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.