In literary critique, you always avoid attributing something to the author, because how can you know that your and their opinions coincide?

In this case (and because this isn't critique, more like... commentary. Kinda like telling someone everything you see and think while riding on a mountain trail. Except that books are far more important and I have the muscles of an old lady) (what was I saying again?) we do know what she intends - no, wait, we do and we don't. If you are questioning my use of conjunctions, remember Ms Weaver. There are almost entire scenes without aliens in, so that no one believes her, but the aliens are still waiting, even if only in her memories.

Ayn Rand is unapologetically in favour of democracy and capitalism, the latter being the spike in my blood pressure. In fact, she dares you to prompt her to apologise so that she can take some time to break your spirit. (Wow, that was harsh, right? I am unapologetically not in favour of capitalism, except that I want to be able to make money from my career and buy things I don't need. Well, I need them, but only because I want them.)

The majority of Anthem is spent in the city, cataloguing the ways in which oversimplified communism denies the human spirit's inventiveness, ability to adapt, curiosity and other things prized by capitalism. Because, clearly, being part of a community and, literally, communal life means you cannot choose your path in life. You will not create art or invent things or investigate the world or be able to think rationally. A fortunate side product is that no one in this city is starving, homeless or without access to medical care.

Yes. Well. I am trying to repress a desire to smack something. Only because it is unladylike. Instead, I swear.

When I was growing up, my father would try to provoke me into debates, because I have always been an opinionated liberal with the world on my shoulders and I am very easy to provoke. He had a copy of Fountainhead and said I should read it because it isn't what people say it is. According to him, the strands of the novel are knotted around a more humanistic perspective than their tautness suggests. 

I understand this now. As oversimplified and unfair as the portrayal of socialism is, the boy's egoism is oversimplified in inverse proportions. His arrogance - at his own (re)discoveries of science, sexuality and freedom - is not a sustainable model for good citizens. Unlimited freedom is not possible if there is more than one person - at some point, you will constrain someone else's freedom. This is a principle of democracy and justice: you have rights, to the point where they restrict someone else's rights.

For me, this humanism is revealed in his relationship with a girl his own age. They fall in love (or lust and general repressed sexuality), they skip through meadows and she declares herself his servant - sorry, wait, what?! 50 Shades of Grey where democracy is white and communism is black? So you reactivated your brain and began to think independently again and now you're a god? (Does this have anything to do with the fact that she's female and you're male? (Really easily provoked.))

I imagine Ms Rand grinning as she typed (obviously, with a typewriter). Grinning at her own mischievousness rather than any consideration of the reader. I imagine this because I enjoy pranking people and the joy comes of the art of the prank and so I laugh out loud while creating and always feel people don't appreciate the humour enough. I mean, c'mon, how do you not stand for a few minutes and appreciate the Alt, Ctl and Del keys lifted with a butter knife from your keyboard and lined up on the desk?

I am crediting Ms Rand with this because the suggestion is not very subtle - you can tie thread around a key, but you can still see there's an object inside and it's probably a key. The author would back me up here, if she weren't in capitalist heaven where life is really unfair because some people get a head start and keep on going and some get a head start but don't know what to do when pushed out the nest and some don't get a head start or anywhere and... you get the picture.

My mind keeps coming back to my glib comment about how the city is free of the problems of our cities. Because negotiating between the two poles is difficult and has rarely worked in modern memory, we should throw ourselves into one or the other - better the devil you know. There must be a middle ground, where creativity and drive meets universal shelter, food and health care. Honestly, I'm just contrary like that. But I'd like to imagine her grinning behind her typewriter, knowing I appreciate the prank.

Neuromancer

Being culturally aware and intelligent folk, you know that the Matrix (starring that master of expression, Keanu Reeves) was based on certain premises in Neuromancer by William Gibson. Which in turn drew from a rich philosophy of talk and debate and drunken theorising about the nature of 'reality' and our place in it. Don't be fooled by Cartesian Maths. That Descartes didn't need drugs to see that our senses are fallible and perhaps wholly untrustworthy. (Insert the rest of Western philosophy here.)

I didn't know all of this. Some filtered through during first-and-only year philosophy class, some of it I live and the rest I looked it up on Wikipaedia.

One of the articles includes a link to various religions. What now (brown cow)? I think. Buddhism, ok, I can see that. Certain sects of Buddhism believe we are living in a dream state, from lesser to more degrees. Some types of Hinduism believe we are ignorant to the 'real' reality. Sikh's believe that the natural world has two states and that we see the superficial layer. Huh. Who knew? I didn't.

The two things I really gleaned from that first-year class are:

• Choose an object, like a table. Define that class of object so it is unique from every other type of object in the world. A chair has four legs that support a rectangular piece of wood. So does a bench. So do certain raised buildings. Anyway you'd have to prove that your senses are accurate and you can't. Philosophers have been arguing this for years and some of these were smart. The senses cannot be trusted, but they're all we have, so let's move on.
• What if we are strapped up to a machine called the Experience Machine? This machine generates only pleasant experiences and we could pre-programme these experiences before plugging in. Would you choose to live in that world? Why? And could you consider that world 'real life'?

