Ignorance is Bliss

The Giver
by Lois Lowry
p. 1993

Lois Lowry’s take on a futuristic Dystopia, The Giver, is one of those books I just can’t believe I never read in my youth, because it would have been right up my alley, not to mention it has left quite a legacy, so much of one, in fact, that it has finally been made into a movie to be released this year (something I did not know about prior to reading the book). You can be sure that many more people will be talking about it into 2015.

At 12, our protagonist Jonas has entered the phase of maturation when every person in his Community must be given a role to fulfill. Nobody has the ability to choose what they want to do for the rest of their life; in fact, nobody has the right to choose much of anything, as the rigid rules of the Community dictate things like who you are to marry, how many children you are allowed to have, even when to die. Even trivial things like what age you are allowed to ride a bicycle or own a stuffed animal or wear a coat with buttons are determined by the Elders who run the Community. Yet everyone seems content with the system, convinced that they are perfectly happy with the life that is chosen for them.

With such strict guidelines in place, it is no wonder that the whole Community is aghast when young Jonas receives an unusual assignment—the apprenticeship of The Giver, of which there is only one. I won’t bore you with the details of Jonas’s apprenticeship. If you’re reading this, you’ve either read the book already or are perfectly capable of reading it in a single uninterrupted afternoon (and it would not be hard to do so, as it’s the kind of book that implores you not to put it down). Suffice it to say, Jonas’s experiences with The Giver open his mind to a world and a history that his and all of the neighboring Communities could never know of, and forces him into a role of adulthood heretofore unknown.

The Giver is not just a great young adult novel, but a great Dystopian novel, and would serve very well as a young and curious reader’s introduction to the genre. As per necessity, the book is not without a bit of darkness, but then so is life, and a young reader could benefit from the more adult perspective. In any case, The Giver is not too graphic or too dark.

Apparently there are a couple sequels or companion books I will be checking out some time this year. I alternately look forward to and loathe the upcoming movie adaptation. Lowry’s book is one that has become a cult favorite, and it deserves justice on the big screen, but it could easily get caught up in the shallow eccentricities of tween book-to-film adaptations today.

Yo-Ho-Ho and a Bottle of Rum

Treasure Island
by Robert Louis Stevenson
p. 1883

It feels strange to admit that I’ve never actually read Treasure Island when the story is itself such a mainstay in pop culture. For sure, it is a tenacious tale that has been reinterpreted over and over again every couple of years for almost a century and a half, and no doubt it will continue to endure the ages because it is such a classic adventure tale with vibrant characters.

It’s always the infamous rogue pirate Long John Silver who gets the most press when people think of Treasure Island, and that’s not a bad impulse, per se, but though Silver is a dynamic and complex character, finally reading him as he’s written made me realize he’s actually rather pathetic. Silver may have been able to round up a herd of mutineers to steal the treasure, but his grasp on their loyalty is tenuous at the best of times and in the end, he is defeated by a smaller party of men, half of whom weren’t even accustomed to sea life, and one of whom is a 14-year-old boy. The film portrayals have gotten one thing right though: Long John Silver is a man of ever-shifting motives and he goes through the whole range of them, but he does have a special fondness for Jim Hawkins and I felt it strongly throughout the book, though I wish we would have had more context as to why.

As for Jim Hawkins, I was a little disappointed that he was so... competent. You have to keep reminding yourself that your narrator is a teenage boy (even upon the retelling of the story, some years later), because he doesn’t present as one. He makes a lot of mistakes, but he’s astoundingly efficient for a boy who has never set foot on a boat before. Hawkins is the catalyst for the treasure hunt, he discovers the mutiny plot, he single-handedly regains control of the ship, endures a bit of suffering and isolation and eventually kills a man who attempts to attack him, and none of this seems to have a lasting effect on his psyche. I would imagine in real life, a boy would show a little more reticence in Jim’s place but young Hawkins is quite bold when confronting the pirates, and he never really sees any consequences for his rash behavior. Everything pretty much works out for the kid. Still, Treasure Island was intended as a boys' adventure novel; that Jim shows incredible mettle and comes out on top is not all that surprising considering the genre.

I’m actually surprised that Smollett, the captain of the Hispaniola, which takes the party to and from their voyage, isn’t a more renown pop culture icon because he was totally awesome. The captain had some of the best lines in the book and it was during the parts where he exerted his leadership that I most felt myself attuned to the action. I wish Robert Louis Stevenson had written a book entirely about Captain Smollett and his prior adventures because I would totally read that.

I am a kid who grew up on "Muppet Treasure Island" and Disney's futuristic reinvention, "Treasure Planet," and I like both of those adaptations, even if they soft-pedal things a bit. Last year I caught a new mini-series adaptation with a pretty great cast, including Eddie Izzard as Long John Silver and Elijah Wood (of all people) as Ben Gunn. For whatever reason, it was on SyFy, so I watched it expecting some fantastical twist on the tale but it ended up having no science fiction elements and I'm still perplexed as to how SyFy ended up with it. That version was a fairly faithful update but what I'm really interested in is the new Starz series starting next month, "Black Sails," which is a prequel to Treasure Island featuring a young John Silver. In an age where the antihero is king, it should be quite compelling to see a story entirely from the pirates' point of view.

