{"id":1199782,"date":"2023-09-04T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-09-04T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/?p=442856"},"modified":"2023-09-04T11:00:00","modified_gmt":"2023-09-04T11:00:00","slug":"what-were-reading-and-streaming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2023\/09\/04\/what-were-reading-and-streaming\/","title":{"rendered":"What We\u2019re Reading and Streaming"},"content":{"rendered":"
\u201cAfter the First Death<\/a>,\u201d Robert Cormier<\/strong> They\u2019re all about authority figures who are eager to manipulate and betray adolescents for their own purposes. As such, they provide excruciating metaphorical lessons about larger-scale human politics, lessons you don\u2019t want to learn but have to. For me, \u201cAfter the First Death\u201d is the most disturbing of them all, with its title taken from the last line of a poem by Dylan Thomas: \u201cAfter the first death, there is no other.\u201d OR IS THERE. \u2014 Jon Schwarz<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cBlue Skies<\/a>,\u201d T. C. Boyle<\/strong><\/p>\n Blue skies I\u2019ve been reading T. Coraghessan Boyle\u2019s novels and stories since 1987\u2019s \u201cWorld\u2019s End,\u201d which intricately plotted Hudson River Valley families through the 1700s, 1940s, and 1968 just as I became a refugee to the area. Now Boyle\u2019s 19th novel takes place in a near-future climate apocalypse in familiar California and Florida coastal paradises, where Western drought and Eastern storms and rising tides are already in progress. As we become inured to news of 115-degree days, bee colony collapse, glaciers melting, and raging wildfires, Boyle writes beyond his customary satire to a state of (yet another vocabulary word I\u2019ve learned from him) mithridatism: the production of immunity against the action of a poison in gradually increased doses.<\/p>\n Will we notice when all the insects suddenly die off (but not the spiders), when we need to take a rowboat to get from the luxury beach house to our Tesla parked on higher ground, driving over the migrating bodies of catfish or facing down alligators swimming on the road, when our career goal of internet influencer is thwarted by the bad behavior of illegally imported pythons? The answer seems, yes, we can survive if there are still local bars serving mojitos, wine, beer, and sake. From baking with cricket flour to eating homegrown gourmet grasshoppers and lab-created chicken, while feeding rats and rabbits to pet snakes, from insect tattoo art to bug-born infections, it seems to be \u201cdoom atop doom.\u201d<\/p>\n The antihero Bug Boy, grievously harmed by a tiny tick while searching for the disappearing monarch butterflies, explains: \u201cNature bites back. That\u2019s what this is all about.\u201d \u2014 Margot Williams<\/em><\/p>\n
I read Robert Cormier\u2019s young adult novels when I was a young adult. At the time they \u2014 especially \u201cThe Chocolate War,\u201d \u201cI Am the Cheese,\u201d and \u201cAfter the First Death\u201d \u2014 were among the most frightening and upsetting books I\u2019d ever encountered. I\u2019ve been rereading them recently, and they still are.<\/p>\n
Smiling at me
Nothing but blue skies
Do I see<\/em>
\u2014 Irving Berlin<\/p>\n