These are serious questions, folks - look lively.

Neuromancer is set in a world of wealth and poverty, with no middle class to mediate between them. Case, our hero (such a loose word), is a freelance hacker for various types of smugglers (he doesn't question what of). He is recruited by a new cowboy in town, Armitage, and his leatherclad sidekick, Molly, whose superpower is using sex instead of expressing emotions (she's a liberated woman). 'Recruited' isn't exactly the right word, because it suggests voluntary consent. No, he has a surgically implanted timebomb in his belly and only Armitage knows how to turn it off.

Off the three go, and then three become four when they pick up a heinous character named Riviera whose real superpower is manipulating reality - well, your sense of reality.

Case has a past (involving a woman, obviously), Molly has a past (involving sex, obviously) and Armitage has a past (very Jason Bourne-like - book Bourne not Matt Damon-Bourne, not obviously (although he obviously has a past)). Riviera has a past but he is all past. In another context, this might be touching (a sad but witty comedy where three misfits and a scumbag tackle their demons) except this is sci-fi, where very little is touching, bar occasional revulsion. But this is a post about the real and simulated, about meaning and value, and the matrix.

Early in the novel, a character suggests that Case is a simulation. He hushes the man hastily - perhaps the author hushes the man hastily. Loudly suspiscious, but it is never addressed again. Except, Case is extraordinarily good at what he does. He actually dies more than once in the matrix, where even death is death. Case also recalls a simulation of his early mentor (the one who taught him to run drugs) in the matrix, and the simulation insists he is that a collection of habits and thought patterns. But he can adapt to situations and assimulate new information. He also arranges for Case to switch him off i.e kill him.

On the other hand, the matrix Case plugs in to seems inflexible; it reminds me of the old dos software: black screen, glowing green characters and flickering cursor. You couldn't use it unless you could translate words into a syntax of '\'s.  These characters form the outlines of a city on top of the real city.

Then again, someone implies that the digital city is the real one. What happens next seems so bizarre it could only take place in a simulation. Shying just short of a spoiler and just to muddy the waters, an artificial intelligence named Wintermute keeps interfering. He actually convinces someone to adopt another personality and periodically takes over people's bodies. From the matrix. A dos-like thing.

I sense a ruse - yes, a ruse, people! I have a theory but my theory is a spoiler, and I took a vow never to, uh, spoil. Again. Although no doubt my opinion is scattered all over the previous paragraphs.

Instead let's dabble in some minor philosophy, in questions that actually take up large chunks of my week, as if tomorrow someone will knock on my door or the partition of my cubicle and ask me to choose a coloured pill. (I will look at them suspisciously and tell them I don't do drugs.) But, yes, let's pretend these are not life-defining issues. My burning question (no, it's not heartburn) is: what is the exact relationship between Case's world and the matrix? And is there a third 'reality'?

Which translates into: what the heck is going on around here? (Here being the world in which you are reading this blog. If you are reading it. And if this isn't part of the multi-verse, which would mean there would be realities in which you are reading my blog spiking out all over the place.)

I will stop there because you know what I mean and if you don't you have your own ideas and that's fine too. I must know (what the matrix is - I can wait for the answer to the other question until Morpheus knocks on my cubicle wall)! Someone fetch William Gibson, bring him here and I shall force him to tell. I shall read the original manuscript to him and point out all the errors until he breaks down and tells me. Or until he lies. Then I will go easy and read him my manuscript. He will be so charmed he will tell me the truth (probably 'I don't know') and publish my book under his own name.

The book was phenomenal, astronomical, universinomical. Whatever, just read the book, kidnap Gibson and one of you tell me.

Seriously though, I couldn't put it down. You could argue that there was too much unexplored, but that's what cinched it for me. I laced up my running shoes and hitched a ride. I was on my own journey (I won't say quest because my object eludes me still; although I know there aren't answers, any more than the Holy Grail exists, Dan Brown), supported by mounds and mounds of talk and debate and drunken theorising. I like a mystery that has no answer, as much as I like a tragedy.

A library, a pterodactyl and a communist walk into a bar

All hands on deck, front and centre (except you guys on the right and left), double time. Threat level: Cold War. All of it. Yes, the whole war. Just imagine you're under attack by capitalists or communists or global warming for you kids - whatever works. The crisis: I. 'I' am the crisis. 'I' am a crisis on the scale of the Cold War, capitalism, communism and global warming, and you are asking inane questions. Like, whether the Cold War and global warming are related. Kids. Psssht.

Just be glad I have put aside the d_st_pi_n fiction long enough for one post. Big Brother is hiding behind that lamppost next to my car and monitoring every piece of communication, except telepathy, and I need to throw them off the scent. Metaphorically.

Yes, I am kidding. You kids, you're a crisis all on your own.

