I have mixed feelings on this book.

I LOVE SPOFFORTH. I loved everything about him. The twists involving him were great, and it was chilling to think about life from his perspective. I couldn't be mad at him. It was just really well done.

But then we get to the majority of the book.... Bentley's point of view. I have trouble believing humans would forget how to read. Being a fan of Asian media, I can read certain kanji without ever having studied it, just because I see the kanji on the screen when they speak about certain things. Considering stuff like that, I feel like it would be hard for an entire culture to just "forget" when you have store signs that people know the names of, etc. Maybe if all letters were somehow removed from earth I would buy it.. but to be surrounded by words and forget...? And the whole religious part was... weird.... just.... Bentley's whole narration was boring and pretentious. Yea we get it, leisure and enjoyment is bad, and we are ruining ourselves, I get it. Knowledge is power. I get it. Also to believe everyone would chose to be on drugs except Mary Lou...... You are asking me for more suspension of disbelief than I have to offer.

Overall it was a nice commentary. I just wish it had been more about Spofforth.

fahrenheit 451 gibi, 1984, cesur yeni dünya gibi bir distopya, nasıl gözümden kaçmış hayretler içerisindeyim. insanlığını unutmuş bir insanın bunu yeniden hatırlama sürecini anlatıyor ve bunu, diğerlerine nispeten daha sempatik görünen ama sonunda daha acı bir gerçeği açığa çıkaran, robotların hüküm sürdüğü bir gelecekte yapıyor. robotlara olan sempatimden dolayı bunun bir insanlık dramı mı yoksa robotik bir dram mı olduğu konusuna karar veremedim. kitabın ismini veren mısrada geçen alaycı kuşun, bizde, amerikalılarda olduğu kadar kültürel bir koda sahip olmamasına rağmen söz konusu mısra olan “ormanın kenarında bir tek alaycı kuş şakır”ın gerçekten de bir şekilde bütün bir kitabı özetlediğini ve tıpkı düşünce otobüsünün paul’e söylediği gibi “ne dediğini tam olarak anlatamıyorsun ama sana bir şeyler hissettiriyor” cümlesinin kendim için de geçerli olduğunu fark ettim. “alay” etmekten ziyade ağıt yaktığını düşünüyorum ben yine de muhtemel “alaycı kuş”un.

Walter Tevis... WHAT THE HECK, MAN?

Mockingbird is a story involving a future society that has a whole host of troubles. Not only has population stagnated, but the remaining peoples are only interested in themselves, are "taught" nothing but the ability to zone out in front of the telly (leaving them unable to read and write, much less be interested in the prospect), and smoke dope and pop pills all day long to chase any remaining thoughts and feelings well away. They are ruled by classes of robots meant to look after them--however, even they have begun to fall into disrepair.

Sound interesting? Well, it is--at least to start--hence my very generous two star rating. (I mean, at least I finished it!) I'm absolutely bewildered by how many raving 4 and 5-star reviews there are... did everyone else read the same story I did?!

What I quickly realised was that while I thought the ideas within Mockingbird were interesting and could have held some real appeal to my geeky little mind, the writing style of Walter Tevis left SO MUCH to be desired. I found myself midway through the book guffawing or wishing I had a ticker to count how many times a really boring phrase or word was implemented. My main pet peeve was, "He looked at her. He looked at her for a long time." I SWEAR TO GOD I've never heard of so many people LOOKING in my life. I get sometimes the use of flowery wordage is frowned upon, but c'mon--gazed, squinted, peered. ANYTHING BUT LOOK!

Same goes for "said." Yelled, shouted, whispered, moaned, hissed--none of these made an appearance in the book. For all intents and purposes, our characters were just about as flat and lifeless as the robots they shared a world with. I don't think Walter Nevis has ever encountered any form of descriptive language is his life. Maybe this is my fault for listening to the audiobook version where it was glaringly apparent, but--nah, bro.

I could go on and on picking apart things I didn't like about this book (warning, rant and semi-lucid spoilers ahead):

1) Robocop being unable to work up enough robo brain cells to work out an idea for why he was doing horrible things or maybe even how to solve minor issues despite having lived for centuries blah de blah;
2) Our heroine just sort of going "meh" on how she truly felt about our hero and thinking maybe she wasn't even really in love with him but then by the end within 2 minutes of their reunion declaring her love once more after he makes her an omelette (and they say romance is dead);
3) That weird, Southern religious cult experienced at the end of the book (what the fuck was that about? I actually cringed;
4) Robocop finding the statistics regarding our heroine and yeah she is literally one in a freakin' million, can you try to make it a little more believable? Ughhhhhhhh.

