Oryx and Crake part 3
reverie_shadow linked to an essay about flashbacks which basically states "don't do it, it mucks up character development." Flashbacks do seem appropriate for Oryx and Crake since they give an evocative contrast between the Then and the Now. Besides, cautionary tales usually can't get any worse, being more about puppets and propaganda than chareacters and stories.
Subchapters: Downpour, Rakunk, Hammer
Summary
So, Snowman's woken up by a rainstorm and takes a new shelter under a crumbling overpass, grimly musing on the irony of an intact Men at Work sign. He wangsts again briefly and that's the end of both pages of Downpour.
Now we're back to Jimmy, he's ten and things have gotten sucker with his parents. Snowman doesn't remember what Dad looked like, which is just as well since he's not a real character but a garish prop. Jimmy angsts about his parents not remembering his birthday, then muses on his present: a "rakunk," a cross between a racoon and a skunk -- with temperament and musk worked out, obviously. This rakunk was the runt of the first litter, which is supposed to be very symbolic. Jimmy's told by Dad that he went to a lot of trouble to get the critter for him, but the way it's written the Narrator practically says "Jimmy's dad was a corporate bully who only got the the pet as a status symbol!"
Narrator then gives a large paragraph of exposition about the folks at OrganInc playing create-an-animal, "[it] was so much fun, said the guys doing it; it made you feel like God." (Emphasis mine.) If I were a mad scientist, I'd make chimeric pets because they be cool, and I'd train them to attack anyone putting hoary cliches into my mouth.
Jimmy angsts about Dad being fake, Mom mopes and says she isn't caring for the pet, and Jimmy goes up to play with his new rakunk, Killer.
A month later, Jimmy's dad, who still doesn't have a name, and his co-worker friend, Ramona, get recruited by NooSkins and move to the HelthWyzer Compound. Sharon, Jimmy's mom, complains that the evil security detail are ruder and prone to sexually harassing strip searches, "women especially." Dad brushes it off, so the readers don't forget what a jerk he is. The security's necessary, he says, since a few weeks before moving in a terrorist sprayed a guard with a biowarfare agent that "dissolved [him] into a puddle of goo." Sharon insists that the housecleaners are spying on them. Jimmy likes his new school though.
At NooSkins pigoons are grown to create youthful skin cells designed to consume and replace old skin. This has obvious medical spin-offs but they don't get mentioned since that'd detract from the Message. "What well-to-do and once-young, once-beautiful woman or man, cranked up on hormonal supplements and shot full of vitamins but hampered by the unforgiving mirror, wouldn't sell their house, their gated retirement villa, their kids, and their soul to get a second kick at the sexual can?" (If that quote doesn't bring in the lurkers than nothing will.) The price for this are dozens of test subjects who've sign away their legal rights for free beta versions, "peeling in ragged strips." The sporking just writes itself in this section, and I'm only halfway through! My mom, who isn't a neurotic chain smoker like Jimmy's mom, ask why NooSkins didn't apply the cells to the buttocks, or even test them on animals.
Speaking of Sharon, she gets into rare form here. Nameless Dad comes home a bit drunk on celebratory champagne: NooSkins has grown human neo-cortex tissue inside a pigoon. Jimmy's mother, and Atwood's sockpuppet, is not at all happy, "More people with the the brains of pigs. Don't we have enough of those already?" Sharon, human brain tissue doesn't alchemically absorb essence of pig when it's grown in a pig host. Sharon should know this since she used to be a biotechnologist too.
Dad gets fed up with Mom's constant negativity, remember that this has been going on for at least five years, and they have a big argument. Sharon says the prices are too high and that Dad used to have ideals, Dad says he still does but can't afford them. Sharon says growing human brains in pigs is sacrilegious, Dad gets angry and tries to talk sense to Sharon but she dismisses him, "I'm familiar with the theory." Where have we heard "theory" used derisively before? Dad says his job is paying for the place, Sharon says that she'd rather he dig ditches so his conscience would be clean. Dad calls Sharon a hypocrite for funding the tobacco companies with her chain-smoking, Sharon's excuse is that she does it because she's depressed. Hubby depresses her, Jimmy depresses her... I'd transcribe the whole thing but you can see it for yourself here, just click on "Search inside another edition of this book" (under the thumbnail) and do a search for "sacrilegious;" you'll want to end up on page 57.