This 'I' is the rabbit that philosophy pulled out of a hat a few hundred years ago. Or so they teach us in varsity. (Useful information, this.)

So apparently, before Shakespeare (yes, there was Chaucer) people did not have a concept of their 'selves'. They were part and parcel of their environments, like a child, whose selfishness is linked to the fact that they think the world is an extension of themselves. I'd hate to be you (again), kid, when you find out the truth. This explanation is a glorious mash-up, but that's why Google exists. True story. Only this last bit and not the rest.

I'm confusing myself just trying to write this. Revert to metaphor.

So this rabbit is easy to catch but difficult to hold. Nonetheless various philosophers manage to get hold of Rabbit and label him (with non-toxic paint, don't worry). The rabbit is labelled ontology and metaphysics and existentialism and Picasso - hey! - and other labels I can't read because they're in point 2 font and this rabbit is, as I mentioned, difficult to hold. And no I didn't label him with my name. Run free, Rabbit!

I want to be a library. Sorry, I couldn't find a solid foothold down from the metaphor's ledge, so I jumped. In the past, I have wanted to be a spreadsheet, a data capturer and a municipal grass cutter, so on the bright side, this is an improvement. As you have noticed (I assume nothing less of you), all are passive sponges whose water is instruction (my metaphors are mixing again - they get out too much).

The aforementioned improvement is that this option is more possible. Right? C'mon, you have to admit that being a library is far more possible than being a spreadsheet. Unless there is a reverse process of machine to AI and Pinocchio to little human kid (heavens above do I dislike that story). I mean, I could sew the books to my clothes, for example, but I would probably fall and get a hundred papercuts. Or I could learn the words of every book as in Fahrenheit 451.

Who am I? What am I (review on Neuromancer pending)? And more practically (apparently; personally, I'm in favour of the previous question so don't cry on my shoulder when you wake in the underbelly of the earth wearing scratchy clothes and AI thingimabobs are on your tail, because Descartes and I, we beeen dere), who do 'I' want to be?

Darn these books. The ones I have read and haven't and never will read, but not the ones I don't want to read because, well, I don't care enough to darn you. They really mess with your head. Although, mine was a little messy to start with. Nya nya I never make my bed so there. These books (pssssht) had me convinced that being a grown-up meant sailing through life and over bumps with elegant prose flowing from one's mouth. My mouth at least.

I had written my book of life: I had a goal and a plan and both involved books because, you know, if I were allowed to, I'd build a fort out of books and only come out once every two weeks to go to the library. I distinctly remember having a goal and a plan, but I've tippexed over them so many times I've forgotten them both now. But on the acknowledgements page of my book, it says: books do not teach you how to live; they teach you how to live in a book. Which I would do, if one would offer.

Two paragraphs later and I know what I can't be: a spreadsheet, a library or myself in a book. And don't tell me everything is possible, you, unless you want to show me how to physically morph into a tabby pterodactyl or be a library!

Life teaches you how to live life - a pity the librarian didn't read over the terms and conditions with me. I mean, I was like six. I doubt I could spell library. Don't defect! My fort of books is still standing. In here, life is elegant (unless you count Michel Houllebecque or Aryan Kaganov), even the bumps, which are more like speedbumps than the fins of mako sharks. A school of them. Have I mentioned that I dislike the ocean?

How about this: if I stop posting about That Kind of Fiction, can I be a pterodactyl? C'mon, I live in a literary fantasy, so all you need to do is write a character who morphs into a giant leathery bird into my book of life. I'll throw in my laptop.

Fahrenheit 451

A plain cover, the title in orange and black, something like the forks of a flame. If you squint. Jacket trapped in durable plastic, folded into sharp corners. Hardcover. The paper thicker than that of popular fiction so you can only see the type on the back page by holding it up to the light. Smells like painted and peeling concrete, water somersaulting from a fountain, green green green (artificially so especially in this heat wave says my conscience, as sprinklers spit and then spray, but then I doubt the paper is made of recycled paper).

I really enjoyed reading Fahrenheit 451. Or I really enjoyed the experience of Fahrenheit 451. Or both. Or my senses really enjoyed the physical book. Or all or maybe none. Have I left anything out, you? Maybe I enjoyed the unexpected intellectualisings - the subtexts to the subtexts to the subtexts. Which is all philosophy is really - layers and circles - but then so is life. And on we skip.

I took the book out of the library (no, you don't get diseases from handling the books (and you germaphobes will be the end of human race, I swear it) and whoop the library is closed until mid-March for renovations so I am less likely to get a fine). Which explains the cover and the paper but not the smell - note the smell of a book is as important a criterion as the first paragraph of said book, but in this case the smell is that of where I was when I read the book. In case you missed that plot twist.

Without conceding that lists have any value on the internet beyond helping bored employees look busy, I may have searched for two sets of valuable information (a set, and not a list, having value, you): best dystopian fiction and best fiction of the previous century. I may have found Fahrenheit 451 on both lists - sets - so whether or not I enjoyed the book or the book or the experience or the thinking, other people think it's grand too.

