Prophet Song by Paul Lynch won the Booker Prize. That would be enough reason to read it, but the dystopian nature, reflecting America’s possible descent into authoritarianism, makes it essential reading. Eilish and Larry Stack are having a perfectly ordinary night with their children (except the oldest boy who like most teens does not always get home on time). Bailey and Molly are in front of the TV and Ben is breast-feeding, as the author muses on behalf of Eilish,
“The night has come and she has not heard the knocking, standing at the window looking out into the garden. How the dark gathers without sound the cherry trees. It gathers the last of the leaves and the leaves do not resist the dark but accept the dark in whisper. Tired now, the day almost behind her, all that still has to be done before bed and the children settled in the living room, this feeling of rest for a moment by the glass. Watching the darkening garden and the wish to be at one with the darkness, to step outside and lie down with the fallen leaves and let the night pass over.
But the knocking… ” (pg. 6) (Paul Lynch’s writing would drive Grammarly crazy which doesn’t make it wrong.)
This proves to be one of the last ordinary nights the Stack family ever has. Who is at the door? The police, but not the ordinary police, these are the police of the new order, the order that is making up rules against every aspect of the state in which the people have lived for decades, perhaps centuries.
What do these people want, these people who were once neighbors, fellow citizens but are now, somehow, the police who can come to anyone’s door and make them disappear? It seems that they want nothing except power over you and your family. As Eilish struggles on her own, once her husband is rounded up and his fate becomes a mystery, she at least still has a job. Soon her job too falls afoul of whatever it is the new government will tolerate and she loses her grasp on the equanimity that routine offers. Everyone tells her to leave but she can’t imagine leaving while her husband is still being held, while her oldest son is off fighting with the revolutionaries against the new government which sees all citizens as enemies. Why? There appears to be no why, but just a quest for absolute power. These new leaders seem to offer nothing to citizens. Eilish’s sister wants her to come to Canada, but she wants to wait it out, believing it to be a temporary upheaval.
This is a disturbing book that we still ought to read since our senses tell us that this is something that could happen in America right now. Who would know better than Ireland (where this is set) what can happen in a divided nation? What would you do if the stormtroopers, no matter how polite they seem and how officially they are dressed, were to start appearing at doors across America warning you about mysterious transgressions that you were accused of committing? What would you do if family members were taken into custody and never returned? Suppose no information about their whereabouts was forthcoming? Would you leave America? Where would you go? You would have to be quick about it before the rules got too stringent and security measures forced you to find illegal ways to travel. It’s chilling to read about it, but it would be far more chilling to live it. A very timely book and a warning to all of us.
In Absolution by Alice McDermott, we travel back to the days when America was first getting involved in the war in Vietnam, perhaps hoping to solve the issues between north and south with diplomacy while using private corporations to get South Vietnam ready for war. The story is told through the vivid memories of a woman who was only just married to her husband Peter at 23-years-old when he is sent to Vietnam as a consulting engineer. Tricia goes with him. She describes her aspiration at that time was “to be a helpmeet for my husband.” Her father told her on her wedding day to “be the jewel in his crown.” She doesn’t exaggerate. This is the way daughters were raised at that time. Like Mrs. Bennett in Pride and Prejudice who had five daughters to find husbands for, my mother had six daughters to marry off. I was once presented to the pots and pans salesman as a potential bride. I confess that I disappointed my mom.
This is a story of another time, of the time many wish we could recapture, although not necessarily the part where we venture into Vietnam. Tricia describes her days as an endless round of cocktail parties bringing together men (and their families) from the military, the government, and corporations. Women, being helpmeets for their husbands, spent hours wearing gauzy cocktail dresses over iron-clad undergarments at garden parties in humid, hot discomfort, attempting to look cool and pretty. She begins her story by telling what a typical day was like. Wives would bathe in the morning, staying in their bath until noon. Then they would do their nails, send out little witty notes to other wives, burn joss sticks to perfume the heat. After that they would apply face powder, rouge, lipstick, pin dress shields in the chosen cocktail dress, don undergarments and stockings, add shoes, and spray some perfume. Tricia says that she would be “faint with heat in my column of clothes.”
Obviously, Absolution is not a book about the Vietnam War. It offers a peek into something we never thought to wonder about. What was daily life like for the wives of the men who were trying to make peace while preparing for war. America tends to turn the foreign countries where it spends time into spaces that resemble America as much as possible. Except for their servants and shopping in the marketplaces these wives saw little of what life was like for the Vietnamese. Tricia describes the Vietnamese women who passed them by as “girls we passed on the streets…were like pale leaves stirring in the humid stillness, sun-struck indications of some unseen breeze, cool, weightless, beautiful.” Alice McDermott is a good writer.
