Resistance Reading

Last week Washington Post book critic Ron Charles published a piece that begins this way:  “Donald Trump may not be a big reader, but he’s been a boon for sales of dystopian literature.  Amid our thirst for adult coloring books and stories about missing girls and reincarnated puppies, some grim old classics are speaking to us with new urgency”  (https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/why-orwells-1984-matters-so-much-now/2017/01/25/3cf81964-e313-11e6-a453-19ec4b3d09ba_story.html ).

Charles goes on to cite links that anyone familiar with George Orwell’s 1984 has also noticed with a shudder:  Kellyanne Conway’s “alternative facts,” and Sean Spicer’s repetition of Donald Trump’s assertion that his inauguration drew “the largest audience ever” despite photographic and statistical evidence to the contrary. 

I had already been thinking about this.  Some old friends were in town for the Women’s March and mentioned that one of the things they and their friends had decided to do as a way of talking about the post-election world that has liberals reeling is to start a book club around “resistance literature.”  Their first title is Sinclair Lewis’ 1935 classic It Can’t Happen Here,  (which, by the way, is temporarily out of stock at amazon.com) about the rise of a president who turns into a dictator to protect the nation from welfare cheats, immorality, crime and a liberal press.  Hmm, sound familiar?  They weren’t sure where they are going after this book, but I have a few suggestions:

Another classic, Being There by Jerzy Kosinski, like the Lewis novel is a satire, this one focused on the media.  Chauncey Gardiner (played by the wonderful Peter Sellers in the film version) is “a household face. . .the one everyone is talking about, though nobody knows what HE is talking about. No one knows where he has come from, but everybody knows he has come to money, power and sex,” (amazon description).  Substitute the main character’s name here. . .

A trio of fairly recent books about the French resistance movement during WWII comes to mind.  The award-nominated All the Light You Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, the popular but light-weight The Nightingale by Kristen Hannah, and Trapeze by Simon Mawer all capture the fear and courage involved in taking action against tyranny.  These are all more serious books that may ultimately be more heartening to read because the good guys have some success. 

One could do worse than take a literary tour of resistance around the world.  Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies, based on a true story, lyrically recounts the story of the three Mirabel sisters, known as “the mariposas,” who worked in the underground movement that attempted to overthrow the dictator, Trujillo, in the Dominican Republic in the 1960’s.  Anil’s Ghost by Michael Ondaatje is set in the Sri Lanka of the 1980’s when a civil war raged.  Anil, originally from the island, has been an ex-pat in Britain and later America; she is a forensic pathologist who is brought back to Sri Lanka to investigate claims that the government is killing its own people.  The book speaks to the danger of attempting to expose a corrupt government as well as enlightening western readers about a real conflict about which they may know nothing.  The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway is a haunting book that follows four people trying to survive in the titular war-torn city.  In a response to a bombing that kills 22 people standing in line to buy bread, a gifted cellist vows to play every day for 22 days at the site.  Another character is a young sniper who picks off enemy soldiers.  A third character is trapped in the city after sending his family away to safety; he believes he can protect himself through isolation but a pivotal event challenges this assumption.  Anthony Marra’s A Constellation of Vital Phenomena takes place in Chechnya between 1996 and 2004 and focuses on several characters who struggle to both survive and to resist the Russian forces that are destroying the villages and cities. 

Sitting on my nightstand is the most recent recipient of the National Book Award, Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad.  Whitehead re-imagines the secret network that fought against slavery as a real set of tracks and tunnels beneath the earth and above-ground stations that transcend time.  It looks to be part resistance story and part reminder that racism is, sadly, still alive and well.

And finally, a different kind of resistance is explored in Jose Saramago’s Blindness.  First, there is much to discuss as characters and readers confront the contagious blindness that sweeps through a society.  Could the blindness be a refusal – a resistance, if you will – to recognize the suffering of others?   The first blind people are rounded up and imprisoned in an abandoned insane asylum (another ironic point of discussion) where as food becomes scarce, violence escalates.  One woman, identified only as The Doctor’s Wife, has not gone blind, and she becomes the de facto leader of the group that resists the compulsion to let go of civilized behavior.  She is a reminder that we must resist, that we must fight back, and that courage in the face of tyranny is our most important asset.