The book is set in an America where people have lost interest in, well, thinking, and have succumbed to the lullabies of popular media. Years earlier, books were piled in corners until the local government just banned the piles and started setting fire to them. Now, our protagonist's job is to burn them. He likes his job so much he can describe the way paper burns, in detail. Like a serial killer recounting his crimes.

As in most dystopian novels, the more shallow the characters seem, the more secrets they keep in their depths. And to be honest, most of the characters seem shallow as a puddle in the beginning. In the middle, so does the plot. But both carry what were then and are again fashionable ideas, and ping pong them around until the ideas get lost in the bushes. Where presumably future writers are meant to find them or bury them or make them into bobble heads.

I was set in a courtyard in a garden. See lyrical prose above. My mind was set, is set, in the body of a superhero whose skin is made of rubber. (I could erase pencil markings with my finger alone, imagine!) In other words, I prefer to think (and read) than do. The circling makes me dizzy but that makes it easier to ignore the dystopian reality that the here and now is.

The future of Fahrenheit 451 was possible but didn't happen, as much as people in my industry cry that books might as well be burnt because no one even bothers to put them in piles anymore. (Drama queens...) Instead, the media have spawned sub-groups upon sub-groups upon sub-groups. Everyone is carved into niche segments with products targeted like rifle lasers on them. Everyone reads although they may not know it.

But I don't think the probability, nevermind possibility, of that future was meant to be much deeper than the characters or plot. (The novel is short, too, which helps.) Let's assume you are unique literally in terms of genes (nature) and experience (nurture), but not in terms of your biology. Some of your behaviour is shortwired. Sorry, but you were set up. Like the men and women in the novel who sit in their living rooms staring at their walls which are now holograms.

What behaviour, you cry. What behaviour is shortwired?

Hush now. Do you have earrings? A tattoo? Do you wear your socks up or rolled down? Is your hair short or long? You were set up to be belong somewhere, to be a social animal, to wallpaper your mind with identical patterns. Or something. Read the book. After you finish reading this blog.

My experience of the book is unique, right: A 30-year-old hardcover, identified through a web search, loaned from the library, read in a courtyard in the sun, by someone lives in a slightly askew mind. But how differently would I behave if raised in the dystopia of Fahrenheit 451? Even if I thought differently? How odd that I didn't connect this with another earlier novel. But I'm not going to give the game away. I'm sure you can find the answer in a review, but I'm giving you a chance to be unique.

The Story of General Dann and Mara's Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog: Part 1 of 1

I promised. I offered up a handful of things I don't really want. Including My Point. My Point is like the law prohibiting jay-walking: it is a good idea but who really abides by it? Apparently there's a municipality nearby that is concerned about drunken people running across the highway. There are bridges, but I mean really, don't we all think we are invincible as squint at our shoes and concentrate on slowing the world around us down? We can't even sound out jay-walking then.

Granted I am still squinting at my shoes willing them to move while the rest of y'll impersonate Usain Bolt. Which still means you only have a one in four chance of making it.

However, now I am living up my to promise, which means I get to keep him. My Point. And all the rest of the things I don't really want. You can keep them if you want? I will hold on to the permanent marker though. When I am next incapacitated, maybe I can ink the world down. You gave that up too easily. What's your game? Or do you not care? Oh, you already have one? Both a point and a marker? A guinea pig?

My promise was to keep you updated about my reading of The Story of General Dann and Mara's Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog. (It's not exactly Reuter's story of the day, but I have promised you many other things, and none of them were any more enthralling.) I finished the book this morning. Approximately morning. Midday.

It is shorter than Mara and Dann, despite the lengthy title (try saying it as you're drawing wings on your shoes; question: if you are flying in the direction that the world is spinning, will it appear to stay still?) and its subject. The novel is concerned with history and the discipline of History. Rather, the protagonist is concerned - agitated - and incapacitated by the idea that records of the past have been lost.

In the prequel, Mara was the one concerned with the past. Now Dann has left her at 'the Farm' with her husband and is following the fractal perimetre of the coast as if he is looking for something he hasn't left behind. Maybe the search itself, the agitation, attaches to this concern of his sister's; maybe it is the proximity to the ice mountains that are 'Yerrup'.

I understand the anxiety: of not being able to hold... well, the world in my head. Of not recording every moment, as if the importance of the moment is in its living longer. Of not understanding why an ancestor has made something or done something. Of needing to understand because knowledge is an anchor - a resurrection of truth. Unlike Dann, I recognise that you can't create if you concern yourself with keeping the past alive. If you can't create, you weaken. If you can, you go to war over what is left.

Luckily we have Google so we can just sit back and let them run things. This reminds me of a book I once read, of a dystopia created by well-meaning politicians. Granted, I trust techies more than politicians.

Not to be flip, but being flip, Dann steals something else from his sister: crying at the drop of a hat. Or the shedding of dog hair. At first, these fits seem like a strength, of being able to recognise his traumas. But, as one character puts it, every refugee in the streams of refugees has suffered, but they route when given common cause and safety. Dann... needs a bib. Ok, that was flip. I am reluctant to replace this Dann with the Dann of the first book, however selfish and arrogant.

