Noah' s Compass, by Anne Tyler

"In the sixty-first year of his life, Liam Pennywell lost his job." is the first sentence of Noah's Compass. Anne Tyler has always had a knack for capturing me from the start, but I found this hook extraordinarily effective.

Pennywell experiences a second disaster almost right away, and with these events, Tyler introduces us to another of her very human--quirky, selfish, out-of-it--characters, and his family, which is also singular; yet, isn't there some platitude about all families being crazy when viewed up close?

Another terrific read from one of my very favorite authors.

The Subprimes, by Karl Taro Greenfeld

New York Times review.



It's dystopian near-future fiction. America has become almost completely de-regulated, practically everything privatized. There's an enormous population of unemployed homeless, the "Subprimes" of the title, who wander the country, working as temporary labor--especially at fracking sites--and squatting in foreclosed, uninhabited housing developments. The environment has deteriorated quite a bit from the way it is now: summer has become a long, hellish season with temperatures routinely climbing into the 130s. A major character is a kind of Bernie Madoff who may be rehabilitated by a televangelist who characterizes him as a victim of progressives who wish to stymie the "job-creators." One of the skillful things that Greenfeld has done is to make this world very, very close to the one we are in. Many current cultural references are made: it's not that far in the future.


Unfortunately, I didn't much like the ending. It seemed contrived, a sort of deus ex machina thing that says, "I didn't know what to do with this plot so I did this." To me, anyway. The book was still worth reading for its dire predictions and the caution that it should raise.

MaddAddam, by Margaret Atwood

This is the third part of a trilogy that began with Oryx & Crake,  and continued with The Year of the Flood. I was pleased to find that the book began with a brief recap of the first two books, as it's been quite some time since I read them. In this one, we find the surviving humans along with some modified-humans (The Crakers), and many another interesting life-form in the post-chaos world.

A lot of the book is made up of flashbacks into Zeb's life, back to the time when he and Adam were half-brothers living with their father, "The Rev." This is pre-Flood, at the height of Corporate power in Atwood's future Earth.

Atwood's writing is, as always, unintrusive, economical, precise, and entertaining.

What could be a drab indictment of the present environmental atrocities committed all about us is kept alive as a very readable story by the interesting and sympathetic characters she has created in this trilogy.

Be advised: one is not left with a warm, fuzzy view of the future.

NY Times Sunday Book Review

Margaret Atwood's Web Site

Future Dramatization of the Trilogy

Dark Age Ahead, by Jane Jacobs

Loss of memory equates to loss of culture. Culture transferred by word of mouth, by demonstration, rather than by writing or recordings.

The automobile as an agent of cultural destruction, loneliness, sprawl. The demise of the trollies at the hands of GM.

p.17:
Cultural xenophobia is a frequent sequel to a society's decline from cultural vigor.

shift from faith in logos to mythos

...conservatism that looks backward to fundamentalist beliefs for guidance and a worldview...

p. 31  "The miracle of money growing on houses operates even more potently in the [US]..."

p. 34 "The most serious and widespread increase was the need for an automobile"

p. 35 ...probably the most important: speaking relationships among neighbors and acquaintances...

p. 37  automobile -- chief destroyer of American communities

p. 38-39

destruction of elec. street car systems GM, Robert Moses, Fiorello La Guardia
interesting notes on this topic p. 186-188  see also www.almankoff.com

p.98  Americans...don't ... think that any place outside the United States is totally real; their curiosity about Canada seems almost nonexistent