The problem is Big Brother Inc
January 11, 2010 11:29 AM Subscribe

"2044 starts where George Orwell’s 1984 left off. The problem isn’t Big Brother and the leviathan government. The problem is Big Brother, Inc., and the all-powerful marketplace."

Mark Kleiman (previously) calls the book a far more polished performance than its Orwellian model.

Available for free from Scribd and for 99 cents for the Kindle.

posted by AceRock (91 comments total) 11 users marked this as a favorite

Should have come out last year and been called 2090, in keeping with Orwell's orginal naming scheme.
posted by Eideteker at 11:31 AM on January 11, 2010 [4 favorites]

OpEdNews.com

A review from a press release factory doesn't exactly inspire confidence.
posted by empath at 11:31 AM on January 11, 2010 [2 favorites]

Didn't Aldous Huxley already write this book?
posted by eustacescrubb at 11:33 AM on January 11, 2010 [16 favorites]

Malcolm’s discovery could benefit millions – but it also threatens business interests who are happy the way things are.

How original! I have never seen this plot in any movie, ever!
posted by qvantamon at 11:34 AM on January 11, 2010 [16 favorites]

With a vaguely themed Wordpress site to sell it even!
posted by kingbenny at 11:40 AM on January 11, 2010

Here's a comic for philistines like me who don't feel like reading 1984 or Brave New World.

And let it be said that nobody should ever write a story that has similar themes to an existing work. It simply should not be done, and no good can come of it. SOYLENTGREENBURGER
posted by mccarty.tim at 11:40 AM on January 11, 2010 [2 favorites]

qvantamon: "How original! I have never seen this plot in any movie, ever!"

I hope there's a scene where a water filtration plant blows up and Keanu Reeves has to outrun the shockwave on his scooter.
posted by brundlefly at 11:41 AM on January 11, 2010 [4 favorites]

Sweet Jesus that's some terrible writing.
"“He’s not a terrorist,” Malcolm repeated. He leaned closer, made himself impossible to ignore. “He’s my father. He’s a department store manager.” The fat man didn’t answer but Malcolm had his attention. “He’s not a terrorist.”
The man turned to him, unable to escape. He took another bite and worked it down slowly, then shared his conclusion before he returned to the television. “They couldn’t say it if it wasn’t true.”

It's like Dan Brown, Jodi Picoult and James Patterson got together and tried to be Cory Doctrow.
posted by 8dot3 at 11:44 AM on January 11, 2010 [20 favorites]

Mark Kleinman is surely a fucking idiot then.

I read about 15 pages, and hoo-boy. It took brass balls for the author to make overt allusions to Orwell, in the title no less.

Advertising on the Moon! Bar-code Tattoos! It's like Jennifer Government, but somehow worse.
posted by Cookiebastard at 11:48 AM on January 11, 2010 [3 favorites]

Kleiman. That guy.
posted by Cookiebastard at 11:49 AM on January 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

Mark Kleiman (previously) calls the book a far more polished performance than its Orwellian model.

I'm reminded of an acquaintance of mine who tried to claim, once, that Bob Seger was "the real Bruce Springsteen".
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:51 AM on January 11, 2010 [2 favorites]

I'm reminded of an acquaintance of mine who tried to claim, once, that Bob Seger was "the real Bruce Springsteen".

I once heard Ozzy Osbourne described as "the greatest singer-songwriter of all time".
posted by kingbenny at 11:52 AM on January 11, 2010

I once heard Ozzy Osbourne described as "the greatest singer-songwriter of all time".

I would buy this person a beer.
posted by uncleozzy at 11:57 AM on January 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

From Kleiman's column:

Orwell was a great essayist and (with the huge exception of Animal Farm) a distinctly second-rate novelist...

and

...the author is capable of making you care about their fates, which is more than can be said for Winston Smith (whom Orwell deliberately made a thoroughly uninteresting "last man") or Julia.