Charlene, who befriends Tricia, is a mother of three and “a seasoned corporate spouse.” She practices the small charities that she would have pursued if she was still in America, taking baskets of small gifts into hospitals for example. She comes up with the idea to dress Barbie dolls in Vietnamese attire and she sells them to help her buy the supplies for her baskets or she gives them as gifts sometimes. Tricia, although shy, is easily persuaded to help the beautiful and confident Charlene with this and other activities. Tricia is having a crisis of her own as she attempts to be the perfect helpmeet and partner by making a family, having a child. She has a series of miscarriages that make her feel guilty, damaged, and which undermine her own confidence.
It’s a little gem of a book that too many might dismiss as a “girl book.” The way the author immerses us in the mores of the 1950s and 60s, the evocation of a world and a time most of us have never experienced makes this novel well worth a read. Some key scenes have been left out of this review to make them fresh when you encounter them for the first time. While it would have perhaps had more universal appeal if we also followed the husbands as they lived out their days, there is no way for most of these women from these times to have any intimate knowledge about that.
“But how I wished that there existed someone to whom I could say I was sorry.” says Tricia in the Epilogue, quoting Graham Greene from The Quiet American.
While The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport by Samit Basu is not great literature, this novel epitomizes the discussions of AI that dominated 2023. It also does that thing that sci-fi does so well. It offers commentary on modern and future society and politics.
Shantiport is a once-prominent city with a port that was busy and thriving. It is now a backwater decaying city that has internal problems which keep it in existential danger of dying out completely.
We wonder how we will ever become home to multicultural societies which should be easy for us because we are all humans. Shantiport wants to become a multicultural oasis which seamlessly protects the rights of both humans and bots. The bots seem to exhibit the same propensities as humans for violence, elitism, and tribalism. In this case the Tiger clan is warring against the Monkey clan.
The bot characters are well done and are as appealing, at least those who are main characters, as the human main characters. In fact, we find that those main characters, both bot and human, are a family unit as in brothers/sisters/ancestors. When the “jinn” is recovered from where it was hidden (Aladdin of legend) the one who holds the jinn gets three wishes. If your goal is to restore Shantiport to its former glory and make it a truly multicultural city what would your three wishes be? Be careful, it’s a very tricky jinn.
The same difficulties apply if you are trying to profit personally and don’t really care about the fate of Shantiport. This may not be literary fiction, but it is fun, and inspires thoughts about our own present and future dilemmas.
Sadly, not many Americans will read Tyranny of the Minority by Levitsky and Ziblatt. It’s not difficult to understand, but it is dense with historical evidence/proofs to back up the authors’ points. Still, this is an important book, and all citizens ought to read this treatise or at least read a summation of the points these two now-famous authors make. They are neither revolutionary nor extremist, but rather scholars who study democracies – why democracies work, how they work, and what dismantles them or makes them less democratic.
Americans revere the founders and our documents, the authors say, but our founders knew our Constitution would need to be revised and updated. Certain antique features that have remained as facets of our republic, which democracies that formed later did not include in their founding documents, have allowed a minority party to exploit these anti-majoritarian features to keep power even though their numbers are in the minority.
Chapter 1: Fear of Losing opens with a lesson from Argentina and the Peron family. This is a discussion of the peaceful transfer of power. At the time when our nation was formed handing over power was not the norm anywhere in the world. Also discussed is the struggle between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson when the Federalists wanted to hold on to power and Jefferson contemplated the use of violence. “Outsized fear of losing turns parties against democracy,” says one source. Examples from the German terms in office of Angela Merkel and from modern Thailand are also discussed.
Chapter 2: Banality tells the story of the crisis of a French party in 1934. What are the expectations of those who are loyal to democracy?
1. To respect the outcome of free/fair elections.
2. To reject the use of violence to stay in power.
3. To always break with undemocratic forces and watch out for semi-loyal democrats who play a passive role in democratic collapse.
2. Sever all ties with groups that back anti-democratic behavior.
3. Loyal democrats must unambiguously decry violent acts and condemn them publicly. Semi-loyalists try to have it both ways.
4. Join forces with rival democratic parties to defeat authoritarianism.
Examples from Spain in 1936 are used to make their point along with Joe McCarthy’s Unamerican Activities campaign in America.
The authors list four ways to subvert laws:
1. Exploiting gaps or loopholes (Ex. denying Obama chance to name a Supreme Court Justice – had never happened before)
2. Excessive or undue use of the law (Ex. presidential pardons meant to be used sparingly, also impeachment).
3. Selective enforcement of laws.
4. Law-fare (as in warfare) – laws are used to target the opposition.
Orbán’s journey towards illiberal democracy in Hungary is summarized:
1. Voting system was changed
2. Purged and packed the courts.
3. Expanded numbers of judges in their supreme court.
4. Passed a law changing retirement age for justices. By 2013
the judiciary was a puppet of the government.
5. Media became a government propaganda arm.
6. Used constitutional hardball to change the way seats were filled on Electoral committees and retained control of parliament regardless of the popular vote.
