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bookgazing) wrote2011-05-31 04:43 am
bookgazing) wrote2011-05-31 04:43 am
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'Total Oblivion, More or Less' - Alan Deniro (Second Half Thoughts)
Finally, here's my second post about 'Total Oblivion, More or Less' by Alan Deniro, which Jeanne and I read in May. I really don't know what's up with me at the moment - hopefully normal blogging pace will resume soon.
Both the first and second parts of ‘Total Oblivion, More or Less’ are journey quest stories. In the first part of the novel Macy and her family’s journey feels somehow less perilous because her whole family is together on the journey. Even though pretty awful things happen to them all and they quickly lose any sense of control over their actual destination, or fate, there’s a security in seeing this family unit struggling to hold on to a goal, together that undercuts some of the danger inherent in the random flailing mess their lives have become.
At the same time their journey together does feel very random, very unplanned because it’s clear that Macy’s dad, who they are following, because he received a letter from a colleague offering him and job and a destination to aim for, is losing faith. Macy’s mum is vague for much of the trip, even before she gets the plague. Macy’s sister Sophia is trying to escape. Her brother Ciaran appears a menacing force that will destroy the family for fun, especially when he’s accompanied by his sinister dog Xerxes. So, through the first part of the novel there’s this tug and release balance between the safety the family unit provides and the worry that when the time comes for action all the family’s different members will get in the way of each others survival.
In part two Macy has to set out on her own quest alone and the precariousness of her situation is quickly apparent. She’s travelling to Nueva Roma to see Ciaran before he’s tried as a terrorist (at fourteen years old) when her boat is attacked. Macy attracts the attention of a man:
‘I could tell he was thinking about hurting me. Maybe he wanted kicks before dying, or to hurt someone before he got killed.’
Yet Macy on her own, proves more capable of making a decision than the Macy who journeyed down the river with her family. She kills the man and jumps off the boat into the corpse filled river, ready to try and make some kind of stab at living. Maybe it’s because she has no one else to rely on, or maybe it’s because she’s finally freed to make her own decisions without having judgement piled on her head, but she gives the reader the illusion that she is taking control in a situation that is so out of control and full of randomness. Really she’s just adapting, in order to survive, as so many science-fiction characters do. However, I’m impressed that Macy is a heroine who can fool me into believing that she’s taking names and carving a path through this jumbled jungle, even when all evidence in Deniro’s world suggests that there’s no way to take control of anything (unless you’re very manipulative and very rich, but I’ll come to that later). She’s shaping a linear narrative of progress and success out of the weird, even as she reminds us that narratives and stories rarely reflect the true collision and tearing of life:
‘That was the last time I ever saw Oxna. I had half-expected that we would have future adventures together, that our lives would intertwine more. But life doesn’t work out like that all of the time.’
She does piece together a surrogate support system throughout the second half, made up of Em the submarine captain and her lover Wye (who in the first half of the book is a shady, menacing character who arrests Ciaran – odd turn around). This group of people indirectly leads her to find parts of her family and contributes a slight feeling of increased safety to Macy’s story (at least for me). Strangely Macy’s younger brother William, reincarnated in the body of the dead Xerxes was the character which made me feel most secure about Macy’s fate. Once there was a talking dog on the scene I knew everything was going to be reasonably ok in the context of this novel. As William is family I guess that shows that I don’t always feel like Macy’s family gets in the way of her safety and the book kind of bears that thought out. After William turns up in his dog form Macy’s family’s narrative arc becomes one of a family coming back together, rather than a family willingly separating into parts. Macy finds and rescues Sophia, returns to her dad and hears that Ciaran is free. Em and Wye begin a new submarine board family when Em’s baby is born.
To wind up I just want to quote a couple of my favourite moments of political commentary in the second half of the novel. When I was talking to Jeanne about the first half of the book I said I couldn’t really determine a particular metaphorical connection between the political commentary and current events (I probably used like a lot more when I e-mailed her).
There’s a lot of general commentary that links the controlling forces of Deniro’s Nueva Roma with the destructive corporate side of America:
‘Crystal touched the edge of Oxna’s teal scarf. We designed these she said. Oxna gave her a goofy smile.
You really are in the Teal’s corner, he said. It’s been huge –
The stepmother laughed and it was cutting. No, no she said. Our brand identity team designed the logos and apparel for all the colours. The street campaigns are designed so that each team thinks they’re the unique target – that no one else “gets” them, their unique needs.
Crystal made the quote mark sign with her hands, which I’m positive Oxna didn’t get. She squeezed Oxna’s shoulder and said: Our little secret, okay?
Oxna’s shoulder sank.’
I think in the second half of the novel the connection between Roman conquering forces and American capitalism becomes a lot more definite:
‘It’s all manipulated by my stepmom and dad, she said. They keep pretending to give people something authentic, but it all turns out to be force fed lies. Look at this.
She was drinking some kind of papaya rum concoction from a Dixie cup. She pointed at some graffiti of a unicorn sparring with a gladiator. The unicorn had a cup in one of its front hooves. The cup was over flowing with a green liquid. PAPAYA-OVERLORD! It said in English, and there was demotic script below it. The same slogan, I assumed.
They use “street teams,” Lydia said. These freelance art-school dropouts from up north pretend to be actual graffiti artists and tag the city with these stupid ads.
The Romans used to do the same thing, I said. I mean, the graffiti, not the street teams.’
How that all fits into the grand scope of the books political rhetoric I’m still not sure. I’m not sure there’s a lesson to be extracted from ‘Total Oblivion, More or Less’, a way that Macy’s society could have saved their world. Maybe Deniro just wants to point out that we should all at least be aware of what’s going on and the connections that can be made between history and now. Maybe we all need to be aware, instead of remaining totally oblivious, in order to avoid total oblivion. Maybe we all just need to be aware, even if that won’t keep us from ending up in a similar situation to Macy. Maybe the only way to cope is to be aware enough to survive?
