Boulder Book Club discussion

This thread is for discussing The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood.

i am supposed to have read this (because like 50 bazillion people have recommended it to me and/or been appalled to hear i have not read it)

I got a copy for myself and one for Miles last night. The bookworm is officially out of copies (they were cheap!). My recommendation would be to check Red Letter Books.

Done. Anybody want to borrow? Oops too late. I sent it off to a worthy consumer. N.B. you can get books through goodreads. You pay the postage, and the website finds a donor. Pretty cool!
My review is here.

I am about a third of the way in and it is great. I cannot type apostrophes on this German keyboard, so my words may seem extra stilted without contractions. I just finished The Children of Men and it is fascinating how the two seem to intersect both thematically and plot-wise. It is almost as if The Handmaid's Tale could be a continuation of what reality might become post The Children of Men.

Has anyone heard of the Kingdom Now movement?

http://www.kingdomnow.org/95Theses.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQtB-A...

Apparently Texas Governor Rick Perry is an adherent, and it's gaining popularity.

#76 "Indeed, faithfulness to Jesus and to the building of his Kingdom is our primary calling, and we can no longer adulterously serve two masters: Jesus and the United States."

Another link to consider:
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/ferti...

more on Rick Perry, potential GOP candidate:
http://www.suite101.com/content/rick-...

Ooof, a hard book to read because it seems so easily possible...and in fact, too close to the truth in other countries already.

I guess I'll add another link which I found appropos while reading the book: http://www.npr.org/2011/08/02/1389190...

In particular, many of the links in that article are worthwhile.

Adam, that's a spooky read. The author was obviously spooked himself, probably thinking "how could my writing be woven into this nutball's manifesto?"

...but he shouldn't have bothered: theorizing about how crazies reason? Say that out loud: doesn't make sense. The very point is that such people manage to pervert things they learn.

I'll play though! So the question is "how can people DO such poor reasoning, such illogical logic?" My thought is that use of the word "mashup" later is a key to it. I suggest that it's just the consequence a very short attention span. If you can't focus longer than a sound bite, then you can put a bunch of them together, each individually satisfying, and the broader incoherence being beyond your ken. That's how things could be juxtaposed so jarringly.

I like this line of reasoning because it suggests a lesser form of stupidity (maybe being able to see a little farther (but still not think "rationally" as I'd characterize it) explains the seeming sub-psychopathic stupidity I feel I see around me all the time.

And, just to finish the reasoning, I had better also imagine there are smarter people still, circling frustrated through our midst, metaphorically throwing their hands up all the time and thinking (about me!) "Oh my god how stupid can these people be?" Maybe some of them are you!

But I doubt it. Stupidity, you see, is its own defense. (And stupidity squared, which is insanity, will let you get away with murder.)

In addition to that, Mark, I think that people are easily able to convince themselves of illogical things because they want to believe.

When discussing books, especially science fiction, the term "suspension of disbelief" comes up again and again. The interesting thing is that we can apply this outside of fiction as well. If someone wants to believe their significant other is cheating on them, they'll find a way to manufacture evidence if none exists. If someone wants to believe their favorite sports club is going to make a huge trade for one of their desired players, they'll find a way to believe the outlandish rumors.

Ultimately, we're a far weaker organism than I'd like to believe and the ease with which we can make ourselves easy ideological prey is alarming. Complacency, desire and fear all combine to overcome logic on a regular basis, and that very well may be te scariest thing.

From the article, for posterity here:
"As many have said before, we live in an age in which technology isolates individuals within bubbles of virtual reality while simultaneously empowering them to wreak havoc. This is true in ways big and small. It's hard to imagine, for example, that Breivik would ever have completed his 700,000-word manuscript without recourse to the World Wide Web or that its contents would be the same if he had had to work in a library. It is a Google manifesto, comprising a mash-up of information — some true and some false, some from learned sources and much from crackpots — that Breivik would had to have at least reflected upon more deeply had he been compelled to retype all that material.