As the kids are saying these days, FAIL. 1984 is an exceptional novel, and the lead characters were very human and sympathetic.
posted by Cookiebastard at 12:04 PM on January 11, 2010 [5 favorites]

I always thought Jennifer Government was a nice counterpoint to 1984.
posted by Monochrome at 12:06 PM on January 11, 2010 [2 favorites]

Indeed.

Regrettably, 2044 is samizdat, which means that few bookstores will carry it and - more damagingly - few reviewers will bother to notice it.

Or, maybe because it just plain sucks.
posted by jquinby at 12:18 PM on January 11, 2010 [3 favorites]

I hate that this inspired me to make an account on HuffPo just so I could make the comment above on the article. I feel so dirty now.
posted by Sidhedevil at 12:20 PM on January 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

I once heard Ozzy Osbourne described as "the greatest singer-songwriter of all time".

I would buy this person a beer.
posted by uncleozzy at 2:57 PM on January 11 [+] [!]

Holy shit, I didn't know the ozzman was on metafilter.

Play Ironman!
posted by piratebowling at 12:25 PM on January 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

I wish people who don't really get 1984 would stop using it as a go-to reference.
posted by Pope Guilty at 12:32 PM on January 11, 2010 [2 favorites]

Seger is the real Bruce Springsteen.

Suburban shithole New Jersey is not free-spirited American frontier, no matter how fast the spinners on your wheels twirl. "Heartland rock" from 50 miles outside Manhattan is transparently not the real thing.
posted by jock@law at 12:35 PM on January 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

I think we should do everything in our power to discourage sequels to dystopian novels because that trend inevitably leads to sequels to post-apocalyptic novels and that will lead to The Road II: The Road Less Traveled. And I think we can all agree that's just unnecessary.

What? But what happened to the characters in the end?! The world deserves to know!
(kept fairly nonspecific so as not to spoil)

My God man, what if Dan Brown were to fall suddenly ill and the world were no longer blessed with tales of Robert Langdon? What if Stephenie Meyer doesn't finish rewriting Twilight from Edward's point of view? For the good of humanity it must be told!

Uh... I consider Dan Brown to be distopian because of all those secret conspiracies, and Twilight because the vampire is an abusive stalker.
posted by graventy at 12:43 PM on January 11, 2010

Why do I get the feeling that what happened here is this Kleiman realised that 1984 was continually referenced online, sat down and thought "how could I make some money out of that?"
posted by litleozy at 12:45 PM on January 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

I jumped to a random page and read this:

He stepped into the next available elevator, planning to stroll another floor, but his hand froze over the panel of buttons, overwhelmed by the need for decision. He stared in amazement at all the choices, dozens of buttons in orderly columns, unable to decide which button to press. They all looked the same. One button led to Internal Affairs, he knew, and another led to his own office; he had recently learned the location of the specimen lab and he already knew the floor for the cafeteria and the gym. But that was all. He could only account for a handful of choices staring him in the face. Which one should he choose? Were the other floors like his own, lines of cubbyholes with staff hunkered over computer screens? Which one was Human Resources?

I've never read a more gripping depiction of a man facing the frightening reality of unlabeled elevator buttons. Which one was Human Resources indeed.
posted by burnmp3s at 12:50 PM on January 11, 2010 [14 favorites]

Hey if you've ever ended up talking with HR you can understand the fear. The future is a vacation and sick days policy stomping on an employee's schedule - FOREVAH!
posted by Babblesort at 12:53 PM on January 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

http://www.fanfiction.net/book/1984/

"Samizdat" indeed. Remember when somebody tried this with Star Wars and got cease-and-desisted clear into a galaxy far, far away? Kinda sad when Mary Sue And Friends manage to out-rebel your ripoff of 1984...
posted by vorfeed at 12:57 PM on January 11, 2010

Is Eric Lotke some kind of pseudonym of Cory Doctorow?
posted by mkultra at 12:58 PM on January 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

Sounds potentially awful.
posted by Artw at 12:58 PM on January 11, 2010

Can't wait to watch the movie of The Road. Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman! how can that not be awesome?
posted by Artw at 1:00 PM on January 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

SAMIZDAT? Holy fuck, Mark Kleiman.

