"maybe it's true that the people who live through the times that become history's pivotal points are those least likely to understand them. i wonder if abraham lincoln himself could have answered the inevitable test questions about the causes of the civil war. once the daily newspapers ceased to appear every morning and radio broadcasts grew more and more sporadic, what news we did get was so fragmentary and conflicting as to tell us almost nothing about what was really happening.
"of course, there was a war going on. we had moved our mother's radio from her workroom into the kitchen, and before the batteries died last spring we used to coax it into muttering its litany of disaster while we were fixing dinner. sometimes the news of the war would make father stomp and swear, and sometimes it would send him upstairs to his bedroom long before our meal was cooked.
"the fighting was taking place half a world away, taking place, the politicians promised, to protect our freedoms, to defend our way of life. it was a distant war, but it seemed to cling to our days, to permeate our awareness like a far-off, nasty smoke. it didn't directly affect what we ate, how we worked and played, yet we couldn't shake it - it wouldn't go away. some people said it was that war that caused the breakdown.
"but i think there were other causes, too. sometime in january we heard that a paramilitary group had bombed the golden gate bridge, and less than a month later we read that the overseas currency market had failed. in march an earthquake caused one of california's nuclear reactors to melt down, and the mississippi river flooded more violently than had ever been imagined possible. all last winter the newspapers - when we could get them - were choked with news of ruin, and i wonder if the convergence of all those disasters brought us to this standstill.
"then, too, there were the usual problems. the government's deficit had been snowballing for over a quarter of a century. we had been in an oil crisis for at least two generations. there were holes in the ozone, our forests were vanishing, our farmlands were demanding more and more fertilizers and pesticides to yield increasingly less - and more poisonous - foods. there was an appalling unemployment rate, an overloaded welfare system, and people in the inner cities were seething with frustration, rage, and dispair. schoolchildren were shooting each other at recess. teenagers were gunning down motorists on the freeways. grown-ups were opening fire on strangers in fast-food restaurants.
"but all those things had been happening for so long they seemed almost normal, and as things got darker and more uncertain, people began to grasp at new explanations for what was going wrong."
it's fiction, originally published in 1996, but it could well be non-fiction written today. the first two times i read this book, i loved it. it became one of my favorites, and while i appreciated that it was a version of the future that could actually happen (as opposed to something like star trek), i didn't really see it as my future. now i think it could be. it's a story of hope. they get through it in the end stronger than ever, and the story is a good one and well-written. it's like i'm reading it with new eyes, getting ideas this time.
i know this makes it look like i'm a defeatist and an extremist regarding where we're heading and what we're doing now. it's not intended that way. i'm not saying the world is ending and we're all going to die and all that. but i rather like recreationally thinking in terms of different paths that things could take. different ways things could go. and this book explores one of those paths. i still rank it among my favorites.
1 comment:
me too. I loved that book. Especially all the risks it took and the honesty within it.
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