Oryx and Crake, Finale

Uh, well I am finished with the book now, and I can't keep it in! Patrick is going to read it so that I have someone to talk to, but I just wanted to say a couple of things before Thursday because then I'll remember everything that I need to say...

So if you haven’t finished the book: DON’T READ ME.

This book is a lot about using. Jimmy uses a lot of drugs to get high, to forget. Crake uses his power and his brain to let him hide away in a little bubble and plan to kill the world. Jimmy and Crake’s reactions to their similar conclusions about the world’s meaninglessness are opposite: Jimmy drinks and smokes weed (destroys himself), Crake destroys the world...or at least changes it.

Both of them use Oryx in different ways, but because we don’t know Crake’s motives outside of Jimmy’s own perception of him, it is hard to judge the motives of Crake. We do, however, know that he killed the world. Jimmy uses Oryx as a drug – like we all use our partners – to lessen the pain of existence, to provide some solace during hard times, and to love. He wants to save her – he uses her to give him the confidence that he can steal her away from a hard life and fix all of her problems and kill the bad guys. He objectifies her, and doesn’t listen when she tells him the truth. All he wants to hear is the story that he expects to hear. So reminiscent of the story that he tells the Crakers when they ask questions about the world – he can’t tell them any different, because he can’t explain everything to them in a way that they will understand. So instead, he tells them half-truths to make them feel safe and secure.

Obviously there are a lot of themes here about God, science, the science and humanities (art) debate, genetic engineering and what is a person, consumer society, the divide between the rich and poor (pleeblands and compounds), the human condition (and the reduction of people to robots, reptilian brains who want and soothe the want), dystopia in general...

And my final thought, even though this is short and I am racing through without explanation,

What Jimmy needed consistently was to save somebody and to feel needed and cared for...
Did Crake know exactly what Jimmy needed and try to give it to him despite his crazy? Did Crake choose Jimmy because he recognized this need and wanted Jimmy to be fulfilled?
I don't think we can ever answer that question, but we can see that no matter the speculation, Snowman was at the end able to both live out his basic need / desire and to have hope.

Jujubes.

Oryx and Crake

So I started the book! Oryx and Crake, and I hear that we are going to post ideas and imaginings and stuff, so I am going to post and if you would like to reply, that would be just wonderful.

I obviously can't post everything that I want to talk about, because I am learning that Margaret's style is such that there is no superfluity. Everything that she writes about the mysterious 'Snowman' is intended to show his breakdown from a man into a sort of half-man, and everything that she writes about Jimmy is intended to show the social and cultural context of his time, as well as developing him into the person who could become 'Snowman', the last person on earth.

I like this.

Oh, I am on page 100 or so. I got the book yesterday, I can't put it down. Except that I did to write this 100 page review.

My thoughts aren't super-formulated yet, but maybe for right now I will just copy some of the paragraphs that I have underlined as being super important:

Chapter 2: OrganInc Farms: "The furniture in it was called reproduction. Jimmy was quite old before he realized what this word meant- that for each reproduction item, there was supposed to be an original somewhere. Or there had been once. Or something."

This has so many implications: What are the new child-people, the crakers, really? Are they reproductions? Cut and paste parts? Are they even human? They make Snowman feel disfigured.
They do not understand anything about the world as he knew it -- is there a connection here to every child and grandchild just not getting it? Life moving too fast to be understandable to the next generation? And what about their morality, if they don't understand what happened before? What does this say about the use of technology and the things that we create with it? They don't understand the context, the reasons that they are the way they are and society is the way it is.
What is the relationship between them and Snowman?

Next Section: Lunch: "He was frightened, as well. There was always that knife-edge: had he gone too far? And if he had, what came next?"

I mean, this one is pretty obvious. But what is 'going too far' in the context of the book? When will we find out what Crake did, who he became, and who Snowman became? What is his breakdown about, what is he hiding from?
Why does he keep losing his stuff? What's his deal? Does he want to live?

Brainfrizz: "Noodie news, which was good for a few minutes because the people on it tried to pretend there was nothing unusual going on and studiously avoided looking at one another's jujubes."

Jujubes.

"Crake said these incidents were bogus. He said the men were paid to do it, or their families were. The sponsors required them to put on a good show because otherwise people would get bored and turn off. The viewers wanted to see the executions, yes, but after a while these could get monotonous, so one last fighting chance had to be added in, or else an element of surprise. Two to one it was all rehearsed."

This just has implications about social breakdown in general - but does Atwood believe that, like she wrote, the mind / body / soul connection actually broke down at some point, or does she believe that we have always been addicted to carnage and just hid it from ourselves pretty well for a long time?

And for that matter, what is the deal with the Pleebland / Compound split? Her descriptions of the Pleeblands sound a lot like descriptions of the city that my dad told me to scare me off...

"Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death." Macbeth.



"So they'd roll a few joints and smoke them while watching the executions and the porn - the body parts moving around on the screen in slow motion, an underwater ballet of flesh and blood under stress, hard and soft joining and separating, groans and screams, close-ups of clenched eyes and clenched teeth, spurts of this or that. If you switched back and forth fast, it all came to look like the same event. Sometimes they'd have both things on at once, each on a different screen."

This one is fucking intense. I think this is great sex writing - I actually started to get a little aroused, sorry for being so informal, and then realized that what she is talking about is the connection between sex and violence. I think that's exactly the response that she wanted - to break down our boundaries a little and let people see their carnal side...

I hold fast to my idea of calling all lady-business "jujubes." Margaret Atwood, Goddess.

January Selection....Selected!

Happy New Year my friends! In Scotland it's called Hogmanay and the festivities include first-footing which dictates that the first visitor of the new year must come into your house with ceremonial gifts including: coal, shortbread, a black bun, and what else, whiskey. That place is crazy.

Anyway, thanks to all who were able to make it to discuss Never Let Me Go. I was really pleased that everyone seemed to enjoy this book and find something provocative in it. If you missed the meeting and still want to talk about the book, we can do some re-hashing either at the next meeting OR pick a date to watch the movie (David downloaded it for us) and then talk more about it then.

The January book is Andrea's choice and she has graciously offered to host the meeting in early February with an exact date to be determined. The book is Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood. As Andrea mentioned, this is another dystopian one (many of her novels use that setting but this one takes it to the top, apparently) but I think it will be very interesting to compare the vision of dystopia in this one as compared to Never Let Me Go. There are some similar themes throughout.

Here is a podcast of the author discussing Oryx and Crake back in 2007.

LadyBooks for Ladies now has a group on Shelfari as well. LBLs is infiltrating the 'Net!