My mind is about to explode. Calling a self-published book "samizdat" is outrageous special pleading. "Samizdat" doesn't mean "self-published"--it means "bucking official censorship and circulated at risk of serious consequences."

I am under the impression that "samizdat" does literally mean "self-published," but you're right that (in English at least) the associations of the word imply some level of illicit-ness and defiance, and this usage seems overheated.
posted by grobstein at 1:01 PM on January 11, 2010

Hey if you've ever ended up talking with HR you can understand the fear. The future is a vacation and sick days policy stomping on an employee's schedule

Well, the growing trend toward combining those two into a (smaller net) allocation of "personal time off" that you can spend either on a beach in Cancun, or curled up on your bathroom floor in a cold sweat puking into the tub depending on what suits you best (hey, they don't judge) does seem pretty Orwellian to me.
posted by Naberius at 1:04 PM on January 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

Oh, and Anthony Burgess wrote a 1984 'reimagining" called 1985 back in 1978, which probably makes him the first to pull that particular trick. IIRC it was pretty awful as well.
posted by Artw at 1:04 PM on January 11, 2010

Can't wait to watch the movie of The Road. Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman! how can that not be awesome?

Dude that's Fallout.
posted by graventy at 1:10 PM on January 11, 2010 [3 favorites]

Can't wait to watch the movie of The Road. Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman! how can that not be awesome?

Dude that's Fallout.

Nah, Fallout was Dustin Hoffman and Cuba Gooding Jr. running around in a helicopter or something.

You're thinking of Fallen.
posted by Naberius at 1:11 PM on January 11, 2010

There's a deep problem here. Orwell was talking about communism and what happens in communist countries. Now this claims to start "where 1984 left off", by excoriating capitalism.

How in hell can this claim to be some sort of sequel when it takes the exact opposite ideological position?
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 1:15 PM on January 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

I am under the impression that "samizdat" does literally mean "self-published"

"Samizdat" means "self-published" in Russian.

In English, the language in which Kleiman was writing, it refers specifically to works written, reproduced, and circulated underground at great risk.

You couldn't write about "le smoking" in French and expect people to think you meant smoking, just because that's the meaning of the word in English--in French, "le smoking" means "tuxedo".
posted by Sidhedevil at 1:21 PM on January 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

And if Kleiman meant to indicate only that the book was self-published, he could have used the English word "self-published".
posted by Sidhedevil at 1:21 PM on January 11, 2010 [2 favorites]

Orwell was talking about communism and what happens in communist countries.

I think you're either confusing 1984 and Animal Farm or 1984 and We.

Orwell was explicitly NOT specifically talking about communism in 1984. According to Orwell's comments in "Why I Write" he was talking about totalitarianism in general, which he had seen as an issue for both communist and fascist governments. Orwell self-identified as a socialist.
posted by Sidhedevil at 1:25 PM on January 11, 2010 [6 favorites]

The movie version of 1984 by Terry Gilliam is superb.
posted by Artw at 1:27 PM on January 11, 2010

Chocolate Pickle: I was about to comment the same thing, but then decided to look up Orwell before doing that, and found out he was actually a strongly Anti-Totalitarian Socialist (or Social-Democrat, although this term is kind of watered down). So excoriating totalitarian communism first, then corporate capitalism later does kind of somewhat follow in that regard.
posted by qvantamon at 1:28 PM on January 11, 2010

Wait, sorry, my mistake. The relevant passage isn't in "Why I Write"--I was confusing the statement on 1984 with the statement on Homage to Catalonia--but in a letter to the then-head of the UAW, which was reprinted in Life magazine in 1949.