If, like Karl Marx, Breivik had spent countless hours in the reading room of the British Museum, he probably would have still produced gibberish, but he also might have learned some intellectual discipline, or just given up on his pretensions of being an intellectual. At least he would have gotten out of the house. As it was, his immersion in the Internet not only enabled his vainglory, but also taught him how to make fertilizer bombs while at the same time isolating him from once close friends who might have helped him with his mental illness. Breivik seems to glimpse this truth when he advises his imaginary fellow travelers: "Being a bitter old goat behind a computer will only drive you to depression, and defeat.""

You both have very good points. I want to tie the whole thing together with Marketing somehow -- or Propaganda, depending on your point of view. We get a little taste of it in Handmaid (moreso with e.g. Brave New World) -- there are cleverly named events to re-educate, re-sheep-ify, reduce the masses to consumers of whatever the folks in charge decide. A central memory of Offred was her time at the re-education center where there was *some* violence used, but the main tactic was public humiliation and simple media shown with commentary to tell you what you *should* think. I guess that hit a nerve with me. How often have I seen some current event flash across my screen and then turned quickly to some trusted news/opinion site for their reaction almost before registering my own reaction to it?

For us the media/internet just seems to be growing in it's power that way and it's becoming harder and harder to filter. In the end though, it's use is for a (mostly harmless?) goal -- to make money, not for some nefarious agenda. At least for now..dun dun dunnnnnnn :)


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let's have book club soon!

also, from here:
http://www.npr.org/2011/08/11/1390858...

Handmaid #22 best sci-fi book of ALL TIME!

Another article that reminded me of the book:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/24/wor...

"
“What’s the matter with us?” Ms. Mika asks German women. “Don’t we want to be free and equal?”

“We are collaborating with a system that reduces us to motherhood,” she writes. “We voluntarily choose to be powerless and adjust to self-inflicted victimhood. That’s cowardice.”
[...]
Why do we insist on spending ridiculous amounts of money on our looks, all the way up to elective plastic surgery? Why do we still draw so much of our self-confidence from having a husband and a baby? Indeed, why do young professionals often obsess about being that elusive “perfect” mother?

Yes, women are fundamentally different from men: they give birth. So one answer is that they have different priorities and are making choices that make them happy. Another is that their freedom to choose remains somewhat illusory.
"

Nice going on the meeting Gina!

Couple of closing thoughts from me, first the obviously more proactive & aggressive role in the movie, moved Kate from victim to heroine. Our reactions to that were mixed, but I thought it took a lot of the punch out of the book in exchange for a more palatable ending.

Second, the idea about feminism after dinner: my thought was that society grows, like an adolescent, and not until recently was it even possible to contemplate sexual equality. The movement, the abolitionist movement, the democratic movement, these were all phenomena whose times had come, and the groups that espoused them were although participatory a consequence, not a cause, like zits to adolescence, (nice, eh?) they arose when the culture was ripe, and subsided later. Else, why not feminism before the civil war, or abolition before the revolution? Sure, there would be proponents, but only as voices in the wilderness.

Thanks again everybody.

I'm now very glad to have skipped the movie. Part of the beauty of the novel was the passivity of Offred (and I am only assuming that Kate is Offred in the film). She was a protagonist and victim, and making her heroic would completely change and defeat part of the purpose of the novel. Several of the people she consorts with are heroic, but she's consistently a victim of society, of desire, of her own lack of will, and it's only through happenstance and the good luck to be privileged not only as a handmaiden (when compared to women of other status other than wife), but as the handmaid to a high ranking official. If Offred had been heroic, she wouldn't have survived the first third of the book.

Totally agree. Offred is meant to represent the preponderance of the oppressed population, not the 1% underground. Making her the literal spearhead of the resistance (she kills Fred) provided a comic book overtone. One thing that made it worthwhile was the evil genius of Duvall. That guy can do creepy like nobody else.

The movie suffers (obviously) for lack of access to her thoughts, and from complete lack of tension, as well. Offred's continuous powerlessness and peril should have lent the movie a sickening frightening atmosphere. Instead we got a sunny and mellow Gilead, where somehow even the act of hanging a handmaiden is sapped of any dramatic force. Fail.
But oh well.

Looking forward to the next book!