Reading Wednesday

[sabotabby]

Currently reading: The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. Still really into this, and almost finished it (if I'm not too exhausted, I'll be done tonight). Three things stand out for me, two positive and one negative.

Negative first: She doesn't lean in to Lauren's hyper-empathy as much as I would have expected. Butler is too skilled a writer for me to think it's not on purpose, but it's a bit weird. It's not my favourite concept, and I think the book could be just as good without it, unless it's relevant in the last 50 pages.

And now the positives: As I said last week, this is a remarkably prescient book. I think it would still be hailed as such even if it had come out this year. If it weren't for the complete absence of cellphones and characters missing their online communities, it could absolutely be a scathing post-apocalyptic novel written in 2021 about what's in store for us three years down the road. It's harrowing and bleak and feels very much real. She sets forth a lot of the elements that would later become standard in the genre. And I think a lot of it comes from writing a future that is the present day reality for large swathes of the planet.

It's also one of the rare books with a teenage protagonist that feels like an authentic teenage voice. Lauren is kinda pretentious and Earthseed feels like the kind of religion a kid would come up with. She's a smart, sensitive teenager, but she's still very much a teenager, and this absolutely feels like a kid's diary of the apocalypse. The details of her personality add a certain specificity and realism to the horrors she witnesses.

I probably don't have to tell you that triggers and trigger warnings abound with this one.

Comments

[altamira16]

I felt like it could have been a modern story too.

In the 1960s, I think there were a bunch of religious cults in the US, especially in California, and that may have influenced some of what is going on in Earthseed. There are also various eco-communes that still exist. How does Earthseed compare to them?

Where would you like to see the hyper-empathy story line go?

Hyper-empathy messes people up, and it would be interesting to see people dig into that a little.

[sabotabby]

In the 1960s, I think there were a bunch of religious cults in the US, especially in California, and that may have influenced some of what is going on in Earthseed. There are also various eco-communes that still exist. How does Earthseed compare to them?

Oh yeah, Earthseed absolutely fits with that. I guess I'm unclear as to whether Butler had those tendencies back in the day herself, or whether she's (I think) fairly realistically depicting a culture that might emerge from the apocalypse.

Where would you like to see the hyper-empathy story line go?

Hyper-empathy messes people up, and it would be interesting to see people dig into that a little.

Yes, that's what I was kind of expecting. She's around these people suffering and dying constantly, and while she notices it, it doesn't really impact the storyline much so far. She just keeps moving through the pain. I'd expect to see it be either an obstacle or an asset, or both, and it's really neither. Like it doesn't stop her from being able to kill people when she needs to, and it doesn't seem to have a huge amount of impact on her ability to survive and gain followers.

[kore]

Butler is one of those writers, like Tiptree, who writes absolutely beautiful amazing prose that blows everyone else out of the water and also can feel absolutely lacerating to read. I may be in just the mood for this one tho. (Did you hear about the US veteran who died on a gurney waiting for treatment of gallstone pancreatitis because the hospital he was in was overwhelmed with covid patients? I know doctors probably can't deal with the idea of sending unvaccinated covid patients home with palliatives so they can treat people who could actually recover, but....)

[sabotabby]

I may be in just the mood for this one tho.
It's either a really good thing or a really wrong thing to read right now.

(Did you hear about the US veteran who died on a gurney waiting for treatment of gallstone pancreatitis because the hospital he was in was overwhelmed with covid patients? I know doctors probably can't deal with the idea of sending unvaccinated covid patients home with palliatives so they can treat people who could actually recover, but....)

I am kinda thinking they should. I know when someone comes in who's in bad enough shape, they can't always tell, but that's what vaccine passports are for.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouver-paramedic-hospital-protests-1.6164508

Anti-vax protesters murdered someone in BC last weekend.

[dagibbs]

I read this when, or close to when, it was published (definitely before Parable of the Talents was published), and I remember it being a powerful and moving book.

[sabotabby]

I've got that one to read too, I think.

[dagibbs]

I remember it being good, too, but not as...hm... brutal? as Parable of the Sower. Or, perhaps, I was better ready to deal with it a few years later.