A review of a review
Connection and loneliness
Today, I want to recommend a book to you, that is very well worth your time.
Actually, the book was recommended to me by a friend I had since I was 16 years old and who now lives an ocean and half-a-day’s timezones away. It took me a few weeks to follow up on her recommendation and when I did I was transfixed.
The book is The Anthropocene Reviewed, by John Green.
It’s a collection of essays on the human experience, penned by the same writer who wrote the modern young adult fiction hits The Fault In Our Stars, Looking for Alaska and Turtles All The Way Down (amongst others).
Each essay is a review of thing. Something that humans experience in this age of human endeavour (hence the word anthropocene in the title). Some are very specific, like a goal in a football match, or very general, like sunsets. Some essays are about specific diseases (viral meningitis), commercial products like Diet Dr. Pepper, or natural things like dinosaurs or comets. In each one, he manages to strike a connection with the reader that surpasses 99.99% of other writing. By working up to a score of 1 to 5 stars, Green makes a connection about the shared human experience that has left me breathless. His writing is so raw and honest and I highly recommend the audio version, which he narrates himself. Precisely because his writing is so vulnerable, and the thin quality of his voice adds to the naked power of his observations.
The book was recommended to me and I have recommended it to others, even gifted it, because of the way it manages to raise a tent over us, in which we can relax and conspire in secret about what we feel about what it is to be alive.
This is a special work and meant to be enjoyed together with those you love deeply.
To take a line from it, I give The Anthropocene Reviewed, 5 stars.
This book is in sharp contrast to a movie I reconnected with this week. The Martian, by Ridley Scott, from the novel by Andy Weir.
This story is a futurist version of Robinson Crusoe, where a man gets stranded on the other side of the solar system. Where help and rescue is years away and where even communication takes minutes to reach him.
Where Green creates intense connection, The Martian is about intense disconnection.
It is beautifully constructed, with the insane isolation counter-punctuated with 70s disco and self-deferential humour. But in one of the last scenes, the veneer breaks - and you feel the insane desperation in Watney’s voice, played by Matt Damon, as he gives his go command to the rescue mission.
Just watch this, masterful:
I am not going to lie. I cry like a baby in this scene. The moment that tiny rocket lifts off that foreign planet, off that red soil and tears through that inhabitable atmosphere - that is liberation, pulling away from the gravity of whatever it is that keeps us trapped and isolated.
Maybe we all just want our crew to come back for us, to rescue us. Our crew with whom we share the human experience, this Anthropocene.
Me, more than most.
The Martian and The Anthropocene Reviewed are well worth your time this week.
Leon.