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Showing posts from April, 2017

Losing out on the pleasures of Hitler's Youth, in "The Circle"

The most interesting thing in Dave Eggers' novel "The Circle" hadn't anything to do with technology. It was that he seemed to take a "manifestation" concerning how humans relate to one another that bubbled up in production of his previous work, "Hologram for a King," and gave it full extension here. Specifically, in "Hologram for a King," while writing to his daughter, the principle protagonist, the salesman Alan, makes reference to himself as once akin to Hitler's Youth or Khmer Rouge, in that, once having found out his parents were hypocrites, he "lorded it over them," did the emotional equivalent of "shooting the adults in the rice paddies." In the novel "The Circle," Mae Holland has parents who, no matter what she does, always ostensibly know just a bit more than she does. They are always a bit her moral superior. They keep around them her ex-boyfriend, Mercer, who, too, feels he's much better m...

"The Zookeeper's Wife" as historical romance

A Polish zoologist and his wife maintain a zoo which is utopia, realized. The people who work there are blissfully satisfied and happy. The caged animals aren't distraught but rather, very satisfied. These animals have been very well attended to, and have developed so healthily for it that they almost seem proud to display what is distinctively excellent about them for viewers to enjoy. But there is a shadow coming--Nazis! The Nazis literally blow apart much of this happy configuration. Many of the animals die. But the zookeeper's wife is a prize any Nazi officer would covet, and the Nazi's chief zoologist is interested in claiming her for his own. So if there can be some pretence that would allow for her and her husband to keep their zoo in piece rather than be destroyed for war supplies, he's willing to concede it. The zookeeper and his wife want to try and use their zoo to house as many Jews as they can. They approach the stately quarters of Hitler's zoologi...