"The Dangers of Smoking in Bed" by Mariana Enriquez

It's easy to remember many of the classic campfire scary stories told in my youth: the woman driving alone on a rainy night, unaware of the killer in her backseat; the babysitter who calls caller ID after receiving crank calls, only to learn the calls were coming from inside the house! Last summer, I kept a group of kids enthralled as I recounted the "tale of the bloody finger" over a crackling fire. We love scary stories, ghost stories, stories that end unsettled, as if the lack of equilibrium in the world could catch us too. But there's also a sense that these are stories for children. Adult scares come in the form of medical tragedies, unexpected expenses, or the inevitable ennui of middle age.

It's a surprise, then, to read The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, which I'd call--with no criticism intended--a collection of scary stories. Sure, they're literary scary stories, but they're campfire tales all the same, full of ghosts and possessions and creepy children. Shortened and simplified for an oral audience, the stories--particularly ones like "The Lookout," about a vengeful ghost--would be ideal for a group gathered around the fire on a dark fall night.

Because the stories have so much in common with traditional ghost stories--a normal world, slowly going askew; characters succumbing to the terror that lurks--it was almost hard for me to read them as literature. Traditional ghost stories often have a vaguely moralistic lesson (don't ignore the man at the gas station because he looks creepy! he's warning you about the murderer in the backseat!), but Enriquez has no such didactic purposes. Her characters are rarely at fault themselves. Instead, they're victims of family history and choices or the society in which they live. Few stories are overtly political, though the final one, "Back When We Talked to the Dead," where a teenage girl suffers because she's the only one in a group not to personally know someone who's been "disappeared" (presumably by the government), suggests there's plenty of evil that comes from non-supernatural causes.

Perhaps part of the stories' appeal, at least for an American reader, is the Argentinian setting, itself similar but just slightly "askew" from America. Smoking, as in the title, is present in many stories, an ashy haze that seems appropriate for the subject matter. But because smoking is far more common in Argentina (as it also is in Europe) than in America, this too feels slightly off, another element that situates the stories of the precipice of unreal. 

Several stories include variations of vicious female masturbation, done for obsessiveness or other macabre ends, but never for pleasure. This appears most grotesquely in "Where Are You, Dear Heart?" about a woman with a heartbeat fetish--or maybe in "Meat," about teenage girls who consume their rock star idol. In fact, so many stories revolve around teenage girls or female sexuality that we're reminded how easily these two things can be turned to horror in our society, something to be feared.

Ultimately, The Dangers of Smoking in Bed is literary ghost stories for adults. And that's not a bad thing.

"A Children's Bible" by Lydia Millet

I finished A Children's Bible before Ready Player Two, but busyness pushed writing the review aside, and I also found I wasn't quite sure what to say about Millet's novel. It's a weird little book, unsettling but without a didactic message.

The novel begins with an assortment of jaded teenagers at a summer house with their parents. They're hugely disdainful of their embarrassing and drunk parents, so much so that they make a game of identifying whose parents are whose. The last person to have a parent correctly identified as theirs wins. Then a terrifying hurricane ushers in the apocalypse. The kids are left largely on their own, working for survival against the elements and human threats. The book's title comes from the children's Bible that Jack, the younger brother of narrator Eve, carries around. It's a clear nod that much of the book is allegorical (from Eve's name to the great flood to the "plagues" they face), though I'll confess I'm not clear on the allegory's meaning. 

For instance, Jack works to save the animals a la Noah, but there's little indication the animals need saving. In fact, Jack has to be told to let them go when another sees they're suffering. There's a baby born in a barn, but the baby has no real effect other than bringing out the parental care of his sister. Millet isn't trying to make any religious message, a point emphasized when Jack announces he's "decoded" the message in the Bible. God is nature, and Jesus is science. Believing in Jesus thus means believing in science.

I read that Millet works in environmental policy, so it would be easy to see this as a direct warning about climate change and the like. But I don't think Millet is being so un-subtle. Jack's announcement has no effect on the other characters or the plot. It's not a grand revelation that changes the world.