Here's the whole of the reprinted passage:

"My recent novel is NOT intended as an attack on Socialism or the British Labour Party (of which I am a supporter) but as a show-up of the perversions to which a centralized economy is liable and which have already been partly realized in Communism and Fascism. I do not believe that the kind of society I describe necessarily will arrive, but I believe (allowing of course for the fact that the book is a satire) that something resembling it could arrive.

I believe also that totalitarian ideas have taken root in the minds of intellectuals everywhere, and I have tried to draw these ideas out to their logical consequences. The scene of the book is laid in Britain in order to emphasise that the English-speaking races are not innately better than anyone else and that totalitarianism, if not fought against, could triumph everywhere."
posted by Sidhedevil at 1:39 PM on January 11, 2010 [5 favorites]

He stepped into the next available elevator, planning to stroll another floor, but his hand froze over the panel of buttons, overwhelmed by the need for decision.

Did anyone else picture George W. Bush?
posted by Fuzzy Monster at 1:39 PM on January 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

Oh, and Anthony Burgess wrote a 1984 'reimagining" called 1985 back in 1978, which probably makes him the first to pull that particular trick. IIRC it was pretty awful as well.

*shamefaced* I'm probably the only person, anywhere, who likes that novel. Though I prefer the first half, which was an analysis of Orwell's work, and was pretty interesting even if you don't agree with Burgess's world view (given that he was writing just as Thatcher came to power, his vision of a nightmarish dystopia Britain ruled by the unions was somewhat unfortunately timed).
posted by Infinite Jest at 1:40 PM on January 11, 2010

Suburban shithole New Jersey is not free-spirited American frontier

So Ann Arbor is the free-spirited American frontier?
posted by lukemeister at 1:40 PM on January 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

Infinite Jest - IIRC The first half was kind of interesting, it was the novel portion that was really bad.
posted by Artw at 1:42 PM on January 11, 2010

Available…for 99 cents for the Kindle.

At least until Amazon decides otherwise.
posted by one more dead town's last parade at 1:47 PM on January 11, 2010 [2 favorites]

He stepped into the next available elevator, planning to stroll another floor, but his hand froze over the panel of buttons, overwhelmed by the need for decision.

Did anyone else picture George W. Bush?

You mean The Decider?
posted by shakespeherian at 1:48 PM on January 11, 2010

"Heartland rock" from 50 miles outside Manhattan is transparently not the real thing.

Yes, musical authenticity is determined primarily by the artist's distance from Lebanon, Kansas. At the time of the performance, actually. So you can see it's really very fluid.
posted by Naberius at 1:50 PM on January 11, 2010 [2 favorites]

Sidhedevil: "Wait, sorry, my mistake. The relevant passage isn't in "Why I Write"--I was confusing the statement on 1984 with the statement on Homage to Catalonia--but in a letter to the then-head of the UAW, which was reprinted in Life magazine in 1949.

Here's the whole of the reprinted passage:

"...I believe also that totalitarian ideas have taken root in the minds of intellectuals everywhere, and I have tried to draw these ideas out to their logical consequences. The scene of the book is laid in Britain in order to emphasise that the English-speaking races are not innately better than anyone else and that totalitarianism, if not fought against, could triumph everywhere.""

Thank GOD for Sarah Palin and the teabaggers!
posted by symbioid at 2:04 PM on January 11, 2010

So does this mean that Bruce Springsteen is the talented Bob Seger? I'm so confused now.
posted by EatTheWeak at 2:09 PM on January 11, 2010

From the website blurb it’s hard to see this as anything other than a rewrite of Jennifer Government. (As pointed out earlier, that novel was already a great counterpoint to 1984.)

<derail>Also, I really fucking hate Scribd. Merlin Mann says it better than I ever could.</derail>
posted by spitefulcrow at 2:18 PM on January 11, 2010

How in hell can this claim to be some sort of sequel when it takes the exact opposite ideological position?

Les extreme se touchent, as the French say.

