2014 read #11: Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler.

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler
299 pages
Published 1993
Read from January 23 to January 31
Rating: ★★★★½ out of 5

Extensive (though general) spoilers ahead.

When you live in interesting times, pessimism can seem like prophecy. Every day I try to keep my mind from spiraling into a bottomless depression over the thought of what kind of world my son may have to grow up to face. Climate change, resource exhaustion, erosion of labor power and class solidarity, the concentration of power and wealth in the hands of a laughably small but amply protected elite -- none of it looks like it's going anywhere good. It's likely technological development will supply renewable energy, at least outside of the US; it's also likely population numbers will stabilize within my kid's lifetime, if not mine; eventually some kind of new equilibrium will be reached and people will adapt. But it tightens my throat to think of him having to struggle, or not having luxuries and gadgets and other things most westerners still take for granted, or worse, finding himself a debt slave in some deregulated, privatized libertarian dream come true, i.e. living hell for the vast majority of human beings. Right now the future seems like a race between oligarchic authoritarianism (sold with such delicious irony to voters as "freedom" and "American values") and technological advances that might -- might -- democratize the resource base and lead to a more sustainable society. I've fallen into deep, deep depressions over such thoughts. The only way I've found to stay sane is to emulate the vast majority of Americans and do my best to ignore everything.

Parable of the Sower was a tough book for me, because the dystopian near-future it portrays reads like every one of my worst private fears. Social and economic collapse leading to walled fortress communities, water and food shortages, roving bandits and opportunistic criminals, the government happily selling off infrastructure and services to private exploitation -- none of it feels so far from the present day. President Donner's policies in the book are indistinguishable from the current, mainstream GOP platform, or for that matter from the bluer wing of the Democrats. Butler never stints the brutal details of reality in such a collapsed society. I had to put Parable away several times to take a break and come up for light and air. But its bleakness and brutality, balanced with the gentle humanity of its narrator and the personal scale of the story, give Parable its power. It may be the second most depressing book I can remember reading (after Cormac McCarthy's The Road), but Parable is undeniably brilliant, almost entirely surpassing its genre bounds to merit a place among the classics of English language literature.

The only critical shortcoming in the book, in my opinion, was one of its genre trappings, the role of Lauren Olamina as instigator of a new religion. Earthseed never impressed me much; all it amounts to, seemingly, is a codification of "Adapt to your conditions and try to alter your conditions to suit you." The "Destiny," of course, is close to my own heart, but its presence here felt like an starry-eyed sci-fi nerd intruding upon a grim, all-too-plausible, Cato Institute-directed future. (Additionally, many of the supporting characters were hazily sketched at best, but I'm willing to forgive one of my perennial complaints here because of the overwhelming emotional clout of the book as a whole.)