What I drank prior:
A sixer of miller
lite and a sixer of New Belgium Rampant imperial IPA, and a sneaked shot of
Boodles Gin (Sorry Ginny).
Spoiler Free Overview:
son, my feet hurt FOR jimmy.
I’m a summer baby,
and it’s summer, so I’ve got a good little summer heel, myself. But he’s been
stompin' out crickets for a little while now and lols at it, to boot.
Homie spends his night in a tree hiding from genetically
enhanced frankenpigs and his days processing the post apocalyptic coastline he
inhabits. The ants bite(and the snakes), and he has one single weird
futuristic fucking choco-soy-carb-chitin bar left before he’s gotta drink the
scotch. For the calories. What bothers leatherface jimmy more than anything?
Which verse of the CRAKErs’ origin myth he has to trade for a grilled fish
today. Right. The first-generation of fully engineered humans. Just all in my man’s hangover. You know you hungover
when you willing to drink th water out of a birdbath and sametime trying to explain why this old lady died. Jimmy goes THROUGH IT,
smh.
Through a series of flashbacks, we learn about how Jimmy
became Snowman, and how and why he ends up as the last man in the world. he
was born maybe 100 years from today, and he watches capital-C Capitalism
work through his interactions with his parents and friends and lovers; and
folks, that shit trickles the fuck down.
His genius bff CRAKE (no relation) affectionately refers to
him as #Normative and I read smacked too often to keep count, but I think his
dad calls him Champ more than anything else. Mommy don’t love him and
young metro don’t trust him(footnote) but Crake fucking does, adn this ends up being a rel pain in the ass. Everyone he knows
works for some kind of biotech sales/health multinational organization with no regulation, and visiting
the “plebelands”, cities like New New York City, are tantamount to heresy. By
the time pubescent Jimmy and Crake meet the lewd cherub Oryx , Atwood has us all spinnin through tangled webs of jealousy, epiphanic exploration, and the good-natured befuddlement
of a hungover, underfed version of my black
ass, in the shithole leftovers of the world.
Spoiler Free Thoughts:
I always trust the novel’s third person narrator, insofar as
he’s a regular mofucker with regular-ass issues trying to come of age
surrounded by overwhelming stimuli. When he seems deadpan and emotionless, I cant
help but feel for and like him, trying to make sense of his feels and tring to
decipher why others feel what they feel. you feels me?. Maggie Atwood succeeds at making me care about her
protagonist as much as I recognize him as a vehicle for some apt and timely
social commentary. that's a feat by itself and not lost on me.
The only time Jimmy seems "stupid" in his world is during his
little love story (same). He struggles and is weird (same) and then becomes a
fuckboy in his shitty liberal arts college (kinda same) before falling for a
girl way too savvy for him (same AF).
Then again, we only learn about the world and its perisl
through Jimmy’s relationships, and his greatest lost causes are women and words
(fucking same) as the world spirals out of control. In this way, the novel is a
pretty Modern take on some pretty advanced science and its threat on the fabric
of our society.
Writing Style:
A cool thing: Atwood uses jimmy’s deepening love for words
as wind in the sails of her own prosaic man-o-war; by the time we’re enrapt
with the power trio and want them to have an orgy, she’s weaving phrases together like a thatched roof,
watertight and tear-inducing. She
navigates between terse, clear syntax and a flowing lyricism, and does so affectively.
It’s beautiful stuff.
When you leave jimmy, he’s wondering wether or not he should
let the chopper spray on these similarly
scraggled, equally starved humans. The novel’s last works are Crake’s,
reminding Jimmy to do the best he can. I suppose we’ll see in the next novel what exactly he does
Rating:
8/12 IPAs: I’m hammered and I’m a little scared and a little
turned on, and I have a bad taste in my mouth.
What to pair It with:
Vodka soda, then Maker’s Mark, neat. Fuel the inevitable
crash into the brick wall of human arrogance. Then once fucked, drink about it
casually like proper Englishman.
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