Both the first and second parts of ‘Total Oblivion, More or Less’ are journey quest stories. In the first part of the novel Macy and her family’s journey feels somehow less perilous because her whole family is together on the journey. Even though pretty awful things happen to them all and they quickly lose any sense of control over their actual destination, or fate, there’s a security in seeing this family unit struggling to hold on to a goal, together that undercuts some of the danger inherent in the random flailing mess their lives have become.
At the same time their journey together does feel very random, very unplanned because it’s clear that Macy’s dad, who they are following, because he received a letter from a colleague offering him and job and a destination to aim for, is losing faith. Macy’s mum is vague for much of the trip, even before she gets the plague. Macy’s sister Sophia is trying to escape. Her brother Ciaran appears a menacing force that will destroy the family for fun, especially when he’s accompanied by his sinister dog Xerxes. So, through the first part of the novel there’s this tug and release balance between the safety the family unit provides and the worry that when the time comes for action all the family’s different members will get in the way of each others survival.
In part two Macy has to set out on her own quest alone and the precariousness of her situation is quickly apparent. She’s travelling to Nueva Roma to see Ciaran before he’s tried as a terrorist (at fourteen years old) when her boat is attacked. Macy attracts the attention of a man:
‘I could tell he was thinking about hurting me. Maybe he wanted kicks before dying, or to hurt someone before he got killed.’
Yet Macy on her own, proves more capable of making a decision than the Macy who journeyed down the river with her family. She kills the man and jumps off the boat into the corpse filled river, ready to try and make some kind of stab at living. Maybe it’s because she has no one else to rely on, or maybe it’s because she’s finally freed to make her own decisions without having judgement piled on her head, but she gives the reader the illusion that she is taking control in a situation that is so out of control and full of randomness. Really she’s just adapting, in order to survive, as so many science-fiction characters do. However, I’m impressed that Macy is a heroine who can fool me into believing that she’s taking names and carving a path through this jumbled jungle, even when all evidence in Deniro’s world suggests that there’s no way to take control of anything (unless you’re very manipulative and very rich, but I’ll come to that later). She’s shaping a linear narrative of progress and success out of the weird, even as she reminds us that narratives and stories rarely reflect the true collision and tearing of life:
‘That was the last time I ever saw Oxna. I had half-expected that we would have future adventures together, that our lives would intertwine more. But life doesn’t work out like that all of the time.’
She does piece together a surrogate support system throughout the second half, made up of Em the submarine captain and her lover Wye (who in the first half of the book is a shady, menacing character who arrests Ciaran – odd turn around). This group of people indirectly leads her to find parts of her family and contributes a slight feeling of increased safety to Macy’s story (at least for me). Strangely Macy’s younger brother William, reincarnated in the body of the dead Xerxes was the character which made me feel most secure about Macy’s fate. Once there was a talking dog on the scene I knew everything was going to be reasonably ok in the context of this novel. As William is family I guess that shows that I don’t always feel like Macy’s family gets in the way of her safety and the book kind of bears that thought out. After William turns up in his dog form Macy’s family’s narrative arc becomes one of a family coming back together, rather than a family willingly separating into parts. Macy finds and rescues Sophia, returns to her dad and hears that Ciaran is free. Em and Wye begin a new submarine board family when Em’s baby is born.
To wind up I just want to quote a couple of my favourite moments of political commentary in the second half of the novel. When I was talking to Jeanne about the first half of the book I said I couldn’t really determine a particular metaphorical connection between the political commentary and current events (I probably used like a lot more when I e-mailed her).
There’s a lot of general commentary that links the controlling forces of Deniro’s Nueva Roma with the destructive corporate side of America:
‘Crystal touched the edge of Oxna’s teal scarf. We designed these she said. Oxna gave her a goofy smile.
You really are in the Teal’s corner, he said. It’s been huge –
The stepmother laughed and it was cutting. No, no she said. Our brand identity team designed the logos and apparel for all the colours. The street campaigns are designed so that each team thinks they’re the unique target – that no one else “gets” them, their unique needs.
Crystal made the quote mark sign with her hands, which I’m positive Oxna didn’t get. She squeezed Oxna’s shoulder and said: Our little secret, okay?
Oxna’s shoulder sank.’
I think in the second half of the novel the connection between Roman conquering forces and American capitalism becomes a lot more definite:
‘It’s all manipulated by my stepmom and dad, she said. They keep pretending to give people something authentic, but it all turns out to be force fed lies. Look at this.
She was drinking some kind of papaya rum concoction from a Dixie cup. She pointed at some graffiti of a unicorn sparring with a gladiator. The unicorn had a cup in one of its front hooves. The cup was over flowing with a green liquid. PAPAYA-OVERLORD! It said in English, and there was demotic script below it. The same slogan, I assumed.
They use “street teams,” Lydia said. These freelance art-school dropouts from up north pretend to be actual graffiti artists and tag the city with these stupid ads.
The Romans used to do the same thing, I said. I mean, the graffiti, not the street teams.’
How that all fits into the grand scope of the books political rhetoric I’m still not sure. I’m not sure there’s a lesson to be extracted from ‘Total Oblivion, More or Less’, a way that Macy’s society could have saved their world. Maybe Deniro just wants to point out that we should all at least be aware of what’s going on and the connections that can be made between history and now. Maybe we all need to be aware, instead of remaining totally oblivious, in order to avoid total oblivion. Maybe we all just need to be aware, even if that won’t keep us from ending up in a similar situation to Macy. Maybe the only way to cope is to be aware enough to survive?