When I was asked to talk about dystopias, I thought. The world we find ourselves in could form the basis for an extraordinary novel of this genre. Everywhere we see disease and plague, absurdity and fear, the destruction of culture and people, inhuman acts and violence, inexplicable political and economic decisions. It seems that during the pandemic, we’ve all gotten tough and ready for any eventuality. But the history of world literature assures us that we have not yet exhausted all possibilities, unfortunately.
I will start with the classics that you must read but forget. In one of Ray Bradbury’s most famous novels, books – as the most dangerous, most destructive works of our time – are banned. They may contain sedition, as they encourage a person to think and therefore to exist. hero of the novel “451 degrees Fahrenheit” – fireman Guy Montag – destroys all books found by him and his colleagues. Those who keep them in their dwellings are arrested and the houses are cleaned with fire. But at some point, Montag realizes that the path he has chosen is wrong, that if some people are willing to sacrifice their lives for the book, there is a hidden meaning in literature that he does not know about. And in order to save himself, Montag opposes society, the oppression of free thought, the destructive power of television.
Today salvation can be found in books, movies, and even in each other. It is interesting how reading preferences change under the influence of external events. In March 2022, dystopian e-book and audiobook sales in liters were up 33% compared to February. The novel was the most popular. “1984” George Orwell – about a totalitarian society where everything is subject to the wishes of the party and its leader, Big Brother. The manifestation of love and creative thinking in Orwellian society is considered a thought crime and punishable by law. In the unfree world, everything is regulated: from sexual relations to official language.
The struggle with language is an interesting mediocrity in many dystopias. The degradation of language and the destruction of culture is always the beginning of the end. For example, in the novel “Memory Police” Yoko Ogawa, written in 1994, but translated into Russian only in the 2020 pandemic (translator – Dmitry Kovalenin), the words are also lost. Japanese writer Ogawa has created a very poetic and fragile world woven from loss and oblivion. Their characters live on an isolated island. They go to bed every night and may wake up the next morning with a strange sense of loss. In their temporary world, not only words but also objects, smells and sounds are lost. The memory in everyday things is slowly dying, and with it everything else. The inhabitants of the island for a long time were not surprised by anything and got used to these losses – at first they collectively mourn the new loss, and after a while they no longer remember it. But those who cannot erase past losses are in danger – sooner or later the secret police will come for them. It is not known what he will do with violators of public order, but one thing is for sure – they will disappear without a trace, like everything else.
In a dystopian world, everything and everyone can disappear. This happens in two more modern novels – gruesome with their cruelty “Special Meat” Argentine writer Agustin Basterrica and “Slaughterhouse” Swedish Osa Eriksdotter. An epidemic breaks out in the future world of Basterrika and all the meat is infected. The government allows people to be raised for slaughter to prevent world hunger – society is divided into two parts: those who consume this meat and those who become this meat. Where cruelty prevails, humanism, love and compassion are impossible.
As for Eriksdotter, overweight people are starting to fade from his dystopia. In the slaughterhouse, the radical Health Party comes to power and decides to get rid of those who do not meet its standards. Intellectuals, scientists, economists, writers – they all become puppets in the hands of a government that discriminates against everyone equally. Eriksdotter shows how propaganda works when it’s in bad hands, and how society crumbles under its influence.
There are also dystopias where gender discrimination takes place. For example, these are feminist novels. “Sound” Christina Dalcher (about a world where women can only speak a hundred words a day), “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “The Covenants” Booker laureate Margaret Atwood (about theocratic state, castes and women who find themselves in slavery) and also “Force” Naomi Alderman (about the matriarchal world where men are the “weaker sex”).
Writers were always very keenly aware of the moods of the people and either possessed the bitter gift of foresight or lured the future. So, for example, at the end of last year in cross-publishing “Alpina. Prose” appeared with the narrator title “Time is up. Modern Russian dystopia”. It bothered Russian literature, prose gloomy and terrible omens. Thirteen well-known writers (Andrey Rubanov, Alexei Salnikov, Eduard Verkin, Alexander Pelevin, Alexander Snegirev, Denis Dragunsky, etc.) tried to artistically understand where we are going and what awaits us in the future.
And so. The future has come.
The author expresses his personal opinion, which may not coincide with the editors’ position.
Source: Gazeta