I can't decide whether the two books are similar or different. Is anything substantially new introduced? Does the second develop or resolve the themes of the first? Are the landscapes indicators of change or is the plot consistent despite their variations? Are the characters consistent or are the differences part of something else - the development of the themes, plots, pacing - or am I reading too much into what is just an happenstance of writing a sequel?

Mara and Dann is a few hundred pages short of an epic, but that's it. The siblings travel Ifrika, becoming exiles, refugees, soldiers, servants and royalty. Mara learns and analyses, inculcating her brother in her theories. Dann's knowledge (which he shares with Mara, more usefully) is that of survival. No matter how despondent the characters are, the reader always has the sense that knowledge is around the corner. Because this is an epic and this is how epics end. If seen on a movie screen.

 The Story of General Dann and Mara's Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog feels like an exposition of just one scene from the prequel, even though it takes place mainly in two settings and only one of the main characters is the same. It is Mara and Dann concentrated but also expanded. Like orange juice, if the concentrated stuff were half as good. Dann still doesn't have the same power of analysis as his sister and sometimes seems to give up his knowledge of survival, but he has a new power over people.

And there is part of the answer to our conundrum. (Remember the one about history and recording the present while living it. Remember?) ('Part of' because first prize would be actually having all the records that were destroyed, but that's a bit like drawing wings on your shoes and expecting the world to stop.)

Why are you still staring at me like that? I'm not SparkNotes; that's as far as I walk with you. Or run. That highway there? Ok, you first. I need to squint at my shoes.

Parts 2 & 3: Reading Mara and Dann

Dear Reader, I cheated you. This spiderweb's thread of trust that twangs between us? I danced on it. Stomp-style, not Swan Lake. Oh, that's called taking the high ground by jumping up and down on a thread in the middle of a sandstorm? Ok, then that's how I cheated you.

It's a metaphor.

No, I can't really dance on a spiderweb thread.

See, we have an arrangement between us: I post and you read. Sometimes I post and you read a year later because it popped up in a web search and you thought, lookee, another angsty literature major/writer/editor/publisher/nihilist who has taken the option of publishing her opinions without being peer reviewed.

If you could read before I could post, would we be using quantum computers? Or would you be like Kevin Spacey in that movie called Sum'in' Sum'in'? Or Bruce Willis in 12 Monkeys?

The pet guinea pig called My Point has nudged us home. While reading Mara and Dann, I wrote multiple posts. In my head. Yes, on the inside of my skull in smelly permanent market. Despite this, I can't recall a single one. Not so permanent, or so permanent they have sunk into the fleshy folds of my brain.

I finished Dann and Mara at least a week ago. Since then I have been restless. What now? The conclusion is double-edged: will we leave the characters in stasis or do we choose to hear a matching restlessness in the tone of Dann's voice? Also, what do I read next? I could choose Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood, but I don't want to pollute either with proximity to the other.

I paced along my bookshelf, read a set of satirical essays, paced some more, eyed Ulysses again (now that would exorcise Lessing's dusty, starving refugees from my brain) and, without looking directly at it, pulled The Story of General Dann and Mara's Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog ('General Dann' at least five times the rest of the type).

As I crawled into bed (lots of pillows to arrange in just the right geometric puzzle, y'know), I thought perhaps I had picked up the wrong one - the spines of a couple of other books look the same: dusted, with one or two purposeful figures, long titles. I was relieved. I would read whatever else it was because it wanted me to. (Self-justification is a wonderland of talking creatures and bullying objects. It's where the tooth fairy comes from.)

You know what happened, because you too come from this magical land. Or you are versed in the conventions of different types of text in different media. Or you just know I like to string you along, while really wanting to tell you my point. (Even reading is its own story.)

The average-sized, average-weight paperback with the sandblasted spine was The Story of General Dann and Mara's Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog. (While the cover of Mara and Dann is a classic Vintage design, with bars of gold and black, and one simple dominating image. The card stock is lighter, I think, but feels luxurious. The paper too: thinner but silky. A reader knows this is Literature of Some Weight (excuse the pun)).

Now, I was in my own sandstorm (you can replace 'sand' with an appropriate word), partly of my own making. But, and tell me if I'm alone here (knock once on your computer screen for 'yes'), deep in the recesses of my brain, next to the other posts I 'wrote', I believe everything is my fault. War, poverty, spilt ice cream. So, in my mind (but not in reality, because the upper echelons of my brain are rational), it is up to me to fix everything. Because clearly I am the only grown-up in sight. (That's 10-year-old me talking.)

At first the book was a paperweight I used to exercise my fingers and thumb. (A Kindle switches off after five minutes, which is an annoying reminder you aren't reading. Amazon can do many things, but not fix that.) Then I started to read because no one puts me in a corner, and gorged on images of war, poverty... and a puppy.