Instead, the book focuses more on how we make our way in the world, the choices we make to exist in or escape the reality around us. The most withering criticism seems to be for the kids' parents, who exist in a boozy and drug-filled haze, barely able to eek out concern for their children. Their lives are vapid and meaningless. It's hard at first to see their privileged children's lives as significantly better, despite their disdain for their parents and their Peter Pan-like desire to avoid growing up. Nonetheless, the children do ultimately take charge and live with what they're given. They accept the environmental truth around them, and instead of resisting the inevitable, work with it. Perhaps that's Millet's environmental message after all.

"Ready Player Two" by Ernest Cline

It's embarrassing to admit now, but I loved Ready Player One. I even ranked it my favorite book of 2011! I acknowledged some of its weaknesses in my review, but overall I found it entertaining. In the following years, after reading some thoughtful critiques, I came to have a more balanced perspective toward the novel, particularly Wade's egotistic behavior (especially towards his crush) and the novel's narrow, white-centric view of culture. Still, I wanted to read Ready Player Two. I'd read some of the harsh critiques of Cline's sequel before picking up the book, so I felt prepared going in.

Ultimately, all the critiques are appropriate and justified. RP2 is not a great book. And I'm still embarrassed to say I enjoyed it anyway. 

In my review for RP1, I argued that one of the reasons I liked the book was because it was fun, a contrast to the Deep and Meaningful literature I'd like to think I typically read. That's undoubtedly true of RP2 as well. I wanted a silly romp with dumb characters and expected endings. And I got it!

So what to say about RP2? RP1 ends with its hero--Parzival/Wade-- winning Halliday's contest and gaining control of the OASIS, the virtual-reality world most of the world spends their days in. RP2 begins shortly after, but Cline thoughtfully realized that his book-one underdog hero is not nearly as fun when he's the richest and most powerful man on the planet. Wade was a whiner in book one, but at least he was a poor whiner. Now he's just an entitled brat who spies on his friends and uses his unlimited power to destroy people who oppose him. To address that, Cline almost immediately hits "reset." Rather than explore his hero's newfound power and the complicated issues around what it means to be human in a digital space, Cline has crafted a plot almost identical to RP1: there's a new puzzle challenge with a new series of obstacles that Wade and his band of friends must solve by relying on their encyclopedic knowledge of '80s culture! And this time, Wade will literally be saving the world!

Now, this challenge should be nonsense. Did I say that Wade is the richest and most powerful man on the planet? That he has a giant corporate team at his beck and call? That it makes no sense whatsoever that he and his three friends would essentially go it alone to solve a puzzle necessary to save the lives of half a billion people? But, of course, reading about a CEO navigating personnel is boring. It's more fun if Wade and his merry band have to use their pluck, courage, and friendship to save the world.

Like in RP1, Wade, Shoto, Aech, and Art3mis must pass through '80s nostalgia to solve the puzzle. And, like before, this premise is easier to accept if you hand wave... a lot. Because the reader now knows Aech is a Black woman (she concealed her identity, playing as a white male avatar in RP1), she can occasionally pipe in on the fact that all of this nostalgia is white (and every other normative). But beyond Aech's comments, RP1 rarely acknowledges any culture beyond the white suburban "mainstream." Instead, RP1 and RP2 exist in a world where everyone has dedicated their lives to '80s pop culture. Which, again, makes no sense, even if you accept the insane popularity of Halliday. Sure, plenty of people are John Hughes fans (I guess? Are there still huge John Hughes fans?). But enough to painstakingly recreate every detail of his movies into a virtual world?

In fact, the whole RP1/2 universe suggests that everyone devotes their lives and days to recreating nostalgia from the past. I can understand why the OASIS is insanely popular. But why wouldn't people create new worlds? New adventure? New game forms? Why, instead, make intricate versions of Middle-earth or Prince-worship planets? Aren't there new forms of entertainment? Why do people spend their days completing insanely difficult quests in these worlds? Plenty of people don't do that in video games today!