Hipsters in Training

Pirates of the Retail Wasteland

by Adam Selzer 
p. 2008

I picked up Pirates of the Retail Wasteland from a discount bin in front of a soon-to-be-shut-down Borders, which seems ironic given the novel’s themes about corporations shutting down the ‘little guys’ and the transience of the retail industry. The cover description was vague, and I hoped it might run parallel to my own ideas for a customer-service-themed story, to see what other people had to say about topic and how mine would differentiate. Evidently I misinterpreted the plot slightly, and I really miscalculated the target audience, which I have a good ten years on. But I’ll try to be fair in my review and keep in mind that this book was written for 11-15-year-olds.

Pirates is the story of a group of middle-schoolers in the so-called ‘gifted pool’, who write poetry ragging on their gym teachers in their exclusive advanced English class, who have a hippie teacher that lets them sit on couches instead of desks, who go to the school’s basketball games with the express purpose of blowing them off because they’re cooler than that, who hang out at the local coffee house and drink mind-blowing amounts of coffee, though most middle-schoolers are more likely to be slamming Mountain Dews and Red Bulls, and who really really hate the corporate makeover their town is receiving. In short, our narrator, Leon, and his ragtag group of ‘wacky’ friends are basically insufferable, young hipsters in training... which means that I probably would have loved this book had I read it in my early teens.

Selzer’s novel, which is very much aimed at the age group it portrays, is everything a rebellious, too-cool young preteen who knows everything could ever want in a book, but innocent enough to still be acceptable to parents of said preteens. I think the fact that I was so annoyed by the pretentiousness and bratty qualities of Leon and his friends is a sign that I am getting old, because all I could think throughout the book was how much I wanted to slap every one of these children upside the head.

The plot is about the most illogical thing you could conceive of. Through a hyperbolic misunderstanding, Leon and pals come to believe their privately-owned coffee joint of choice, Sip, is in danger of going under thanks to their corporate competitor, Wackford’s (Selzer’s approximation of Starbucks, I suppose). For a school assignment directing them to create a ‘monument’ to something, the kids decide to “take over” Wackford’s, and create a short film as a monument to the old downtown area, in hopes of saving Sip from being shut down. Posing as pirates (and with copious amounts of help from two apathetic employees and a good old mid-western snowstorm), the well-intentioned preteens convert Wackfords into an “accounting office” for the day, with the belief that no one will be able to tell the difference. What exactly these ‘pirates’ are getting at with this comparison is beyond me, and even their teacher claims to not understand the point, but for all parties involved, it’s probably best to just go along with it. The kids’ understanding of what an office looks like is very much in keeping not only with someone who has never worked in one, but with someone who is too young to even have a job to begin with.

I thought about this book after I finished it, trying to decide if there really was a deeper meaning to be found or if I’d just wasted an a few hours on trite, indulgent preteen bullshit and settled somewhere in between. The book does a good job at targeting its audience but it does little to address problems that same audience will be facing just a few more years down the road. Leon and his friends can pretend all they want like they’re never going to sell out and they’re going to be hip forever, but they are so close to realizing that they will change, that the ‘old downtown’ they’re striving to protect is really just their childhood naivete quickly slipping away. If this theme were drawn out more, I would commend Selzer for composing a novel celebrating that last bastion of childhood before growing up but unfortunately, nothing Leon and his friends do is painted in a bad light. There are no negative consequences for their behavior and nothing really seems to have been learned. The kids act like holy terrors to unassuming adults and no one calls them out on their shit, especially not the adult employees at Wackfords who enable them.

One character in Pirates is a self-described McHobo, an average guy with a personal philosophy about service industry jobs. He whores himself out at every corporation, never working at any one place for more than six months, and never moving up in his career. Supposedly, McHobos shun things like benefits and raises and just live the life of the nomadically-employed. This is probably the most interesting concept in the book, and one Selzer can relate to being a McHobo himself, but it’s largely avoided, and I still don’t buy that any person in real life wants this life. People working these jobs just want to get by and pay their bills until they move on to something better. I have never met someone who would allow a bunch of preteens to annoy the living hell out of their loyal customers just for kicks, and anyone who would do this shouldn’t be hired anywhere.

But I digress; maybe all this is just a sign that I am getting old and have forgotten what it’s like to have that innocence of youth, that belief that nothing is ever going to change and that adults can never be cool and I have such a vast understanding of the world that it is incredible that I’m the only one who sees things... Yes, Pirates of the Retail Wasteland is a great book for a specific age. I anticipate many a reader going back to relive this book in their later years and revising their opinions about many of these characters, perhaps even switching sides on the kids vs. adults issue. In that case, I suppose, it is a story that is quite true to life.