In Mara and Dann, the relationship between brother and sister is a powerful counter to the sandstorms of war and poverty around them. For me, it is the most important theme (but not the only - that would be dull) in the novel. This is up for some interesting debate, when you finish the book. The snow dog is that for me in the second novel (so far. If anything happens to that dog, I will find a portal of crazy into that world and maim the person who did it. And I don't have much (real...) experience in maiming, so it could get ugly).

Ms Doris Lessing's experiments in dystopian (is it postapocalyptic if you don't know what happened and whether everyone really did die and aren't holed up somewhere in Asia? And when an entire continent survived...?) landscape are dark but solidly knitted together. They accept the stupidities of human nature but offer some hope in the individual who is tried and found... to be a survivor. (This is a flash-summary (except, like, expanded) of what the posts stinking up my inner brain would have looked like.)

These books remind me that the world is, war and poverty aside, mostly a sandstorm (for many of us, at least). But that the world is also something to explore. If you are curious, you will experience many things, not always pleasant, but the trick is to maintain your distance, be an individual and be curious.

More to come. No, really this time. I vow on the twanging spiderweb thread. And my pillows and permanent marker. Ok and the guinea pig.

Doris Lessing, 1919-2013

A dull yellow (impersonating gold) trade paperback, in library-grade plastic and accompanying Dewy-decimal-system label on the spine. This was when I first met Ms Doris Lessing. (Disclaimer: it was not The Grass is Singing, because a BA degree is an overdose in colonial and post-colonial fiction. Even Gabriel Garcia Marquez is tainted by my grand nemesis The Heart of Darkness - Mr Achebe, while I'm with you about the layers upon layers - no, actually, just one deep layer - of racism, it is also one deeper layer of boring.)

The Golden Notebook. My first handshake with Ms Lessing. Not literally. Read above, please. Read the title. Focus!

I was about 20, in my gap year between one degree and the next, naively contemplating the theme of my adult life (naively because, as you know, dear reader, that theme snaps at your heels, accuses you, does back flips and takes your spot on the couch endlessly - right? Or is this just me?).

In brief (this book is anything but brief), the novel is comprised of five, different coloured (not literally, fool) notebooks and a binding story set in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. The protagonist is a middle-aged woman named Anna Wulf, living in London. (For those who know Ms Lessing's own story or have the power to Google, the plot(s) resonate.)

The book was written in 1962. We could ascribe the politics of the novel to the time - and this probably didn't hurt sales - but these themes could be traced back to the novel of the singing grass and Ms Lessing's liberal but tempered temperament. The themes (of both novels) include feminism and socialism (loaded terms, but that's why there's Wikipedia (again, encyclopaedia is spelt with an 'a', open source dorks).

Even as a teenager, perhaps even a tot, I have gravitated toward these liberal movements - I shudder as I type 'liberal' - literature tells me liberals are too impassioned to be rational, misguided and unfocused, appealing to human nature rather than the greed, envy, lust and basic selfishness that natural selection rewards. Trust me, I went to a politicised university and have seen two riots. Wait, now I'm a voyeuristic, liberalesque pseudo-intellectual. Still, call me a liberal and I will... moderate your comment. You.

The novel stalks the measure of the terms - from the perspective of the times, obviously; I later learnt more about the revolutions before and after (and no I'm not talking about #Occupy-a-park) - setting my principles in some sort of shape, like water in an ice block (just way more haphazard). Feminism was the one that immediately appealed to me. Given that a comment about women drivers is still enough to incite me to violence - or wait, my favourite "She's a smart cookie." Do I look like a gingerbread woman?

Today, when I think about the novel, some shadow of the experience of reading projects on the back of my head. Of sitting on a forest-green couch in a room painted yellow. Of the view from a kitchen window of a London street. The aura of importance that being involved in grand ideas provokes. Of a mother and her children, with the realisation that a child is a separate being to her. Of gritted teeth as a man, of common mind, tells a woman what feminism means.

None of these are necessarily written in the book - but they are what I see when when I think of it. They are a set of first dates with the world around ideas I thought were mine. A world which the mass media do not quite grasp.

Ms Lessing passed away about two months ago. The literary world is reeling. AS Byatt and Margaret Atwood have written tributes to her. Did you know she won the Nobel Prize for Literature five years ago? Did you know she had the same effect on me as touching a bell as it swings? Why is the whole world not reeling?

I had ordered two of her novels online and they were delivered the day before she passed: Mara and Dann and The Story of General Dann and Mara's Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog. Predictably (for me) they are dystopian novels, predictably (for her) written to explore political and social issues. Reading them feels like a ritual honouring her and her effect on me. What else will she teach me? What other ideas will she help me shape?

Doris Lessing was one of the greats, unassuming but influential. This post is my tribute to her and acknowledgement of her influence on me. And an assuaging of my guilt. I confess I have undervalued the author over the last few years. Read my archives and she doesn't appear, except as a passing reference. As often happens, it has taken her death and the reeling of my world to make me appreciate Doris Lessing and The Golden Notebook.