Jimmy goes up to his room, wangsts about parents being fakey and not wuving him, and relaxes to Killer licking his feet.
Now we move forward in the flashback to Jimmy at 15, doing pretty good for himself in high school. He's resigned about his parents, and so fed up with them that he entertains his classmates with hand-puppet parodies of Mom and Dad. The classmates offer suggestions for Jimmy based on their own broken homes, which is supposed to be another clever hint. Jimmy feels guilty about his puppet shows, which are on p.60 and also must-see-to-believe, too-quotable-to-pass-up, but-I-can-only-write-so-much-before-going-crazy(er).
Not as crazy as Jimmy's mom, who smashed the computers, stole liberated Jimmy's pet, and ran away from home. She left him a note so cliched that Margaret didn't bother writing most of it, replacing most of it with "blah blah." Yes, I know this is probably supposed to be written from Jimmy's perspective, but Jimmy/Snowman and the omniscient narrator are practically one and the same, this is bad. A narrator is supposed to describe, objectively, what there is and what's being done; basically, what the narrator say is truth. If the narrator holds the opinions of the main character, or the author, then we're just being preached at. Also, domestic animals released into the wild do about as well as the proverbial pretty-boy-in-prison, and Jimmy knows this. Yes, the feral rakunks are doing well as a species, but how many died in dominance fights earlier? Sharon seems to see animals as people, but she obviously loathes people treated in a utilitarian manner -- then does exactly that with Killer.
There's a whole page of wangst (p.63) about how everything was sooo much better in the good-'ol-days than the cesspool of cyberpunk cliches they live in, the CorpSeCorps interview Jimmy about his mother, and Jimmy goes all emo.
Ramona, co-worker of Jimmy's still-nameless dad, has now moved in with JImmy; apparently much more than just a friend to Dad, who's implied that he's had an affair with her for some time. I'm supposed to hate Jimmy's dad* but, unlike my father, he neither shied away from spending time with his kid, nor left his family in a financial lurch, so fuck you, Margaret. Snowman blames Jimmy's parents, Jimmy misses his birth-mother a bit, and we end with Snowman being all emo.
*(No, I don't endorse cheating husbands, he should've divorced Sharon like anybody else would've done. But Evil Dad has to be a jerk, 'cause Margaret disagrees with him.)
Subchapters: Downpour, Rakunk, Hammer
Summary
So, Snowman's woken up by a rainstorm and takes a new shelter under a crumbling overpass, grimly musing on the irony of an intact Men at Work sign. He wangsts again briefly and that's the end of both pages of Downpour.
Now we're back to Jimmy, he's ten and things have gotten sucker with his parents. Snowman doesn't remember what Dad looked like, which is just as well since he's not a real character but a garish prop. Jimmy angsts about his parents not remembering his birthday, then muses on his present: a "rakunk," a cross between a racoon and a skunk -- with temperament and musk worked out, obviously. This rakunk was the runt of the first litter, which is supposed to be very symbolic. Jimmy's told by Dad that he went to a lot of trouble to get the critter for him, but the way it's written the Narrator practically says "Jimmy's dad was a corporate bully who only got the the pet as a status symbol!"
Narrator then gives a large paragraph of exposition about the folks at OrganInc playing create-an-animal, "[it] was so much fun, said the guys doing it; it made you feel like God." (Emphasis mine.) If I were a mad scientist, I'd make chimeric pets because they be cool, and I'd train them to attack anyone putting hoary cliches into my mouth.
Jimmy angsts about Dad being fake, Mom mopes and says she isn't caring for the pet, and Jimmy goes up to play with his new rakunk, Killer.
A month later, Jimmy's dad, who still doesn't have a name, and his co-worker friend, Ramona, get recruited by NooSkins and move to the HelthWyzer Compound. Sharon, Jimmy's mom, complains that the evil security detail are ruder and prone to sexually harassing strip searches, "women especially." Dad brushes it off, so the readers don't forget what a jerk he is. The security's necessary, he says, since a few weeks before moving in a terrorist sprayed a guard with a biowarfare agent that "dissolved [him] into a puddle of goo." Sharon insists that the housecleaners are spying on them. Jimmy likes his new school though.