And besides, isn't capitalism supposed to be the logical consequence of socialism according to Marx or Fukuyama or some other French guy?
posted by sour cream at 2:23 PM on January 11, 2010 [2 favorites]

extremes
posted by sour cream at 2:23 PM on January 11, 2010

but as a show-up of the perversions to which a centralized economy is liable and which have already been partly realized in Communism and Fascism.

Centralized economy, economy for the benefit of the monied interests what's the Federalists difference?
posted by rough ashlar at 2:26 PM on January 11, 2010

I always thought Jennifer Government was a nice counterpoint to 1984.

Pale, pale reflection of the cyberpunk authors of the 80s and 90s. The computers and technological futurism were just icing to the really meaty treatment of "late capitalism" and likely cultural responses to it. Specifically, I suspect something like Gibson's Virtual Light gets modern corporatist exploitation and class rebellion far better than ripped-from-the-headlines peak water pulp.

I'm a sucker for dystopia, though, so I'll probably give it a read.
posted by cowbellemoo at 2:29 PM on January 11, 2010

I liked Jennifer Government a lot. I enjoyed how Max Barry attempted to create a "realistic" supercapitalist future, where it's not all a dystopia, but where a lot of stuff has gone to shit because there's no attempt at a balance.

It's not a masterpiece, because Barry's experience is somewhat limited, so he's forced to try and write variances on a theme that was maybe one book strong. His third novel, Company, was a similar mix of enjoyable and weak. But if you want a brilliant pulp read, pick up his debut novel, Syrup, about treachery and backstabbing in the world of marketing and cinema and Coca-Cola, which is one of the fastest and most enjoyable reads I picked up this decade.
posted by Rory Marinich at 2:33 PM on January 11, 2010 [2 favorites]

Here's a comic for philistines like me who don't feel like reading 1984 or Brave New World.

That comic is actually misleading; the comic includes examples that weren't in Huxley's book ("The Biggest Loser", examples of superficial culture on television, computer mouse and TV remote, etc). Remember, Brave New World was written in 1932. Television didn't come out until, ironically, late thirties at the earliest. This comic is obviously biased; it presents none of the same culture examples as it does generously for Brave New World.

Of course, the biggest flaw in the comic is that the artists's conception, drawn completely from the book "Amusing Ourselves to Death" by Niel Postman, is that Orwell's 1984 includes the very interpretation of Brave New World that is being tossed around. The culture of 1984 is one of consumption; every member of the Party is trained to ignore or become confused at the mere possibility of a conversation leading to crimethought. The author is ignorant when he claims that Orwell only claimed that Oceania bans books. It does "ban" books, but it would be ignorant to suppose that it maintains a list of books that are not to be distributed. It collects books, revises them to fit the Party line, replaces every existing copy with the revised one, and has long since removed any work opposing the Party. There are no banned books; all books in existence are accounted for and there are no copies of books which are banned. No party member would read it, though, if they were adequately trained in doublethink.

The truth isn't obviously concealed in the way it's depicted in the comic. It's concealed by citing a war in a distant location of which no real observation was possible. In the comic, the guy can just turn around. There isn't even any evidence that a war is going on at all from any Party member's perspective. The novel opens with Winston watching TV; watching supposed war films. It's probable that these aren't even real.

This comic comes up every time someone talks about 1984. It's an ignorant comic based on a bad, pervasive interpretation of 1984 as only about the surveillance society aspect of the Party. The surveillance society aspect of Oceania is important, but it's not the prime focus of the novel. It's just a tool the Party uses to make sure Party members are toeing the line. Orwell's vision for 1984 was much more comprehensive, and much more scary, than Brave New World.

It's unlikely that this new book will be able to capture the writing style, nor the purpose behind 1984. I fail to see how 2044 can "start off where George Orwell's 1984 left off" and also "[follow] our current social and economic trajectory to the extreme". Which is it?
posted by leafxor at 3:05 PM on January 11, 2010 [7 favorites]

Oh, well, I still think that, as far as fictional dystopias are concerned, Huxley's Brave New World seems the most plausible (as much as any of these dystopias is), and probably the most positive. After all, what does it matter if you are culturally and intellectually crippled, as long as you are satisfied and, as far as you know, happy?