Footnote: Stay posted (har!) for reviews of Mara and Dann and its sequel. I will try to keep the soppy to a minimum.

World War Z

The book, not the movie. There's a book? There is a book. From the movie poster alone, I can tell they do not tell the same story. Well, ok, there are zombies (the book discourages this moniker, only partly tongue-in-cheek). But the story is definitely not told by Brad Pitt. (I can tell because of the accent.) And the story is in every other way almost completely different.

So, I haven't actually watched the movie. Everything in this post is anecdotal or based on Wikipedia (PS. open source geniuses, 'encyclopedia' is spelt 'encyclopaedia') or based on the movie poster with the remarkable visual illusion that we can see the curve of the earth.

The book is good. Read it. It sounds much better than the movie. It's a book, so it never is what it says it is. Or says it is about. The book is not really about zombies. To my mind, they don't feature except to propel the plot. The story is told entirely in transcripts collected by a man who works for the UN and never reveals where he was during the war. Like a professional researcher. (This isn't sarcasm or a plot hint. Researchers should really remain separate from their subject. Like anti-Jane Goodalls or -Pitts.)

This movie and its main character are just such easy bait.

Wait for it... Did you get it?

Because it is a report, World War Z is set after the zombies have been brought under control. (Hint: a zombie is by definition dead and therefore cannot be brought back to life. Gross. So yes, by massacring them.) The researcher travels around the world to meet key members of the resistance, who tell their stories, some about failures (most) and some about successes. The stories are technical, moving, military, esoteric, pathetic and disturbing.

Together they make a picture of how we behave in crises. Most of our behaviour is reactionary, I'm afraid. Some of it is a modern hubris, a belief that primordial threats guided by random desire can be destroyed by weapons and strategy, like night and the lightbulb (and a generator, obviously). Bravery is often pure instinct; but instinct is also reactionary.

Another common reaction is to blame. Most of the accusers are justified, but this is easy to say in hindsight. Again, reactionary.

It's easy to take the moral high ground in this story - become its saviour (my hint is: zombie's can't climb - get it?). I often take issue with dystopian novels, in that they assume the worst of human nature. Not all of us are going to start eating each other to prove our status in what is essentially the same world as our ancestors and animals live(d). You don't find tears running down their bones because they were hunted by lions and hyaena. That's life.

But you are at least one of these people (and no, not Brad Pitt, who from the sounds of it drags trouble behind him on a leash). The reactionaries. And, likely, a corpse.

If you protest (reactionary), consider that the novel contains hints of the HIV pandemic and racial segregation. How have you reacted when met with these 'wars'? Jumped to the front line? Sacrificed yourself? Found something else to blame? Hightailed it up a tree? (Smart.) This. Is. Life. There is some war right on your doorstep. Maybe this novel is about the worst of human nature.

Segregation was, predictably, the one I identified with the most, in both Israel and South Africa. Especially given my home town is point 0. We are introduced to the man who conceived the most effective strategy to end the war - and also the most horrific. He is a psychopath (not in the murderer sense, but in the clinical sense: he lacks emotions, which makes him a great strategist). He was also one of the architects of apartheid.

These facts alone - even without more back story - make me think twice. More times, in fact. I don't know. There is no right answer. This isn't even an issue of subjectivity. What justifies such brutality? The ends? The ends justifies the means? I can't endorse that. But do I want us (humanity) to live or die? I would have said I didn't care - this is life - but then why am I turning this around in my brain?

Again, take note that I have not watched the movie (although in a sense I have because I have watched other such things featuring other such headline names). Yet, I have a string of other jokes to tell and disjunctions to point out. But that is less interesting (?) than the conclusion of this movie and another, and their books. In I am Legend utopia follows in the wake of dystopia. So much work to be done blah pop another grape in my mouth.

This is life. Life doesn't award you some oasis in green and leafy parks, at the centre of which is the Fountain of Youth. (Fittingly mythical, but one that men with an eye on knighthood killed themselves to... not find.) Life (my life, at least) is philosophical crises, as well as physical ones. Some personal and some social. What is humanity? Where do you fit in? And what would you do to maintain your status quo? Is it worth maintaining?

What do Russia and dystopia have in common?

When I typed in the heading, the spelling feature in Chrome highlighted 'dystopia' and gave me only one option: 'topiary'. It's a bit of a leap from anti-paradise to a garden feature via Russia, but I'm sure that there's an answer out there. This is not what the first and last have in common, however, so perhaps we can ponder this in another post.

Multiple answers come to mind. The most obvious one is that this is the literature I am most drawn to at the moment. (One might be tempted to diagnose my state of mind here, but you're reading the post of an amateur anarchist, so really what did you expect?)

Ah, The People's Act of Love. Some of you may know how that book both terrifies me and is high on my favourites list. You may also know that the book haunts me in a tangible way, in that I am always aware of its presence, that just looking at it (as I am right now) is enough to plunge me into crisis and hold my head under water, and that I am not the only person to feel this way (click on link, now please).