Chapter 3: It Has Happened Here brings to our attention a time after the Civil War when freed Black men began to fill important positions in the government of Wilmington, NC. This seemed to open the door to multiracial politics until a group of prominent white Democrats launched a violent crusade to restore white rule (remember those Democrats are now Republicans as the parties switched in the 1960’s). It’s not a pretty story but you should know about it. The prospect of multiracial rule angered the South in part because it upended social and racial hierarchies.
Chapter 4: Why the Republican Party Abandoned Democracy
During the term of Lyndon Johnson and the passage of the 1964-65 Civil Rights Bills these reforms passed with votes from both parties. 60 years later, the authors say, the Republican party has become unrecognizable. He reminds us that Republican Mike Lee called for “liberty, peace and prosperity” but not democracy. They inform us about VDEM which issues an annual illiberalism score. The GOP’s illiberal score soared after 2000. Examples include the Republican’s “Southern Strategy” and State’s Rights and the added White Christian strategy of the “Moral Majority.” Once again the rise of multiracial society threatens the White party, the Republicans.” This chapter offers up the current situation in America.
Is the entire Republican Party anti-democratic? Answer these questions to determine their Democracy grade.
1. Did they sign on to the amicus brief to nullify votes in 2020?
2. Did they accede to manipulations of the Electoral College votes?
3. Did they cast doubt on the legality of the election?
4. Did they vote against Trump impeachment?
5. Were they against an independent commission to investigate 1/6?
6. Did they refuse to hold Steve Bannon in contempt for ignoring a subpoena?
Chapter 5: Fettered Majorities begins with a discussion of the disemboweling of the Voting Rights Act pre-clearance section in Shelby County v Holder and the 26 states that subsequently passed restrictive voting laws. Although Dems had total control when the John Lewis bill came to the floor the bill died again and again and finally two Democrats, Joe Manchin and Kirstin Sinema, killed it. A partisan minority is currently blocking majority power the author tells us. It can’t be too easy to change the rules in a democracy and it can’t be too difficult to change the rules either. We protect minority rights, but we are learning that there can also be a tyranny of the minority. In addition, one generation can tie the hands of future generations far into the future.
Chapter 6: Minority Rule begins with a discussion of German “bread lords” and the urban/rural divide in Germany at that time. Political institutions were frozen in place despite demographic and social changes. We are experiencing that same situation in 21st century America. Only in the 21st century have counter-majoritarian rules benefited a single political party. This is due to the same urban/rural divide encountered by the Germans in the 20th century. We now have a rural state bias in the US Senate, the Electoral College, and the Supreme Court. As a result, say the authors, “we run the risk of descending into ‘minority rule’.” They explain in some detail.
Chapter 7: America The Outlier explores how a country (America) that set out to find an audacious new idea for government has now fallen behind other democracies on scores determined by Freedom House. Most countries dismantled undemocratic sections of their constitutions. Elections would no longer be determined by “first past the post” rules. Upper chambers of government were no longer elitist, but either more representative or no longer existed at all. Cloture rules were simple as opposed to our filibuster rules which allow minorities parties to delay cloture altogether. Judicial review which allows Supreme Courts to overrule legislative laws is an area that has not been reformed. Other nations have laws about term limits for judges or specify a retirement age, which we do not. We have made some changes to rules to make them less counter-majoritarian as with the laws that allow direct elections of Senators, but we have kept most of the laws mentioned above. “The US” the authors say, is a democratic laggard.” We have the hardest constitution to change and are now the least democratic of the world’s democracies.
Chapter 8: Democratizing Our Democracy is necessary because in America majorities do not really rule. Remedies are offered up by the authors and most of them have to do with upholding the right to vote. I should not steal the author’s thunder by offering potential readers a comprehensive list. You really should read the book. However, here are a few of the suggestions:
1. Establish automatic voter registration.
2. Expand mail-in and early voting
3. Schedule elections on weekends or holidays.
4. Restore national voting rights with federal oversight.
5. Ensure that elections results reflect what people want.
6. Abolish the Electoral College
7. Reform Senate to be proportional to the population.
8. Eliminate partisan gerrymandering.
9. Abolish the Senate filibuster, etc.
10. Make it easier to amend the Constitution.
This is an important book, and it is well-researched. I did not get to read a print version because I was having cataract surgery (which has turned out well). Listening to an academic book that reads like a text is not ideal. Page numbers to give attribution for direct quotes are not available and some quotes get missed because they go by too fast. This is a book that would be best added to your library in print so that you could refer to it as necessary. I had to take notes. These two authors will most likely not be heard by those who need to hear/read these truths because of our current partisan divide but Levitsky and Ziblatt are fighting along with many of us to save our democracy. Their academic approach adds gravitas to the points those of us who love democracy are trying to make.
So Many Books, Choose Wisely 