Since I’m completely swamped with student papers, I thought the only sensible thing to do would be to start up the reading group again. Nothing like willingly putting bricks in your pocket when you’re already treading water.

Unless anyone has any objections I’d like to read Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint.

Most critics recognize Roth as one of the greatest Jewish-American writers of the last century, and “Portnoy’s Complaint” as one of the seminal Jewish-American novels of our time. Although, I do feel as if I should warn you–while Roth can be subversively funny, he can also be, um, well, sometimes he’s pretty damn dirty. So if you’re at all squeamish about scatological or sexual humor, then you might want to skip this round of the reading group.

Depending when everyone gets their book, we’ll probably start reading next week.

I’m not quite done with the post on Dark Obsession. My apologies. I’ve been busy, and frankly, this one’s been hard to write.

Hopefully it’ll be up tomorrow.

In other news, several outlets have reported that in Vincente Fox’s new autobiography, Revolution of Hope, the former presidente claims that President Bush was, “The cockiest guy I ever met in my life.” Obviously, non-Bush fans consider “cocky” to be a pejorative word. Not me. I think it’s a good thing. There’s nothing that makes me feel safer than knowing that I can describe the President in the same way I’d describe a typical high school varsity football player. God knows they both have the qualities necessary to deal rationally with international policies.

Anniina asked when I was planning on starting another round of the Hyperliterature Reading Group. I think now’s as good a time as any. I have a few books in mind I’d like to propose, but I thought I’d solicit help this time around. So, any ideas?

Before I begin this post, I feel as if I need to come clean about something: I felt a little letdown with this novel. I felt that Atwood used the broken narrative structure and the odd prose to gussy up what was a fairly cliche scifi/dystopic trope. And don’t get me wrong, I like stories that utilize the human extinction trope, but I just didn’t think Atwood added anything new to the conversation.

Regardless, I did find the general outlook of humanity presented in the novel interesting. If Crake is to be believed, and I see no reason why he’s not, humanity was heading for starvation, and eventually extinction, despite Crake’s manipulation. Presumably, global warming had pushed humanity into living in domes for protection from erratic weather, and in the pleeblands it appeared as if disease and viruses ran rampant. Catastrophic conditions notwithstanding, humanity seemed more interested in self-indulgence and status than in attempting to improve life on Earth. The materialistic attitude presented in the novel reminded me of Wordsworth poem “The World is too Much with Us.”

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.–Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

Snowman’s selflessness in leading the Crakers out of the dome and helping to watch over them stood out as a lone act of philanthropy, although, I do think an argument could be made on whether or not Crake was perhaps the most selfless person in the book. Since Crake felt so firmly that the Crakers should not evolve into spiritual beings it would make sense that he would never want them to meet him personally. It would also make sense that he knew when the Crakers were expelled from their Edenic dome that they would eventually deify Oryx, as well. Consequently, Snowman would have been Crake’s best hope for leading the Crakers out into the world.

Either that, or Crake’s cowardice prevented him from living out his magnum opus. I’m not sure, because Crake was so emotionless that I never had a firm grip on who he was a character. Was he a savior of humanity? Other than their placidness, the Crakers were far better equipped for long-term survival than normal humans. Or was he a genocidal sociopath? I was waiting for some kind of emotion from Crake when Snowman revealed that he knew the actual plan of Blyss Pluss, but Crake seemed rather indifferent. I wasn’t expect a Bond-Villian type monologue, but something woulda been nice.

Thoughts?

I’ll be posting my final thoughts on the book tonight. In the interim, what’d you think?

An explanation for my absence may be in order.

After “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was released, I resolved to read the entire series straight through before beginning the seventh, and final book in the series. So last week I started “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone,” and I began a concerted effort to avoid all sites that I thought might post spoilers. I was avoiding all message boards, comments sections and so forth, because internet users can be real jackasses about that kind of stuff. I was still visiting Digg and CNN for news, but only fleetingly, and even then I was trying to avoid comments section.

And then I clicked on a Digg story, about Ron Paul of all things, and some dickhead had posted something about The Deathly Hallows. I closed the window before I saw anything, but I got scared. So I quit using internets for a week, until I finished reading all seven books of Harry Potter.

And then we went camping at Lost Maples Texas state park this weekend. Oddly enough, no wifi at the park. I plan on writing a letter of complaint about that. I mean, I want to camp, but I’m not a savage for God’s sake.

Anyway, I’m jacked back in, and things will return to normal. Relatively speaking, of course.

I’m also halfway through Oryx and Crake, and I’ll post my thoughts on Friday. Thanks for everyone that’s still interested. You have a week to gather your thoughts, too.

Well, the twenty-seventh is here. How do we feel about starting up the reading group again? I know a couple of our participants have either started or have already finished the book, but I’d like to hear where everyone is at so we’re all on the same page, so to speak.

