I finally finished Marky Mark's sacred book (as named by Ms Lacroix), We, which I can finally tell you is by Yevgeny Zamyatin. That's why I couldn't remember the author's name off the top of my head, guys! Jeez.
Why is it the sacred book? Did I talk about this already? Because Marky Mark handed it to me and lectured me on it immediately: "Now, I've read it about nine times and you can see it looks new" (it looks like he bought it two days ago--turns out his copy is nine years old, as I subsequently found out) "no bent pages, no creases anywhere, you can't even tell it's ever been read." At this point I'm getting nervous. So I offer to just take a look at the author's name so I can search for it myself, you know, you don't have to lend it to me if you don't want to, whatever... "Oh no, that's fine. I don't usually do this, but I trust you." Oh. There's the cincher. I think I had a minor heart palpitation. For two days I had it set on my shelf and I just stared at it, afraid to touch it. I had a nightmare last night I left a crease on the binding. No lie. I even get worried about my fingerprints on the shiny, glossy cover... I'm fully convinced Marky Mark will find something wrong with it and just punch me in the face.
In any case, I managed to finish the book (though my fear distracted me from it in many ways) and it was pretty good. Basically, it's the predecessor to 1984, Anthem, Brave New World, and every other book in that genre. The main difference is they're working on sending rockets to space in this one and everything is synchronized down to cutting and chewing food. Kind of like A Wrinkle in Time when Meg and Charles Wallace discover that planet where all the kids are playing in the streets and they're all bouncing rubber balls in the same exact rhythm and rate and all. Good book, by the way. But I digress:
Okay, first, the apartments our hero, D-503, lives in are all glass. Just throwing that out there. Not to sound crude, but... getting changed!? Bathrooms!? Nope, done with this society already. Though I guess it would make it easier to decide on what to wear in the morning... hmm....
"After man's tail dropped off, it must have been quite difficult for him at first to learn to drive off flies without its aid. In the beginning he undoubtedly missed his tail. But now--can you imagine yourself with a tail? Or can you imagine yourself in the street naked, without a coat?" Every era before us looks ridiculous and we usually mock the less-advanced for their ways... In history class, this is easy to spot in the form of "those people were stupid, why didn't they just do X?" or "Hahaha, those sixteen-hundreders, look at them, with their butter churns." And I'm over here like "(sigh) To have lived in the Victorian era..." Oh, maybe a better example would be the fifties. Or the eighties. Well, maybe not so much with the eighties becoming popular again, but the fifties are a prime example. Sort of. I AM TRYING.
"To kill one individual, that is, to diminish the total sum of human lives for fifty years, was criminal. But to diminish the sum of human lives by fifty million years was not considered criminal. Isn't that absurd?" Gunter Grass said something weirdly like this in Crabwalk and I can't remember it! Grrrr.
Oh, here's one thing I liked: Unlike Equality in Anthem, he didn't suddenly accept the idea of soul and personality. He understood that the whole societal body could split, but he still didn't understand personality, if that makes sense. Equality was like "Oh, I'm my own person! I understand it in sixty seconds and Gaea understands it even quicker because Ayn Rand is currently failing." (The book isn't that great if you think about the substance over the main idea...) I mean, I don't get how you could suddenly accept such a life-changing thought so quickly and without questioning, even if it feels 'right'. It's still going against everything you knew in your previous twenty years. D-503 struggles with the ideas of soul for quite a good chunk of time and I never really get the feeling he fully accepts it. Instead of being like oh, I've reversed everything I knew in about two days and accept this new truth. Which just seems ridiculous to me. Sure, revelations like that are possible, but they've always seem to me like it hits you, and then you kind of need to become acclimated. Which I guess he did, because he sat down a while and thought about it. But Gaea was just like "Oh, okay. Cool." GO HOME GAEA.
"'What's the trouble? A soul? A soul, you say? What the devil! We'll soon return to cholera if you go on that way.'" Hm, this gets me thinking of a certain episode of the Twilight Zone, number Twelve... (She looks just like you!)
"'We' is from God, and 'I' from the Devil." Oh hey Anthem hey! Want to burn some villagers? Oh cool, let's hit that up. Ooh, but can we rip their tongues out first? Okay! Best. Day. Ever.
"'Who can tell? A human being is like a novel: until the last page you don't know how it will end. Or it wouldn't be worth reading...'" Fun fact!: I almost just typed 'eating'. YOUR WIFE LOOKS LIKE A CHRISTMAS DINNER. Hahahaha, don't ask. Anyways, what my point was going to be: "Call no man happy till he is dead", which was either said by Solon or Herodotus, but Google can't decide, so... Well, it kind of reminded me. Sort of similar. Compare and contrast in 1-2 paragraphs riiiiiiiight.... Now!
"I did not want salvation." / "'But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.'" (Jonathan, in Brave New World by Aldous Huxley) Or, from Invisible Monsters: "I needed the opposite of a miracle." Which I'm totally paraphrasing, but hey. Hey. I can't even say I'm too lazy to go upstairs: This is all Meg's, here. And I'm not jogging to her house. I will get murdered, raped, or die of exhaustion. I DIDN'T MAKE THIS SENTENCE PARALLEL.
Oh man, the end! The end was great. Not great like oh, I liked the ending it was a good ending, but I liked the ending even though it was not so great for our hero. You remember that Twilight Zone reference? 'Number Twelve Looks Just Like You' has almost the same ending. It's good times, I do like that episode. (Soma/Instant Happy? Hook me up.) Marky Mark said the ending was sad, and it is, but I was too intensely elated by the similar endings to be sad about it until now. Man, I love The Twilight Zone. Good show. Contrary to popular belief, it is irony that is the breakfast of champions, not martinis. Well, at least not until I become a hopeless alcoholic...
What else? Well, I think I convinced my CI teacher to read Junky by William S Burroughs. Which makes my forearm hurt because of how gross that book is. GAH NEEDLES. Dammit, Burroughs!
And I ordered an Oscar Wilde action figure off Amazon. It had to be done. Well, maybe not 'had to be' but come on. It's what the cool kids are into nowadays. Don't tell me you or your friends don't own the Marie Antoinette action figure!
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