Real-Life Dystopia

From Uglies to The Giver to The Hunger Games, kids just love their dystopian novels.  In an earlier post I mentioned that even The New Yorker had taken notice of this trend, and on the last day of the KMWP Summer Institute, I recommended a quasi-dystopian novel (Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go) that might interest high school students.  The science-fiction component of these novels gives us a tendency to distance ourselves from their urgency.  Even though they are meant to be cautionary, we still assume that what happens in these books will not happen here.  Never Let Me Go cuts away at this in that it’s set in the 1990′s (the novel was published in 2005) and is absent of any technological wizardry.

That science-fictional distance is also why it’s important for students to know about the real dystopian society that is  North Korea.  I’m encouraged that this year’s winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize for nonfiction is Barbara Demick’s Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea.  I haven’t read the book, but I would be shocked if it was anything but a compelling look at just how oppressed that nation is.  I’m excited to get my hands on a copy and possibly share it with my classes.

If any of this interests you, I’d also recommend Guy DeLisle’s graphic novel Pyongyang, in which the author-artist details his own business trip to North Korea.  DeLisle’s artwork portrays the bizarre, egomaniacal urban planning and architecture of the city in a seriocomic light, and his empathy for the North Korean people (supposedly among the saddest in the world) keeps readers from simply hating the country.  It might be the only place on earth I could describe as tragically fascinating.

Summer Reading

It’s funny that today’s visiting writer, Jeffrey Stepakoff, spoke briefly about Nicholas Sparks.  I’ve been trying to deal with Sparks for a few days now.

This year, for the second year in a row, I have asked my students to assign me some summer reading.  It’s fun to let them turn the tables on me, and some of them relish the opportunity to force me to read something I would never pick up.

My first assignment is to read Sparks’ novel Dear John, a book I would not normally give the time of day.  Sure, I’ve never read him, but I know enough about his stories to know they aren’t my thing.  Still, I want to give Sparks a fair shot at impressing me.

As Chapter One begins, John describes his hometown of Wilmington, North Carolina plainly, like someone reading straight out of a AAA guide.  Then he distinguishes Wilmington from the Outer Banks:

“The Outer Banks may have more romantic appeal because of their isolation and wild horses and that flight that Orville and Wilbur were famous for, but let me tell you, most people who go to the beach on vacation feel most at home when they can find a McDonald’s or Burger King nearby, in case the little ones aren’t too fond of the local fare, and want more than a couple of choices when it comes to evening activities” (7-8).

So you can go to the Outer Banks to be closer to nature and eat local food, or you can go to Wilmington and eat Quarter Pounders.  That says it all right there, not just about Wilmington, but about Nicholas Sparks himself.  Sure, you can read a more distinctive love story–Possession, perhaps?–but sometimes you just want a cheap hamburger.  Nicholas Sparks is proudly the cheap hamburger.  I don’t say this to trash popular fiction.  It’s very possible to write great popular fiction, as Stepakoff argued in today’s presentation (which was full of other great stories of his work in the TV industry).  But if I’m getting a chain restaurant hamburger, I’d rather go to In-N-Out than McDonald’s.

BONUS FEATURE: Here’s an interesting interview with Nicholas Sparks.  He seems fond of his work.

Jose Saramago Is Dead

Portuguese novelist Jose Saramago is dead at 87.  Upon hearing the news, a former student emailed me to say that Death With Interruptions, a novel in which all death ceases, was on his list of vacation reading for next week.  Saramago’s death is sad news, but it’s always nice to know that former students (from eight years ago!) are still reading great literature.