After my last post, I found myself pretty hung up on my response to Alas, Babylon (Patrick Frank). The apocalyptic story, though well done in many details for one of the first of its kind, just did not seem real enough to me. The characters didn't have enough dimension, were too trapped in pre-event stereotypes to be believable.
I have been hung up on the story because I wonder how I could let a story I didn't like get under my skin so much, but this is a book review, not a therapy session... though one could argue that since the fruit of the writer is an insight into the mind of an individual, it is the reader's (and reviewer's) responsibility to acknowledge visceral responses to the brain-fruit of the writer.
**Side note: listening to "The Blues Walk" by Clifford Brown and Max Roach, and the drum solo was kickin'. I'm 40-something, I'm allowed outdated colloquial slang and love affairs with jazz drum solos**
When reading, I wonder often how much the author is presenting of his/her Self or of what he/she thinks we want to read, limiting the intrusion of Self. I'm very interested in accurate reflections of human interaction and speech patterns, and thought processes and impulse control under stressful conditions. How do people really act, and how do non-generalized individuals respond to stressful situations? That is what I want to see in my mind-movie when reading a work of fiction.
I guess we all read for our own purposes. I read to know the authors, to see through someone else's eyes what their imaginary worlds look like. I don't ask for much... just something worth reading.
I can say, Alas, Babylon was worth reading for a look into another time; for perspective into the fears held by mid-century Americans during the Nuclear War terror that gripped the world then.
**Another side note: I don't think the fears they lived under are much different than the proximity we are quickly approaching along the lines of the likelihood of having a button-pushing-happy-World Leader. Will the children in our schools soon be taught to react to a nuclear blast (like our grandparents when they were kids) by slipping under their desks and covering their heads in weekly response drills? Or will we be kept distracted by the next shiny new device that can unlock our houses, tell us our footstep count and play our favorite songs while telling us how to make dinner during a conversation with our Grammygram on her Spain vacation without letting us forget who in Hollywood is getting divorced/arrested/having a baby/gaining weight? **
After saying all of this, as a distraction Alas, Babylon does the job. I guess if I want reality, I'll read the newspaper. Yeah, I said newspaper.
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