At NooSkins pigoons are grown to create youthful skin cells designed to consume and replace old skin. This has obvious medical spin-offs but they don't get mentioned since that'd detract from the Message. "What well-to-do and once-young, once-beautiful woman or man, cranked up on hormonal supplements and shot full of vitamins but hampered by the unforgiving mirror, wouldn't sell their house, their gated retirement villa, their kids, and their soul to get a second kick at the sexual can?" (If that quote doesn't bring in the lurkers than nothing will.) The price for this are dozens of test subjects who've sign away their legal rights for free beta versions, "peeling in ragged strips." The sporking just writes itself in this section, and I'm only halfway through! My mom, who isn't a neurotic chain smoker like Jimmy's mom, ask why NooSkins didn't apply the cells to the buttocks, or even test them on animals.
Speaking of Sharon, she gets into rare form here. Nameless Dad comes home a bit drunk on celebratory champagne: NooSkins has grown human neo-cortex tissue inside a pigoon. Jimmy's mother, and Atwood's sockpuppet, is not at all happy, "More people with the the brains of pigs. Don't we have enough of those already?" Sharon, human brain tissue doesn't alchemically absorb essence of pig when it's grown in a pig host. Sharon should know this since she used to be a biotechnologist too.
Dad gets fed up with Mom's constant negativity, remember that this has been going on for at least five years, and they have a big argument. Sharon says the prices are too high and that Dad used to have ideals, Dad says he still does but can't afford them. Sharon says growing human brains in pigs is sacrilegious, Dad gets angry and tries to talk sense to Sharon but she dismisses him, "I'm familiar with the theory." Where have we heard "theory" used derisively before? Dad says his job is paying for the place, Sharon says that she'd rather he dig ditches so his conscience would be clean. Dad calls Sharon a hypocrite for funding the tobacco companies with her chain-smoking, Sharon's excuse is that she does it because she's depressed. Hubby depresses her, Jimmy depresses her... I'd transcribe the whole thing but you can see it for yourself here, just click on "Search inside another edition of this book" (under the thumbnail) and do a search for "sacrilegious;" you'll want to end up on page 57.
Jimmy goes up to his room, wangsts about parents being fakey and not wuving him, and relaxes to Killer licking his feet.
Now we move forward in the flashback to Jimmy at 15, doing pretty good for himself in high school. He's resigned about his parents, and so fed up with them that he entertains his classmates with hand-puppet parodies of Mom and Dad. The classmates offer suggestions for Jimmy based on their own broken homes, which is supposed to be another clever hint. Jimmy feels guilty about his puppet shows, which are on p.60 and also must-see-to-believe, too-quotable-to-pass-up, but-I-can-only-write-so-much-before-going-crazy(er).
Not as crazy as Jimmy's mom, who smashed the computers, stole liberated Jimmy's pet, and ran away from home. She left him a note so cliched that Margaret didn't bother writing most of it, replacing most of it with "blah blah." Yes, I know this is probably supposed to be written from Jimmy's perspective, but Jimmy/Snowman and the omniscient narrator are practically one and the same, this is bad. A narrator is supposed to describe, objectively, what there is and what's being done; basically, what the narrator say is truth. If the narrator holds the opinions of the main character, or the author, then we're just being preached at. Also, domestic animals released into the wild do about as well as the proverbial pretty-boy-in-prison, and Jimmy knows this. Yes, the feral rakunks are doing well as a species, but how many died in dominance fights earlier? Sharon seems to see animals as people, but she obviously loathes people treated in a utilitarian manner -- then does exactly that with Killer.
There's a whole page of wangst (p.63) about how everything was sooo much better in the good-'ol-days than the cesspool of cyberpunk cliches they live in, the CorpSeCorps interview Jimmy about his mother, and Jimmy goes all emo.
Ramona, co-worker of Jimmy's still-nameless dad, has now moved in with JImmy; apparently much more than just a friend to Dad, who's implied that he's had an affair with her for some time. I'm supposed to hate Jimmy's dad* but, unlike my father, he neither shied away from spending time with his kid, nor left his family in a financial lurch, so fuck you, Margaret. Snowman blames Jimmy's parents, Jimmy misses his birth-mother a bit, and we end with Snowman being all emo.
*(No, I don't endorse cheating husbands, he should've divorced Sharon like anybody else would've done. But Evil Dad has to be a jerk, 'cause Margaret disagrees with him.)