I'd be interested to pick up Jennifer Government, but... is that a series? Stretching these ideas for too long never produces great results. Ask Ayn Rand, she'd know.
posted by wet-raspberry at 3:34 PM on January 11, 2010

Pretty sure she'd claim her work was flawless and beyond criticism, TBH.
posted by Artw at 3:43 PM on January 11, 2010

Jennifer Government is a stand alone book.
posted by drezdn at 3:54 PM on January 11, 2010

Pretty sure she'd claim her work was flawless and beyond criticism, TBH.

I'm pretty sure she would. I do agree to a large extent with her philosophy, but damn, are her books heavy-handed and annoying to read. They compliment perfectly the Eastern European communist/socialist novels - same style of writing, opposite ideas.

Jennifer Government is a stand alone book.
Good to know. Definitely increases the chance of being read, but I got to go through The Road first.
posted by wet-raspberry at 4:02 PM on January 11, 2010

"Heartland rock" from 50 miles outside Manhattan is transparently not the real thing.

Damn right. You want real heartland rockers like the Flaming Lips, 311 and Hüsker Dü. None of that east-coast-west-coast new-fangled crap like Buck Owens, CCR, the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, Gram Parsons, the Silos, Whiskeytown, Wynn Stewart, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Drive-By Truckers, and good god even I'm sick of this joke now...
posted by el_lupino at 4:02 PM on January 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

"2044 starts where George Orwell’s 1984 left off. The problem isn’t Big Brother and the leviathan government. The problem is Big Brother, Inc., and the all-powerful marketplace."

Ted Rall did this first in his graphic novel 2024.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 4:04 PM on January 11, 2010

Worth a thousand words.
posted by sebastienbailard at 4:39 PM on January 11, 2010 [2 favorites]

Suburban shithole New Jersey is not free-spirited American frontier, no matter how fast the spinners on your wheels twirl. "Heartland rock" from 50 miles outside Manhattan is transparently not the real thing.

Not disagreeing, but it does raise the question, how far from NYC would you have to be before you qualify? Are certain states utterly impossible? What do you think?
posted by IndigoJones at 4:51 PM on January 11, 2010

Mark Kleiman is actually brilliant on criminal justice policy-- I was going to say I can't speak for his literary taste, but since he blurbed my boot camp book, Help at Any Cost, I am going to have to stand up for it, at least in that particular instance, I haven't read this book ;-)

However, there's another thread on mefi right now where his work is being praised (he was in part responsible for the HOPE probation program discussed here. And while I vociferously disagreed with parts of his earlier book, Against Excess (he was wrong about needle exchange) and I'm sure we still have major policy disagreements in certain ways, I think people are going a bit far in ridiculing him here.
posted by Maias at 5:02 PM on January 11, 2010

> In English, the language in which Kleiman was writing, it refers specifically to works written, reproduced, and circulated underground at great risk.

In Russian as well. The definition at Russian Wikipedia: "a means of unofficial, and therefore uncensored, dissemination of literary works, as well as of religious and political texts, in the USSR, when copies were made by the author or readers without the knowledge and permission of official organs, as a rule through typing, photography, or hand copying."

And yeah, using the term to describe your self-published subliterate dreck is disgusting.
posted by languagehat at 5:05 PM on January 11, 2010 [2 favorites]

But people, you don't get it... he's self-publishing to avoid the harsh censorship... of the corporations, dude...

By which of course I mean all those publishing houses that obviously used the book being crap as an excuse to not publish it and silence its important message.
posted by qvantamon at 5:26 PM on January 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

Also, I'm totally going to misrepresent languagehat's comment as prescriptivism when the opportunity arrives.
posted by qvantamon at 5:32 PM on January 11, 2010

The movie version of 1984 by Terry Gilliam is superb.

