Molly's 2-cent ramble, with asides

I'm sorry I missed the first meeting, but we finally got our kiddo to actually sleep (!) on a regular schedule and I didn't want to mess it up.

I thought Handmaid's Tale, while well written was quite grim. In contrast, I found Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns, which I read for another book group and that dealt with Islamic fascism and wife abuse, to be beautiful and hopeful.

For me, the book is very much a part of its time: post Reagan, with both Andrea Dworkin and Phyllis Schafly increasingly prominent, and reading it reminded me of my bleak years at the end of highschool and first few years of university. At my school, feminism was a with us or against us deal. The more radical women mistook misandry for feminism; when they should have been having the time of their lives, they denied and repressed their sexuality. There wasn't much room for someone like me, who read Susie Bright and Kathy Acker. (After graduation, I bought a one-way ticket to San Francisco and felt much better.)

I read a lot of Margaret Atwood throughout my teens, although Handmaid's Tale is the first book of hers I've read in over 20 years. Many of her female narrators are very similar to Offred; they tend to be passive or introspective, wishing they could be more like their daring or radical friends. However, in defense of Offred, I think she was smart enough to know that it was best to be outwardly conformist (as one of the more educated women in Hosseini's book does). "He who hides well, lives well." (Descartes)

The men in Atwood's books are weasly and weak, unfortunately -- not a lot of strong men in her books. So, Nick was a surprise -- he's the hero (but maybe he rescues Offred only because she's pregnant?) but you never saw it coming. Two cheers for Nick for screwing them over from the inside. (Plus, it was easy to picture Aidan Quinn as him...)

As to whether it could happen here, I doubt it. But then I'm sure all the female educators and doctors in Afghanistan never thought they'd become criminals or be forced to operate in burqas. Years ago, I hired a guy to remove a tree stump -- a bonafide redneck who constantly opined on everything -- and I remember him saying "just you wait, when the revolution comes it'll be guys like me [heavily armed, southern, no nonsense] that'll fuck them over." So, if it does happen, let's hope he and his buddies can keep their word (and get their trucks to start).

I did like the ending; it seemed appropriate to have a symposium on what is (in our reality, as the reader) a theoretical society -- for a moment, I thought I was truly reading an afterward by independent scholars. It was a neat little trick.

As a Canadian I appreciated that there was a university in the great north: Nunavut wasn't officially declared a territory until 14 years after Handmaid's Tale was published; the Dene (Denay) are the first nations people in the area. Oh, and the "Particicution" was a play on a governmental fitness program popular when I was a kid called Participaction -- I laughed out loud, albeit inappropriately, when I read that scene since in phys ed, we often made fun of Participaction and its goofy theme song. Why does everything have a theme song?

::

I'm happy to host the next meeting (I'm all for whoever suggests the book host the event, just for variety). We live at Camino Seco and O.S.T. -- "practically New Mexico" as we've been told, so I won't be offended if it's deemed too far a journey for the majority. However, we have lots of room, lots of parking, and a booze fridge in the garage.