illness as metaphor and the handmaid's tale

Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and its Metaphors belong in that Eichmann in Jerusalem or The Death and Life of Great American Cities category of staggeringly clear thinking and argumentation that has the voice of rigorous academic authority without needing to bother with academic evidence. The Sontag pieces are dated, although to be fair she predicted that they would be. In fact, the temporariness of the metaphors is part of the point: Things are scariest when we don't understand them, and once we do their power as metaphors dissipates. Cancer is less frightening than it was in the 1970s, and AIDS is less frightening now than it was 25 years ago. They are both still terrifying diseases, but cancer in particular carries less moral weight than it used to.

The Handmaid's Tale is a work of genius. Beautifully written, gripping, terrifying, insightful. I said this on FB the other day but it's almost hard to believe it's by the same author who wrote Oryx and Crake, which is, by comparison, clumsy and clunky and not all that interesting.

telegraph avenue and madeleine l'engle

I liked Kavalier and Clay and Maps and Legends was okay, but Telegraph Avenue I had to put down. I wish I meant that in the put to sleep sense. It's a bad book: overwritten, boring, and forced in the way I thought Empire Falls was, just more so. Empire Falls was okay.

Following that unceremonious dumping, I have begun my quest to read nothing but women authors for the remainder of the year by re-reading the three childhood classics that make up Madelein L'Engle's Time trilogy. They're terrific books, imaginative and strongly moral without being preachy, clearly written for children but not patronizing. Meg Murry, the heroine, is an ordinary child: good at math but not much else, stubborn to the point of stupidity, prone to tantrums and sulking. At one point in A Wind in the Door I actually yelled at her, out loud. But that makes her all the more appealing. She's not superhuman, but she's brave and she struggles even when the going gets very, very tough. I'll finish A Swiftly Tilting Planet in the next couple of days and then move on to either The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas or The Handmaid's Tale (I'm not usually that taken with Atwood's writing but the opening line of this one is EXTREMELY promising).