I think this review has honestly got me a little worked up! In the end, this had some ideas that perhaps when placed in the hands of someone with the skills to thread it all together would have made for an incredible story. For me though, it felt sloppy and a bit underbaked... surprising considering apparently Tevis himself was an educator from Ohio who bemoaned the lack of youthful reading abilities--hence the story. (Now that seems ironic!) Ah well--still pleased I made it through. Seriously.

Énorme coup de cœur, grosse claque et tout le toutim !
Ma dernière lecture pour le @challengegallmeister de 2022 est une révélation !
J'ai découvert Walter Tevis en lisant "le jeu de la dame" et j'ai immédiatement accroché à son style d'écriture. Je n'ai donc pas du tout été déçue ici.
L'histoire est folle, et en même temps, nous n'en sommes pas si loin, et c'est ça qui me touche d'autant plus.
Il est question ici de 3 personnages principaux, et le récit alterne entre chacun de leurs point de vu.
C'est tout un panel d'émotion qui passe à travers ces personnes. Du désespoir le plus profond, à l'espoir le plus grand. De la connaissance la plus fondamentale, au néant intellectuel. Des réflexions les plus cartésiennes, aux croyances les plus mystiques. Ce roman raconte tout et son contraire et c'est à nous, lecteur, de nous impliquer, de réfléchir !
L'amour, la haine, la passion, le déni, la vérité,... Tant de grands thèmes y sont abordés.
J'ai adoré et ce livre, et alors qu'il est écrit en 1980, il est criant de vérité !

The kinda book that makes you google whether it's a film after you've finished. FYI, it's in production.

La meccanica dell'Io interiore

"La riduzione della popolazione è stata spiegata in modi diversi e contrastanti dai demografi contemporanei. Questi i motivi più quotati:
1) Paura della sovrappopolazione
2) Perfezionamento delle tecniche di sterilizzazione
3) Scomparsa della famiglia
4) Diffusione dell'interesse per le esperienze "interiori"
5) Perdita dell'interesse per i bambini
6) Desiderio generalizzato di evitare le responsabilità."

"Un cosa affascinante che continua ad apparire nei film è un gruppo di persone chiamato "Famiglia". Sembra che nei tempi antichi fosse abbastanza comune. Una "famiglia" è un gruppo di persone che stanno spesso insieme, e sembra che addirittura vivano assieme."

"Spofforth era stato progettato per vivere in eterno e non dimenticare nulla. Nessuno si era chiesto come potesse essere la sua vita. La ragazza dal cappotto rosso ingrassò, invecchiò, andò con dieci dozzine di uomini, ebbe qualche figlio e bevve troppa birra e visse una vita banale, senza scopo, e perse la sua bellezza. Alla fine morì, venne sepolta e dimenticata. Spofforth continuò a vivere..."

L'uomo si è sempre contraddistinto nel cercare di trasmettere qualcosa di sé nelle sue creazioni, forse nello stupido e disperato tentativo di giocare a fare Dio.
Ogni decorso morale, spirituale e, infine, autodistruttivo viene accelerato dall'esasperazione tecnologica, imperscrutabile custode di un mondo con la data di scadenza, forse ancora vivo solo per un bulimico accanimento terapeutico da farmaci calmanti e scalette preconfezionate di azioni abitudinarie da rispettare.
Se dovessimo riscoprire i tentativi di veicolare emozioni e storie attraverso film e libri, quale potrebbe mai essere il pericolo?
Forse il ritorno di ogni tipo di emozione, comprese quelle che hanno portato sull'orlo del baratro il pianeta?
E se è vero che aldilà della porta c'è tutto, conviene accettare questo mondo di compromesso e negarsi le intere potenzialità che la vita stessa può offrire?
La nascita di un bambino e la morte di un anziano; ragazzini che giocano nel cortile alla guerra, mentre in un paese lontano la guerra è più che un gioco; un'azione caritatevole al prezzo del dolore inflitto a uno sconosciuto.
Nessun Dio a sorvegliarci, solo l'autodeterminazione attraverso il libero arbitrio.
Tutto oltre quella porta...

A particular talent of Walter Tevis was writing about despair. Despair not necessarily as a rational response to tragic events, but as a sort of inexorable force that has no singular cause and thus, no identifiable solution. His science fiction has clear, straightforwardly exposited plots, but the stories underneath are of deep sadness, isolation and loneliness, and the difficulty of sustaining hope.

Tevis was quite aware that he was writing about, and from, his personal experiences of despair. Here he is talking about his earlier novel*:
Now, The Man Who Fell to Earth is about my becoming an alcoholic, really. That’s my private story about my sense of my own physical weakness and my sense of my not really being human.

And on the writing of Mockingbird:
I was writing out of my own suicide attempt—I had a couple of them.

Mockingbird is set in a fairly distant future, when humans have outsourced virtually everything to robots, become illiterate, and drugged themselves into oblivion; amidst this waste, a man discovers reading, a woman lives sober and clear-headed, and an intelligent android who is deeply tired of running everything wants to end his own life. To me, it felt like close kin to Le Guin's The Lathe of Heaven. Both novels are given a clear-cut, intriguing premise which qualify them as sci-fi, but are really just about people, and feel very relevant and familiar. Both are of moderate length and are highly readable. Both feature protagonists who feel helpless in the face of vast forces that nearly everyone else in the world is incapable of perceiving - in The Lathe of Heaven, the effect of human choices that are intended as benign but result in great unforeseen harm; in Mockingbird, the cumulative weight of centuries of cultivated ignorance and incuriosity.

Despite what I said initially, this novel isn't just a long slog of unhappiness. The setting is interesting, and there's a satisfying element of having layers peeled away to reveal the state of society and the events that have led to it. There is a journey of discovery on the part of the character who learns to read - Bentley - and an adventure story that comes from his increasingly passionate quest to gain knowledge and, thereby, agency. It's a fun read, easy to devour in a couple of sittings.

It's also an interesting take on where ignorance could take us. In this future, most of humanity has forsaken doing and learning and lulled itself into insensibility. It's not as complete a vision as perhaps we might want - partially a matter of the 40 years since the book's writing, I think; machine learning and media-driven stupidity are such real things to us, for example - but I think it works as a premise, and I buy Tevis's own explanation (emphasis mine):

Mockingbird does sometimes, I think, weaken into an attack solely on television and on the modern world, and “weaken” I say because I’m not completely convinced of all those things that I say. But what I am convinced of is that it is very bad for people to find substitutes for living their lives, and that’s what I hope I do say, and say well, from time to time in the book.

But what most struck me, as with The Man Who Fell to Earth, was how Tevis used his science-fictional premise to depict with aching familiarity the muffled deadness of depression. It's hard to describe; it's some effect of the characters' learnings and discoveries, the events and experiences, cumulatively providing a line of sight into a feeling, or set of feelings, that is usually so banal as to be difficult to look at in any sort of novel way. I wish I could explain better.

Or as Tevis himself said: "I don’t necessarily demand that people understand it that way, but that’s what it means to me."


* All the quotes I've used here are from this excellent interview with Tevis in Brick

I read this while I had a temperature, which may not be the best experience for this book, but nevertheless it's gripping and diverting. It's set in a world with a tiny human population, in which almost everything is automated, and humans are encouraged to take drugs in order not to think or feel. The family unit has been abolished, and people are not supposed to cohabit with one another. On of the main rules is, "Don't ask - relax." The story follows three characters: Robert Spofforth, a robot of very high intelligence, and the only being who understands what's going on in the world; Paul Bentley, the last human who is able to read, and Mary Lou, an outcast, one of the few who doesn't take soporific drugs. Paul and Mary Lou become friends, and, through reading, try to understand the history of the world around them, and what events have led up to the world existing in its current state. But Spofforth begins to feel threatened by their actions, and intervenes. Though this novel is gruelling in its depressing view of the world, and in its depictions of the hopelessness of the characters, there is also a sense of love and human decency within this story. It's a bleak portrait of the world, but also one in which change is possible, and Tevis creates a twisted but compelling portrait of the future.

There are a couple of odd notes here. The fact that Spofforth is the only Black character, and that being Black is so noticeable in the far future in which much else has changed, strikes me as not fully thought-through. There is also the inclusion of a religious community living on some kind of nuclear reactor, which feels like it should be part of an entirely different sci-fi story and doesn't belong here. But these elements stand out so strongly because the rest of the book is so carefully judged, and the story feels so balanced.

I don't think this is as good as The Man Who Feel to Earth, but it is very worthwhile, and I would recommend it. Also, to this who need to know: the cat is fine throughout.

I've been sitting here, trying to come up with some kind of review, but I keep drawing blanks. This is a very good book- a little bit average at times, and the themes became a little bit forced at points- but it's very enjoyable and one that will make you think.

I felt that how the world came to be illiterate was not explained well. Though, I suppose, that was partially the point. If nobody can read, and people are obsessed only with themselves (or, as it is said in the text, Privacy), then history is unlikely to be passed down. They don't even know what year it is, though it's stated at some point as being the 25th century.

The characters in [b:Mockingbird|2657|To Kill a Mockingbird|Harper Lee|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1234606708s/2657.jpg|3275794] are interesting, but I found myself unable to truly connect with any of them. I sympathised with Bentley and Spofforth (Mary Lou I was rather ambivalent about), but towards the end of the novel, I found them starting to become rather irritating. Maybe it was because of the prison and why it was never really explained as to why Spofforth decided to imprison Bentley (outside of shacking up with Mary Lou).

An enjoyable book, but some questions that I felt were unanswered.