Finally got around to reading Cory Doctorow's spin on privacy and security in the age of the Internet, Homeland Security, and the Patriot Act. An intriguing read, but I had to really drag myself through it. I don't think the writing's that great--I couldn't pin down W1n5t0n (aka M1k37, aka Marcus Yallow) as a character, couldn't imagine him (see him in my head), couldn't really come to care about him. The pacing was up and down, and I just couldn't wrap my head around a lot of the techno-speak about hacking, arphids, and LARPing (although the VampMob sounded very, very cool. I want a cape, or a Gothic Lolita maid's dress, and some elaborate kabuki eye makeup).Reviews of the book and lots of other good stuff (including free downloads of the book) can be found here: craphound.com/littlebrother
I will say this, though: reading Little Brother makes me want to go and read George Orwell's classic 1984. I'm not ashamed to say, I've never read 1984. But now I want to. In the back of Little Brother, Doctorow says:
This book couldn't have been written if not for George Orwell's magnificent, world changing Nineteen Eighty-Four, the best novel ever published on how societies go wrong. I read this book when I was 12 and have read it 30 or 40 times since, and every time, I get something new out of it. Orwell was a master of storytelling and was clearly sick over the totalitarian state that had emerged in the Soviet Union. Nineteen Eighty-Four holds up today as a genuinely frightening work of science fiction, and it is one of the novels that literally changed the world. Today, "Orwellian" is synonymous with a state of ubiquitous survelliance, doublethink, and torture.
I can't wait to go read 1984 and see how Doctorow played off of and appropriated Orwell's ideas for today. This is what I love about young adult literature, especially YA lit that is inspired by and dialogues with older classics. It keeps the conversation going, showing how themes written about in books published decades and centuries ago are still relevant today. I think if YA lit can make teens (and adults) want to go read and discover the classics--well, that's saying something.
Many of my students had the same reaction last summer when they read it; I LOVED the book and thought it even better the second time around. I also love how Doctorow believes in open-sourcing . . . offering his books for free on his website.
ReplyDeleteHere's one comment:
These are all just minor distractions to the real blockbuster issues the book [Little Brother] presents: civil rights violations, the Patriot Act and its ramifications, the unfair dismissal of Ms. Galvez, illegal monitoring of the citizens of the U. S. A. by Homeland Security, and the loss of freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. I thought that Doctorow was courageous to bring up the issue of torture and water boarding.