No Foolin’
Work of Jan Is De Man, Utrecht, Netherlands, from streetartcities.com:
If the moon mission is successful, will there again be those who declare it a hoax?
Is Bruce Springsteen this era’s Jane Fonda?
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Headline from nypost.com: “Gen Z employees can’t bear the 9–5 grind — so they’re using lunch breaks to nap and cry in bizarre places.”
Born in Nagasaki in 1954, Kazuo Ishiguro’s family moved to England when he was five. He studied literature and pyschology in college and earned a Master of Arts in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. He tried to make it as a singer/songwriter before turning to literature. His work has brought him a Nobel Prize in Literature and the Booker Prize. His books have been translated into more than 50 languages, and The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go were both adapted into acclaimed films. I just finished reading the latter. It is as odd a novel as I’ve ever read. The story is the first person account of a young woman, a test tube baby who grew up on an exclusive campus in rural England, where the “students” were provided a sound education. It is set in the pre-cell phone era. She and her fellow students were created to provide organ donations. They have accepted their fate. There is no rebellion, no word of students disappearing, fleeing. Although it is not mentioned, it must be an alternate universe. Of course, the narrator would not know that. The author avoids any of the regular aspects of speculative fiction and concentrates on portraits of the victims, particularly the narrator and her two best friends. I couldn’t accept that no one would rebel, dogging me the entire 288 pages of the large paperback edition. It all seems pointless. Perhaps that’s the point. Perhaps it is for folks smarter than me. Whatever. The unpolished prose is fine since it is the creation of a non-writer. 40,000+ users at Amazon have rated Never…, forging to a consensus of 4.1 on a scale of ten. I’ll go with two. Photos from Google Images:
Mother Nature made a fool of the Anti-Inflation Book Shop, raining down drizzle as I was setting up, leading me to believe I would be better off at the nearby viaduct. The precipitation never went beyond a few drops here and there. The winning streak was snapped. My thanks to my Constant Benefactress, who came along as I was packing up and bought Hallucinations by Oliver Sacks, the only sale of a long session. I wear the cap and bells today. Photo from GI:
