Parable of the Talents

Parable of the Talents
by Octavia Butler
read: 2017

Jarret's supporters are more than a little seduced by Jarret's talk of making America great again. He seems to be unhappy with certain other countries. We could wind up in a war. Nothing like a war to rally people around flag, country, and great leader.

No comment. 

Parable of the Sower

Parable of the Sower
by Octavia Butler
read: 2017
Nebula Award

Parable of the Sower reads like a post-apocalyptic novel, but its world has no apocalypse. Rather than a cataclysmic event plunging the world into darkness, society erodes. The poor become poorer, cannot get jobs, and cannot buy anything - even basic services from the fire and police. Corporations become stronger while the government loses effectiveness. Drugs and crime run rampant. People become more and more afraid.

When apparent stability disintegrates, as it must - God is Change - People tend to give in to fear and depression, to need and greed. When no influence is strong enough to unify people they divide. They struggle, one against one, group against group, for survival, position, power. They remember old hates and generate new ones, they create chaos and nurture it. They kill and kill and kill, until they are exhausted and destroyed, until they are conquered by outside forces, or until one of them becomes a leader most will follow, or a tyrant most fear.

Kindred

Kindred
by Octavia Butler
read: 2016
Guardian 1000 Novels

Everyone knows slavery is bad, but I have the luxury of feeling it's mostly bad in an abstract sense. The conceit of Kindred - modern African-American protagonist Dana travels back in time to a Maryland plantation where she interacts with ancestors, both black and white - makes the trials and tribulations of the slave's plight more immediate. Dana has modern education and sensibility, but it helps her only a little against the weight of society's oppression. Just as jarring is the effect on her white husband, Franklin, when he accompanies her on one of the trips. Despite his more privileged status as a white man, he is just as powerless to change or improve things for the slaves. It is easy for them to fall into the routine of the pre-Civil War southern society. Octavia Butler doesn't turn a blind eye to the individual acts of cruelty and torture that slaveowners inflected on the slaves, but what she paints as the most troubling feature is just how easy it is for everyone to accept.

The Way of All Flesh

The Way of All Flesh
by Samuel Butler
read: 2013
Modern Library #12, Guardian 1000 Novels

The Way of All Flesh, like a lot of old books (and while not published until 1903, it was written between 1873-1884), is a bit tough for a modern reader to get into, but once I got used to the prose style I really liked it. It was very funny at times; the narrator's tale of his meal of "bread and butter" (which turns out to be a feast complete with oysters) with pompous school director Dr. Skinner is cutting satire, and the doctor's prescription of a palliative zoo visit late in the book (with the note that large animals are better for healing) is bizarre, absurd, and hilarious. Is it the twelfth-greatest novel of all time, as the Modern Library / New York Times folks named it? I don't think so, but I did enjoy it.