I believe you refer to this movie, NOT made by Terry Gilliam but rather by Michael Radford. Darned good, mind you, if you enjoy being horribly depressed.

Gilliam's Brazil was, at one point in its development, known as "1984 and 1/2".
posted by philip-random at 5:42 PM on January 11, 2010

Orwell actually did write novels critiquing capitalism, as well. "Keep The Apidistra Flying" is a good read if you like him enough to check out his lesser-known works.

I'd certainly recommend it over the colossal pile of crap that "2044" seems to be.
posted by kyrademon at 5:55 PM on January 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

I liked Jennifer Government better when it was called The Space Merchants.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 6:11 PM on January 11, 2010 [2 favorites]

I believe you refer to this movie, NOT made by Terry Gilliam but rather by Michael Radford. Darned good, mind you, if you enjoy being horribly depressed.

Gilliam's Brazil was, at one point in its development, known as "1984 and 1/2".

No, I think he actually meant Brazil.
posted by graventy at 6:42 PM on January 11, 2010

It's like Dan Brown, Jodi Picoult and James Patterson got together and tried to be Cory Doctrow.

There is a problem with making grandiose statements like this.

You're implying they mediocre writers, you know this because you've read them all and are guilty of frequently picking weak books, therefore not credible to critique books because you're a hack.

Or you just picked everyone's favorite hate-ons, have never ACTUALLY read their books but think you know their work and therefore not credible to critique books because you're a hack.
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 6:52 PM on January 11, 2010

You're implying they mediocre writers, you know this because you've read them all and are guilty of frequently picking weak books, therefore not credible to critique books because you're a hack.

Some of us actually review books for money, you know.
posted by Sidhedevil at 7:09 PM on January 11, 2010 [2 favorites]

MiltonRandKalman - Third option: based on many, many, many recommendations (by people whose opinions I'd previously respected) that Brown/Picoult/Patterson books are SO GOOD that I just HAVE to read it cause it will be LIFE ALTERING I did in fact attempt to read books by all three authors. I got through a Patterson and a Picoult (the latter being one that I actually threw across the room when I finished it) but by the time I got around to Dan Brown I'd realized that I don't need to finish a book just because I started it. I didn't get past the second chapter.

Doctorow, on the other hand, I quite like.
posted by 8dot3 at 7:54 PM on January 11, 2010

from the Acknowledgments: “I might fancy that I sat down at a blank page to write – but hardly! The page was covered with fingerprints. People whose names I’ve forgotten. Bumper stickers on cars of people I never met. I owe thanks to all of them. If I like what I now see on the page, I owe thanks to everyone who left fingerprints on it.”

We owe them thanks, too. Somebody get that piece of paper to the lab.
posted by koeselitz at 8:00 PM on January 11, 2010 [5 favorites]

we should do everything in our power to discourage sequels to dystopian novels because that trend inevitably leads to sequels to post-apocalyptic novels

like how southland tales was to repo man; wenders' stand on zanzibar :P oh wait, or was that araki's the girl from monday!?
posted by kliuless at 8:11 PM on January 11, 2010

Doctorow, on the other hand, I quite like.

Doctorow's writing style is pedantic and mediocre, and choked with adverbs, and much of it is just rehash of his breathlessly preachy blog posts. He's almost turned me off completely from science fiction as a genre.

This is just my opinion, of course.
posted by Ratio at 8:23 PM on January 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

Personally, I maintain that the best distopian novel ever was Fahrenheit 451, even if Bradbury did give it something of a happy ending. The reason for the censoring of books was weak, but the society created combined the worst aspects of 1984 with those of Brave New World.

Was I the only one who thought that Brave New World wasn't the worst idea for a working civilization when I first read it? The people are happy, the intellectuals either run things or get their islands where they can be weird (they send misfits to the Caribbean, well, Greenland too, but still). People born into lower classes don't ever need to worry about being unfulfilled, and everyone gets to look beautiful until they die (the dying early bit was a problem, but in my version, the top research scientists are working on that). Presented nowadays, the Freudian aspect would probably be gone (remember that Freud wasn't known to be a discredited hack back in the 30's).

