A review by jessmanners
Anthem, by Noah Hawley
3.0
I feel deeply conflicted about this book. On the one hand, I liked the characters, and cared about what happened to them, and was impressed by the way Hawley linked them all together, BUT, on the other hand, it felt like this was just written in a fugue state and he was just trying to process all the horrors of the past...year? 18 months? since 2016? in one novel, and then that felt a bit kitschy--to combine oxycontin, Trump, Covid-19, blue/red pills, Fight Club, incels, climate change, Parkland, the insurrection and the shaman, Charlottesville, Epstein, and on and on and on and on just felt like...a lot. And then it occurred to me that part of the problem is that this is supposed to feel like a dystopian satire, but (as Hawley himself knows) all those things themselves are too ridiculous to properly satirize...so, for example, when you get a monologue from a podcasting (unnamed) Trump about sausages or whatever, it doesn't really land, it just feels like, yeah, sure, I can see that. It doesn't feel particularly sharp or insightful, it just feels...plausible. And I can see the argument that this is sort of the point of this book-as-therapy...that we're basically in the End Times already.
He gets super meta at the end, which I sort of appreciate, but also sort of feel is a copout--he doesn't know how to resolve the plot, so he tells us that he doesn't know how to resolve it. He makes us empathize with him as he talks about the dangers of using people's capacity for empathy to manipulate them...
Anyway, I just don't know! I want to talk to someone who reads this book 15 years from now, and hear what they have to say. Will all of the references be too obscure? Will it feel like a fascinating window into this period of horrible history? Will no one read anymore because we'll have fully descended into the hellscape he imagines...?
Oh, but also: I want someone to explain the witch to me. I still feel uneasy with Magical Realism. Is it Magic or is it Not?
He gets super meta at the end, which I sort of appreciate, but also sort of feel is a copout--he doesn't know how to resolve the plot, so he tells us that he doesn't know how to resolve it. He makes us empathize with him as he talks about the dangers of using people's capacity for empathy to manipulate them...
Anyway, I just don't know! I want to talk to someone who reads this book 15 years from now, and hear what they have to say. Will all of the references be too obscure? Will it feel like a fascinating window into this period of horrible history? Will no one read anymore because we'll have fully descended into the hellscape he imagines...?
Oh, but also: I want someone to explain the witch to me. I still feel uneasy with Magical Realism. Is it Magic or is it Not?