But I'm getting sidetracked. Wade's quest is made all the more challenging because Art3mis/Samantha, the "love of his life" from book one, broke up with him a week after the first book's end. She's worried about the OASIS' stranglehold on people's lives. Wade's super mopey about this. But, don't worry, in comes Quest to Save Humanity and, uh, their relationship is fixed? I've written about a lot of nonsense, but Wade and Sam's relationship takes the cake. She's furious at him and has legitimate concerns about the power of the OASIS and their new neural hardware (the ONI), but once the quest starts, she appears to forgive him immediately. At the end of the book, they're back together, despite nothing changing. In my review of RP1, I noted that "the problematic nature of most of the world spending all their time online is only slightly addressed." In RP2, the problematic nature is addressed via Sam's concerns. And then completely dropped. 

I'm not even going to go into the bizarre "let's live forever" ending. 

Still, though I've wasted far too much of my and my imaginary audience's time complaining, I liked it. I know! I read it quickly. It was stupid and fun and the jokes were bad and the relationships terrible and the world underdeveloped and real issues unaddressed and still whatever. I liked it.

Side notes:

• Is Cline planning a book about L0hengrin, the woman who comes to Wade's assistance twice in the book? She's set up as an important character only to disappear and then deus ex machina the end. She has an entire side quest we hear nothing about! Is there a companion novel?
• Cline implies that everyone is pansexual now because the ONI allows people to experience sex in various forms and with different partners. It could be a cool idea... if actually explored.

"Homegoing" by Yaa Gyasi

I almost abandoned Homegoing early in my reading. Not because it was boring or poorly written, but because I wasn't sure I wanted to endure the violence essential to Gyasi's story (I was simultaneously reading Parable of the Sower, which didn't help). I'm glad I stuck with it, though. 

Homegoing follows the descendants of two half-sisters born in Ghana during the emergence of the slave trade. One sister, Esi, is taken into slavery, thus beginning her descendants' trajectory as slaves in America. The other sister, Effia, marries a white British official, and her descendants continue lives in Africa. Each chapter provides a snapshot of a descendant's life, with the final chapter bringing the sisters' great-great-great-great grandchildren together in both America and Africa.

Many books play on the theme of family, the inescapable way it shapes our lives, despite our attempts to break free. Homegoing's structure makes that theme all the more visible. Gyasi weaves into that universal theme the characters' Blackness--the way both their particular family and their race insists on defining their lives. Successive generations experience greater freedom (compare Esi's slavery to her great-great-great-great-grandson Marcus' doctorate program at Stanford, where he studies his family's history), but none are independent from their history (of the history of Ghana or America).

Most parents want better lives for their children, but that dream is continually thwarted in Homegoing. In fact, many of the descendants grow up more or less as orphans, and few escape lives of poverty. There's a sense, perhaps especially in America, that the progress of time is always for the better, but Homegoing suggests that is not the case. Each generation's suffering may be slightly different, but they suffer nonetheless. 

Though plenty of books address the time periods in Gyasi's novel, I've never read about them all in one piece. Part of Gyasi's point is that they're all interrelated. Marcus talks about the struggle of completing his research: how can he discuss the convict-leasing system that essentially made his great-grandfather a slave without talking about his grandmother's Great Migration to escape Jim Crow, or about his father's heroin-addiction and jail time, or about the current "war on drugs"? Freedom and success aren't about individual choices and grit but often about circumstance and culture.

I saw some reviewers complain about the incomplete nature of each descendant's story. We typically see them as young children, through the eyes of a parent; then for the longest time during a portion of adult life; and finally as snapshots through the eyes of their child. Because Gyasi covers so many time periods, it also means key events, particularly in American history, have to get covered quickly and somewhat shallowly. Nonetheless, I think the structure is the novel's great strength, as it emphasizes the interrelated theme.

A number of teachers use this book in the classroom, and I can see it being a strong way of engaging with American and African history.

"Parable of the Sower" by Octavia Butler

While I read Parable of the Sower, I was teaching Cormac McCarthy's The Road to my junior students. Of course, both share many similarities: the post-apocalyptic setting; a lack of resources; humanity turning on each other; and, of course, the long road journey in hopes of something better. Despite the grotesque horrors Butler depicts, though, Sower is much more hopeful than The Road. In Butler's world, Lauren's small group of survivors band together, sharing resources. They welcome worn strangers, who in turn defend them, rather than steal or attack. The group buys into and supports Lauren's new religion--Earthseed. Perhaps Butler is more optimistic than McCarthy or perhaps their books simply exist at different points on the apocalyptic spectrum. At the end of the novel, Lauren and her lover, Bankole, discuss whether there's any hope for their community. Lauren thinks there is, but Bankole wonders if society simply hasn't hit rock bottom yet. After all, money is still worth something. Were food as scarce as it is in The Road, perhaps there would be no community to form. 