The preceding paragraph was not entirely facetious. While I recognize the problems, at the same time, part of me thinks we would be better off under that system. (We being the human race, not middle class America. Middle class America would probably be destroyed, but for the 1/6 of the population who lives in hunger and misery, how much would they object to a square meal and a bottle of Soma in exchange for that style of government?)
posted by Hactar at 8:26 PM on January 11, 2010

Was I the only one who thought that Brave New World wasn't the worst idea for a working civilization when I first read it?

I read a long essay once about how the particular spin put on a sort of "scientifically perfected" humanity in Brave New World was responsible for people being needlessly suspicious of transhumanism. So, uh. Maybe?
posted by nanojath at 9:13 PM on January 11, 2010

Hactar: “Was I the only one who thought that Brave New World wasn't the worst idea for a working civilization when I first read it? The people are happy, the intellectuals either run things or get their islands where they can be weird (they send misfits to the Caribbean, well, Greenland too, but still). People born into lower classes don't ever need to worry about being unfulfilled, and everyone gets to look beautiful until they die (the dying early bit was a problem, but in my version, the top research scientists are working on that). Presented nowadays, the Freudian aspect would probably be gone (remember that Freud wasn't known to be a discredited hack back in the 30's)... While I recognize the problems, at the same time, part of me thinks we would be better off under that system.”

In my mind Brave New World is a superior book to 1984 and most other dystopias because it is a spiritual dystopia, rather than a governmental one. I don't believe it's even close to being Huxley's best book, but Huxley was a deep thinker on such things. In the world as it is now, I can understand that people might completely miss the point of what he was trying to say: that certain spiritual aspects of the outer arrangement of the world might take such a disastrous turn that the spiritual well-being of society might be put in peril.

If you want an actual direct explication of Aldous Huxley's point in the book, I can recommend a very interesting little book by a man named Rene Guenon entitled The Crisis of the Modern World.
posted by koeselitz at 9:23 PM on January 11, 2010 [2 favorites]

For what it's worth, I like Down and Out in Paris and London and Point Counterpoint better than either 1984 or Brave New World. But then again, I've spent more of my life broke, working a shitty job and/or attending parties with pretentious asshats than I have under the iron thumb of a tyrannical regime.
posted by thivaia at 11:01 PM on January 11, 2010

Third option: based on many, many, many recommendations (by people whose opinions I'd previously respected) that Brown/Picoult/Patterson books are SO GOOD that I just HAVE to read it cause it will be LIFE ALTERING I did in fact attempt to read books by all three authors.

Cancel your goodreads.com account and get better friends.
posted by MiltonRandKalman at 11:06 PM on January 11, 2010

Working at startups during the sitcom boom meant working under the iron thumb of tyrannical pretentious sashays.
posted by Artw at 12:11 AM on January 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

I'm reminded of an acquaintance of mine who tried to claim, once, that Bob Seger was "the real Bruce Springsteen".

the real bruce springsteen never did anything as good as ramblin gamblin man - which should not be interpreted as a dismissal of bruce's talents
posted by pyramid termite at 12:35 AM on January 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

CAN SOMEBODY ELSE REWRITE THIS BOOK IN LIKE 700 WORDS IN A COMMENT PLEASE
posted by tehloki at 5:38 AM on January 12, 2010

"tyrannical pretentious sashays"? Weird late-night iPhone poetry.
posted by Artw at 7:22 AM on January 12, 2010

For what it's worth, I like Down and Out in Paris and London and Point Counterpoint better than either 1984 or Brave New World.

Homage to Catalonia is very much worth a read. At a time when a lot of people were talking about resisting fascism, Orwell was one of the people who went to Spain and fucking did it.
posted by Pope Guilty at 2:33 PM on January 12, 2010 [1 favorite]

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