Alienation, autonomy, and ideology
These are posts about books from the blog Base and Superstructure. Occasionally I’ll read a book worth talking about, and write some thoughts on it. These cover a wide range of topics from the blog.
With summer upon us and coronavirus lingering in the air, I bring to you a new season’s installment of the reading list series! The public library in Iowa City remains closed, and so I’ve had to get creative about where I find materials. In some cases, I’m reading some things on my shelf I put there years ago.
Without further ado, here are 5 books I’ve recently read.
I get a feeling of uncanny accuracy when I read In the Dream House. Not because I’ve ever been in an abusive relationship. I haven’t, and I hope things stay that way forever. It’s because the road – both geographical and description of place – looks so familiar and yet so far away.
Carmen Maria Machado wrote the book, and she wrote it about her relationship with an abuser who’s part of writing communities in Iowa City. Their relationship spans the U.S., but it mostly spans the distance between Iowa City, Iowa and Bloomington, Indiana.
I live in Iowa City, and I used to live in Bloomington. 6 years of the former followed by 12 years – and counting! – of the latter. Setting aside a year in Minneapolis, I’ve lived half my life in these two places.
There’s not much to do in Iowa City other than read – or make cloth masks – given the fact of coronavirus and COVID-19. As I said earlier, one of those recent books is The Naked Sun by Isaac Asimov. I dropped a hint in the earlier post that The Naked Sun is relevant to our current situation. How? By revealing the slow social disintegration of the planet Solaria.
Let’s think a bit more about that.
Yeah, I know. I just put out a reading list for the spring. But there’s reading, and there’s reading, right? With stay-at-home orders in most states, we’re now doing the latter. And not a moment too soon, because we don’t need to mess around with coronavirus and COVID-19.
Lots of you are under stay-at-home orders! Even Florida now. As it happens, I live in Iowa and I’m not. This has led to much wailing and gnashing of teeth among local liberals. But if you can’t – or won’t – leave the house, you’re probably looking for something to read.
Maybe I can help with that. Here’s what I’m reading under my personal stay-at-home order.
John Steinbeck wrote about two thefts of the land in The Grapes of Wrath. As readers, we know Steinbeck as the classic author who wrote eloquently about the second theft, the banks’ theft of the dying Oklahoma countryside from its tenant farmers. But many of us know less than we should about the first theft.
Let’s take a look.
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