Thus The Road exists at apocalyptic rock-bottom while Sower exists in apocalypse-in-the-making. In The Road, humanity is doomed, but individual human lives may have meaning. In Sower, there's still potential for humanity to be resurrected, particularly if Lauren realizes her dream of creating and reaching "Heaven": a settlement in space.  

That serves as good a transition as any into Lauren and Earthseed. Like many apocalyptic protagonists, Lauren is young--15 when the book starts and 18 by the book's end. Unlike other novels, though, Butler doesn't try too hard to make Lauren a realistic teenager. She's preternaturally wise and composed, acting as the de facto leader of her group from the beginning. Before the fires that ravage the community in which her family lives, she's the only one to see the real danger. She never panics or despairs; never doubts or lashes out. When she meets the much older Bankole, she recognizes their attraction, and they calmly and assuredly begin a physical and emotional relationship. Her distance from recognizable teenagers would normally be a criticism, but it somehow works for Butler's purpose. We accept that Lauren is not a real teenager--she's the mouthpiece for Earthseed.

Earthseed is Lauren's self-created religion, dedicated to embracing Change as God. The central tenets of Earthseed frame each journal entry (chapter) of the book. Lauren insists on her religion's importance, and the other characters buy into it, but I couldn't wrap my head around it. I understand the importance of accepting the inevitability of change (and also our ability to shape change), but as a religion? Or how that abstract idea ties into building an actual colony in space?

It didn't move me the way it did Lauren, but ultimately, I was moved by Lauren herself--despite not seeming like a real teenager, despite a bizarre disease (see below), and despite her desire to be a cult leader. In fact, the book flourishes once Lauren leaves her community and family and sets out to achieve her goal. She's a compelling and powerful leader, and she's a young Black woman in a world where racism is very much alive. We need to read more of those in literature, and recognize more of those who exist in the real world.

Miscellany:

• Lauren suffers from hyper-empathy syndrome, caused by drugs her mother abused while pregnant. We're told that this is not a magical ability or superpower but rather a mental delusion, albeit a delusion that is apparently untreatable (there's no references or attempts to manage or mitigate its impact on her life). This doesn't quite make sense. A hyper-empath must be aware of an injury to share pain (which makes sense if it's a mental illness), but if that's the case, wouldn't distraction or mindfulness exercises be a straightforward way of "treating" the delusion? Towards the end of the book, Lauren experiences, in rapid succession, the shootings and deaths of multiple people (i.e. she feels their pain of being shot, which only dissipates once they're dead) during a fight. However, given the chaos of the moment, how is it possible she's aware of who's been shot and exactly when they're dying, even subconsciously? We also learn the syndrome is inheritable, which makes no sense if it's a reaction to invitro drug abuse. Ultimately the syndrome has only fleeting and minor impact on the novel, so its presence is a little unclear. In most dystopian works an unusual "disability" would be what makes the protagonist the chosen one, but that's not the case in Sower. We learn at the end of the book that a number of other people suffer from the disease and that others exploit it, so perhaps it has greater impact in the second book. And perhaps we'll learn it's not a psychological delusion after all.
• I've been torn recently over depictions of horrific violence, particularly rape and child abuse, in literature. Perhaps it's because I also began Homegoing, about the African slave trade, at the same time as I was reading Sower. On the one hand, I don't think literature needs to or should be "nice" or easy to read. Horrors exist in real life, and those horrors will be reflected on the written page. At the same time, such depictions can, at times, serve as lazy shorthand for "look how bad the situation is!", thus becoming gratuitous rather than essential to the book's meaning. I think to The Road, which has horrors in spades that mostly go unsaid and undescribed, without sacrificing any of the setting. I think Sower could have done at least some situations similarly.