I read this right on the heels of having finished Atwood's most famous work, The Handmaid's Tale. Whether or not they are intended to be regarded together, having read them back-to-back makes it hard for me not to engage them as a set. In Oryx & Crake, Atwood covers some similar territory to THT. We meet the MC, "Snowman"/Jimmy some time after a terrible calamity has befallen the Earth. We meet the "Crakers" (cray-kerz), who seem to be humans, but maybe not. Later we learn that no, they are not, not in the strictest sense. We flash back and spend most of the book in an America (though we learn the rest of the world is much the same) where large corporations have brought back the idea of "company towns", herein referred to as compounds. Everything outside the compounds is called "the plebelands". Jimmie is a rather lackluster (by comparison) son of genetic researchers living in a compound where everyone is a genius as a starting requirement. Jimmy befriends the NKOTB named Glenn, who is a requisite genius and Jimmy develops an understated school-boy bromance crush on him. The actual romance is with a girl the two of them find while perusing internet porn. This girl is very young when they first see her, Asian, and acting in some seedy fetish porn that actually contains little to no sex at all. Later on, via plot-stuff, Glenn, now nicknamed Crake, manages to find and procure this girl and she get's nicknamed Oryx. Voila, book title. Jimmy (who is nicknamed Thickney and then later called Snowman by the Crakers) and Glenn pal around in that homoromantic disaffected way that teens have when they want to appear too cool for labels. Whatever, that's not the core of the story. The core of the story is that these companies and their compounds are all in the genetics game, making products, growing organs, modifying plants and animals, etc. Those of you who suffer from GMO Panic Disorder, take your Xanax parachute before reading this book because all your worst nightmares come true! I say that it's hard for me to separate this read from The Handmaid's Tale, because I feel that together they make a more completely actualized warning than either book alone. In THT we see Atwood's take on fundamentalist religion (not to be confused with faith, which no one seems to have any of in that story) and how it can grab both a government and The People by the balls and squeeze with a grip that no one can make let go. The hand just has to eventually break under its own force. In Oryx & Crake, we see Science (yes, capital S) fill the same roll and the eventual squeeze it gives is one that knocks humanity off the planet. Taken together, I think what Atwood is saying is "Stop looking for a do-all autopilot and put your fucking hands on the steering wheel and pay attention to the road. It's the only way." Thoughts?
I'll have to respond more later when not on my phone. Oryx and Crake is one of a group of three novels. Are you going to read the other two as well? I still need to read those.
I've not read the second and third novels, The Year of the Flood, and Maddaddam, no. I may read them, but I felt that Oryx & Crake was a very neatly rounded story. I would be interested to see what else there is to say since I feel like the message was well delivered and complete already.
I didn't even know there were two other books - doubt I'll look for them. Not because I didn't enjoy the first, just because I think it was enough. I thought Oryx and Crake was Atwood at her most Vonnegut-ian. Not the same humour, but a similar matter-of-fact bleakness, a similar sense of distance, sort of, from humanity? I don't know if that makes sense, and it's been too long since I've read it for me to offer any concrete examples. I definitely see the parallels to Handmaid's Tale, though. Bleakness in two different directions... yay? Sometimes Canadian authors need to lighten up a little!
I haven't read them either, though one acquaintance of mine liked Maddaddam the best of all three, so I'm tempted. But I'm in the middle of a long KJ Parker novel, a Murakami novel, and a collection of short stories, so it'll have to wait a while.
I'm taking a break from further remonstration and baleful literary looks by re-reading The Enchantments of Flesh and Spirit. I'll never not love the world of Wraeththu (sorry for the double negative), with all of its below the belt, hands in the pants charm, but after the dry, restrained aesthetic of Atwood, Constantine feels almost juvenile in her lush embracing of heady emotions and dialogue right out of a Castilian novel of the very eldest school, all high drama and affect. Where Atwood is cerebral, Constantine is unapologetically sexual. ETA: And even here I can draw parallels. Where Atwood seems to be telling us to have a care because this little game of Man is preciously delicate and falls apart with such ease, Constantine seems to take the opposite view in the world of Wraeththu, seeming to say that perhaps it's too delicate and should be allowed to pass, as all things do, and be replaced by something new and stronger.
I always found Oryx & Crake to be a continuance of the themes found in A Handmaiden's Tale, but less put together, and a fair bit drier. Did not know there were subsequent novels, but I doubt I'll read them. As has been said before, I felt that Oryx & Crake was rounded in itself and didn't need more. That being said, I did find this novel to be a reactionary product of the time it was written. The full on GMO scare, which is heavily being taught in biology courses nowadays was defining the food market. It was pretty wild in the novel with the detailed descriptions of hulking cows and chickens meant to substantiate enough meat for exorbitant needs of the few. I've seen the comparison between natural chickens in Indonesia and South Korea, and these genetically reconstructed creatures we have now in America from first hand viewing. It's actually pretty startling. I understand a lot of it is selective breeding, but its an interesting subject to view and I understand where Atwood was coming from. Her vision of the future isn't far off in some minor respects. And as she put it, none of of these things were ever in the public's eye. I find, being in the military, that this obsession with porn fetishes that leads to the eventual procuring of Oryx is really not far off from the truth. I've seen people so obsessed with this objectifying of their respective interests so far that they even follow certain "stars." This can lead to even less rational behavior. The loneliness some individuals can experience on a deployment would lead to do wild things in the interest of someone they've never met, in which they see as an object of desire or passion that they can't satiate. Many can become more interested in the falsified relationship than real ones directly in front of them. This kind of behavior that Crake presents is not off-the-wall, but simply Atwood amplifying at the time problems she saw arising in the future. It's quite bizarre how she could see some of these things happening. Makes for an interesting read though. I like to think of it as an aggrandized version of the problems of our present society. A look into the flaws not ordinarily prevalent with people and cultures that are evolving today.
And not just in that area of the world. Where I live, Puerto Rico, chickens and roosters look nothing like their American farm-raised versions. They look almost like pheasants. They're actually attractive birds, with colorful plumage, and rather trim and athletic by comparison. Natural chickens can fly with little trouble.
Yes I couldn't believe the beautiful blues and greens on the chickens in Indonesia. I never realized they were a pleasant bird. So I'm sure it's just another Atwood has hit right an the nose. Those very same chickens are much less desirable to eat I must say though. Very bony. And if the Indonesians, or any Asian nationality really, prepared it you should expect to be stabbed by numerous bone shard while eating. The monstrous genetically modified chickens may be ugly, but they at least won't try to kill you when you eat them! (As far as we know)
I keep meaning to re-try this one. I started it a while ago and got bored fairly quickly, but I did have a feeling that if I stuck with it, it might turn a corner.
I enjoyed it muchly. I started it literally the same day as I finished THT, though, so I was already in the "Atwood groove", so to speak. I'm glad that I read them together. I think that if I had read it alone and separately, I would have taken exception to some of her preconceptions of what it means to be a young man aging out of youth. Taken together with THT, I was able to see her more wholistic approach to being a young person aging out of youth. Just typing that right now also makes me realize that there's a quiet declaration in both works of something I also hold to, the idea that adulthood is a lie, a posture, a piece of artifice in which we wrap ourselves to pretend that we're not all simply 16 year-olds in ever less-forgiving bodies.