PS. When trying to find an appropriate link, the first Google option was 'I love catching people in the act'. No words. Just resignation.

No one knows this personal snippet, except that now you do: when I was a child (climbing trees and reading, copiously) I believed I was Russian. Not consciously, of course. I only realised in adolescence that a) I believed this and b) it wasn't true. When I looked in the mirror I saw a snow-pale, black-haired child. (I am pale, but more the tint of hail clouds and my hair is a dull brown; not that I have a self-esteem issue but this is true.) I'm not suggesting anything esoteric here, only that I identified with something I had watched or read about.

So, it seems, anarchy isn't just an intellectual revolt.

It goes without saying that browsing secondhand bookshops is my favourite way to kill time. I confess, even on a Friday night, when my peers are donning heels and matching underwear. In need of indulgence, I was browsing (on a Wednesday not a Friday evening), finding nothing of interest until I browsed the 'Book club reads' on my way out of the shop (no stone left unturned). Four pairs of men (their hands tied behind their backs I see now) set against a background of snow. I knew I would buy it even before I picked it up.

The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-56 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. (This does not classify as a book club read, but I'm glad it was in my path, appropriately as I was leaving disappointed.)

There it was, as if it knew I was about to reread The People's Act of Love. That is crazy, yes, and anthropomorphic. But this book is enough to make me wax lyrical for hours, except that my words are usually inarticulate in this instance: "I can't explain it; the book destroyed me. Des-troy-ed." *shaking head* And again, on repeat.

This post is already too long, so I'm going to skip over to dystopia.

The list of great such novels is long, so look out for this post. War is dypstopia. It is pre-apocalypse. The thought of people dying and suffering, for decades after too, and often for no reason... How are we not as horrified by even one such event as we should be about children sleeping on the street? It is beyond my comprehension, as it is that I can sit here typing while people suffer. While children suffer. People, we are living in a dystopia. And there is nothing you or I can do. This is the nature of my nihilism.

Reading dystopian fiction relieves some of this pressure (while reminding me that I am a hypocrite) and often pushes me towards the ideals of socialism. Perhaps I should amend my heading: What do the revolutions and gulags in Russia and dystopia have in common? That answer is obvious. And here my shoulders hunch and I lean over my keyboard, gutted.

Intellectually, I can justify my current literary obsessions. Emotionally, the anger and helplessness at the bigness of life and death and pain (because no happiness or beauty can amortise pain) overwhelms me and this is the only demonstration of my refusal to accept this that I can muster.

My next read is We by Yevgeny Zamayatin, a translation of a Russian dystopian novel that, according to reports, precedes (chronologically and in content) all other such novels. Look out for future posts. I will try to contain my emotional nihilism, although really this is the nature of my blog and I shouldn't be afraid of potentially squeamish readers, because virtual sharing is about the construction of my virtual identity not yours - sorry folks.

Brave New World

Writing a review of a book that I finished reading five minutes ago seems like a violation, a desecration, blasphemous (and on and on goes the pseudo-religious rhetoric). But I need to sort my thoughts and I can only do this with words. I have just put down Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.

I had expected something more shocking, something more like Do Androids Dream... or The Dispossessed, something that twists and turns, and beats you into an interpretation. But some of the power of this book is in its subtlety, the extent to which you buy into this society that buys into itself, its insidiousness. A less shocking consideration of the nature of happiness, and therefore being, and of free will.

Yet, at the same time, it posits two extremes, as all good moral dilemmas do, superficially forcing you into one of the camps. This reminds me of the lasting effect of your relationship with your parents: you either choose to inhabit their values or react against them (there's a private joke in this). As much as you may promise yourself otherwise, you have little psychological free will - you are the manifestation of the small violences of your unconscious.

And I have proof.

To continue, below the superficial manipulations and because of its insidiousness, the novel asks you questions about society in general and (your role as) the individual within it (insert the above again here). It is its own proof (not mine - mine is not imaginary, although on second thought in a sense it is). Who are you? What is your responsibility to yourself? To the collective?

The final scene (without giving anything away - don't worry, I would never deprive you of the joy of your first reading of a good book) is the only possible one. Even had the physical reality been different, emotionally it would have remained the same. Does this undermine the questions of the rest of the novel? Question upon question, some turning in on themselves, others content to bite their own tails. And hear I desperately want to make an allusion to the ending of another book but won't. Just know my lips are quivering with the impulse.

There is a sequel: Brave New World Revisited. Will it set up a 'No trespassing' sign in front of the winding paths of its ancestor (another private joke)? Will it wear away new paths (how?)? Will it stand on the shoulders of this novel to see further or will it cut this giant off at the knees? The blandness of the word tacked on at the end worries me. But is it a red herring? Oh, the drama of being a bibliophile, an aesthete, a navel-gazer.

Before I get to it, I have this overwhelming desire to reread Shakespeare, to immerse myself in its catharsis, to avoid losing myself (and my tenuous grip on the here and now) down those paths.