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Oct. 27th, 2008 07:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
felis_ultharusI just finished Oryx and Crake. In its first pages, I found it a bit dull. Then I found it so depressing I almost stopped -- a lot of people do.
But I'm glad I kept with it. It's a wonderful novel. Very rich, very beautiful, and so wise that it can change a person's perspective on things.
It's my favourite style -- optimisitc, but not naive. Able to find hope without turning a blind eye to reality.
It opens with a man who calls himself Snowman, but was once named Jimmy. As far as he knows, he's the last ordinary human on earth. Civilization is gone, and besides him the only humanoid species is a lab-created subspecies of human beings, the Children of Crake, who were genetically programmed to be without violence, without strife -- but also without art, without love, and without religion.
I won't say more than that, because part of what's gripping about the story is gradual unravelling of the mystery of how they got there -- and Atwood is at her best here.
But I think I can say without spoiling anything that a lot of it has to do with art.
Jimmy's problem is that the dystopian world that was destroyed, and supposedly-utopian world that comes after have no place for a "word person," as he calls himself -- he's a writer in a world where the only use for writers is in advertising. There is only one painting in the book. There are no plays, no novels, and they only learn science and life in schools. The art school means he failed to do anything in the sciences, and it doubles as marketing school.
Neither world has a place for him. But both need artists vitally -- they need the larger persepctive and exploration that art and religion and history can provide, and which science can't. It's why the first world crumbles, and why the second might be stillborn if nothing changes.
It reminds me Timothy Findlay's Headhunter in that way. Problem is that while it's a message ordinary people in this country can get, it's one that elites don't. Our political, academic, and commercial classes largely see art as a frill, as a sign of luxury, and are desperate to cut all funding to it.
But they're the ones who most need to understand the message of a book like Oryx and Crake.
But I'm glad I kept with it. It's a wonderful novel. Very rich, very beautiful, and so wise that it can change a person's perspective on things.
It's my favourite style -- optimisitc, but not naive. Able to find hope without turning a blind eye to reality.
It opens with a man who calls himself Snowman, but was once named Jimmy. As far as he knows, he's the last ordinary human on earth. Civilization is gone, and besides him the only humanoid species is a lab-created subspecies of human beings, the Children of Crake, who were genetically programmed to be without violence, without strife -- but also without art, without love, and without religion.
I won't say more than that, because part of what's gripping about the story is gradual unravelling of the mystery of how they got there -- and Atwood is at her best here.
But I think I can say without spoiling anything that a lot of it has to do with art.
Jimmy's problem is that the dystopian world that was destroyed, and supposedly-utopian world that comes after have no place for a "word person," as he calls himself -- he's a writer in a world where the only use for writers is in advertising. There is only one painting in the book. There are no plays, no novels, and they only learn science and life in schools. The art school means he failed to do anything in the sciences, and it doubles as marketing school.
Neither world has a place for him. But both need artists vitally -- they need the larger persepctive and exploration that art and religion and history can provide, and which science can't. It's why the first world crumbles, and why the second might be stillborn if nothing changes.
It reminds me Timothy Findlay's Headhunter in that way. Problem is that while it's a message ordinary people in this country can get, it's one that elites don't. Our political, academic, and commercial classes largely see art as a frill, as a sign of luxury, and are desperate to cut all funding to it.
But they're the ones who most need to understand the message of a book like Oryx and Crake.