Let me know in the comments and I’ll either assign a reading schedule, or we’ll start discussing the book.

And thanks to everyone for staying with me through the postponement, and special thanks to everyone that did some extra advertising for me.

First things first: I’m postponing our reading of Oryx and Crake. I’ve been out of town and away from a computer, and one of our members hasn’t received the book yet, so we’ll begin on the 27th. That gives you time to try and convince at least two or three more people to join the group.

I’ll be back home today, but don’t expect a lot of posts until the middle of next week. The new Harry Potter comes out tonight but since I know I won’t get around to reading it until Monday, I’m not risking a trip to the ‘ole information superhighway without discovering the end of the book on my own. I narrowly avoided having the end of Half-Blooded Prince ruined by the internets two years ago, and I’m damn sure not going to have this one ruin by some jagoff who wants some attention. So I’m avoiding the tubes.

And let me say this to you potential ending-revealers: Not all Potter fans are bespeckled and acne-ridden nerds. You start screaming the end of the book while I’m in line at B&N and you’d better be prepared to run your jokester-ass as fast as you can. Because if you can’t, that little yuk-yuk will cost you a hospital visit.

Oh, and I know this book is supposed to be much darker than the previous ones, but I was shocked when I saw this publicity still for the new book (The smiley face wasn’t in the original. I wanted to spare you the shock of seeing Potter’s “wand” unsheathed):

Good gracious! I can only assume that during the ultimate fight with Voldemort Harry’s clothes get burned off by a particularly strong spell and he is forced to make the long journey back to Hogwarts via horse, because the shock of the duel caused him to forget how to apparate.

As I announced several posts ago, our next book for group discussion will be Atwood’s Oryx and Crake. This one is a bit longer than our last book, so I’ll give us more time for reading. We’ll have an interim discussion on Friday the 20th, and then we’ll discuss the book as a whole on the 27th. I don’t want specifics on the 20th, but more just general impressions on the text.

Let me know if you need more time than that, and be sure to tell your friends about all the fun you had the first time around.

I was very pleased with our first reading group, so I think, if everyone’s agreeable, that we should do it again. Anniina suggested Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood, and unless anyone has any major objections that’ll be our next book. Just remember, if you don’t like this one you should address your hate-mails to Anniina.

If you want to participate in the second Hyperliterature reading group then leave a little note in the comment section to this post. When you get your hands on a copy of the book let me know and I’ll assign reading dates.

If you participated in the first reading group I’d be ecstatic if you convinced at least one friend to join this go-round.

Sorry I didn’t get this posted last night. I tried, but I was exhausted, and at the end of the night I decided to trade bloggery for sleep.

The term “post-modern literature” gets tossed around far too frequently, in my opinion. In literary criticism I’ve seen the term applied to any piece of fiction written after World War II until the present, but in my head there are some very important distinctions in post-modern literature. Post-modern writers tend to explore the link between post-nuclear technology and humanity, and more often than not, the outlook for humankind isn’t good.

There’s a very good reason for this proclivity in post-modern writers. After World War II, advancements in technology forced humankind to face the reality that while science might very well answer many of the questions humankind had been in search of for centuries, we might not be very comfortable facing those answers. Nuculear power offered us amazing energy, the likes of which had never been seen before…and simultaneously, it also contained the ability to murder millions of people in the blink of an eye.

We don’t really need religion to provide us answers to life’s questions anymore, but will science save us…or will it eventually be our downfall?

That’s what comes to my mind when I think of post-modernism: science, hopelessness, and eventually solace found in humanism.

And this is where “Never Let Me Go” confuses me. At first I thought it was going to explore the effects of genetic cloning, but it never really got around to doing that. Genetic cloning, instead of serving as a motif or an allegory for the current human condition, ends up simply becoming a plot device. At the end we eventually see Tommy and Kathy struggling with their relationship, but the emotional aspect never really reaches a crescendo like I thought it would. I guess for some people that might seem more true to life, but after all the talk of deferrals and the false hope I wanted to see more raw emotion.

I suppose the reason the story confused was that without even the hint of free will, these characters were never much more than robots. Like Tank noticed, they never even considered receiving a “pardon” for donations, they only held out hope for a “deferral.” Are they programed? Do they have choice at all? It didn’t seem like it, and without that, I can’t relate to them, and therefore, their plight doesn’t offer me anything.

It’s like trying to identify with the robots in Asmiov’s Robot series. Sure, they often make choices that seem more human than human, but deep down we know that the Three Laws precludes free will.

And likewise with the donors and carers of Never Let Me Go. Whether their own mind-forged manacles prevents them from breaking free, or whether they’re genetically-created automatons, I don’t think they’re human. And without that, any chance for a post-modern exploration of science and humanity goes bye-bye.