Book Review: Feed

Feed
M.T. Anderson

Identity crises, consumerism, and star-crossed teenage love in a futuristic society where people connect to the Internet via feeds implanted in their brains.
For Titus and his friends, it started out like any ordinary trip to the moon - a chance to party during spring break and play with some stupid low-grav at the Ricochet Lounge. But that was before the crazy hacker caused all their feeds to malfunction, sending them to the hospital to lie around with nothing inside their heads for days. And it was before Titus met Violet, a beautiful, brainy teenage girl who has decided to fight the feed and its omnipresent ability to categorize human thoughts and desires. Following in the footsteps of George Orwell, Anthony Burgess, and Kurt Vonnegut Jr., M. T. Anderson has created a not-so-brave new world — and a smart, savage satire that has captivated readers with its view of an imagined future that veers unnervingly close to the here and now.



Star Rating:


Review:
I simply cannot express how much I love this book. These are the reasons why:

1.) It's a dystopian novel. I have a weak spot for dystopian novels.
2.) The characters feel real to me. Not an adult trying to write a teenager. I never doubt Titus as a character, never second-guess his motives. Perfectly crafted.
3.) The language. This is a pitfall for many people, but for me, it just ropes me in closer to the story.
4.) The questions it asks about technology and our dependence on it. And on instant gratification.

I can see where this novel would be immediately flagged "Evil! STAY AWAY!" for some people, mostly for the reasons I have listed that I love it. In that, it must be understood that not all books appeal to all people. This book has, in my experience, always sparked controversy among its teen readers (see my incredibly biased entry, The Book Bias, for more on exactly how this book has been flagged by real teens), and is therefore a perfect choice for reading in high school. If nothing else, the students will want to discuss how much they hated it... which is the starting point for a wonderful discussion.

But I didn't hate this book. As I said, I loved it. I have read it multiple times, and my opinion of it hasn't changed. I love being able to walk away from a book and ask questions about it. I love being so wrapped up in a fictional universe that I'm watching the clock at work not just because I'm excited to get out of there, but because I want to immerse myself in the literary world again. Feed did that for me, and does that every time I read it.

Feed explores not only the dangers of a reliance on technology and instant gratification (those happen to be my favorite topics) but also criticizes the way we are destroying the ecosystem, taking education for granted, the sheep-like nature of the populace to follow the lead of celebrities, the declining rate of general health, overspending, substance use, negligent parenting, and on and on I could go. If there's a controversial topic you want to touch on, Feed probably has something to say about it. That, I would say, is probably Anderson's greatest fault in the book - he tried to say a little bit about a lot of things. It makes the book a little overwhelming, if you are reading it closely.

Then again, maybe that's the point.

the book bias.

I am incredibly biased in the way that when someone starts dissing a book that I found brilliant, I want to sit down with them, and the book, and hash out everything they hated about it and teach them how to appreciate the concepts, the writing, if not the story.  Having said that, I feel the need to lay out my dilemma-of-the-moment.

I fell in love with the book Feed in my senior year of high school, somewhere about November 2006.  When I started reading it, it was incredibly frustrating.  For starters, the whole book is written in the slang of the characters, which is difficult to catch on to.  It's like trying to read a book in chatspeak.  But somewhere between the lesions and Violet, I totally fell for the book (closer to Violet, I think, than the lesions...).  The ideas in it are so frighteningly possible, and interesting, and the characters could be any one of us, or our cousins, or children.

It's difficult for me to explain why I like Feed without too many spoilers, so I will go into the reason why I am posting this.  My younger brother is currently in the class I took when I read this book, and, unsurprisingly, he is reading it and has called it "undoubtedly the worst book [he] has ever read."  Left at that, it doesn't mean a whole lot to me, because lets face it - he's only read the Deltora Quest series, To Kill A Mockingbird (barely), and the first two Artemis Fowl books (they were getting "too long" for him to continue).  It was the throes of comments on his Facebook status about it that made me angry, and deeply disappointed.

"That.
Book.
Sucked.
End of story."

"It's basically taking a clockwork orange and compressing it into a book"

"It doesn't get better, either. It just gets worse. >.<"

"the underlaying theme of the book: TEKNOULEGY R BAAD! GO EMVIRONMANT! WOOO!"

And I wrote a long paragraph to defend the book, and rationally decided to delete it because something I have learned about high schoolers and arguing with them is that they are always right, even when they are wrong, and even when it is not a contest of correctness.  I left a brief comment, basically saying I liked it (oh, maybe five minutes ago) and I've already been accosted for that.  Honestly, I have never felt more judged for my interests in books than on Facebook.  It makes me miss Ashley and Caitlyn, who - even when we didn't agree - were more than happy to let me enjoy it instead of making me feel like I'm a bad person for enjoying it.

It also makes me sad, because (per Facebook statuses of the high schoolers I have worked with) I am noticing that the high schoolers instantly hate all books they are told to read, simply because they don't have the choice (even those who, in their free time, enjoy reading).  I hope desperately that it's just the group that I work with, but I doubt it.  Maybe it's a push against authority, but this isn't the first time I've seen blatant force against a book based entirely on opinions, coupled with an apparently inability to find even a single good thing about it.  If you ask people to think of one, just one, good thing about a book, either they will refuse, or else they will say something they find witty like "burning it."

I feel like such an intellectual snob sometimes.

Why do people always have to be right?  I feel like it's book extremists and fanatics who scare away potential readers sometimes (yes, even the Pott-heads).

.

Last Movie/TV Viewed: The Matrix. Not an episode of Psych! ... Believe it or not, I only have ONE episode left until I'm caught up....
Last Song Heard: "Baby" covered by Alex Carpenter.
Last Google Search: "feed m t anderson".
Today in History: Ron Weasley was born, in 1980. ... What? It sort of counts!