A little slow to post

I've been busy. I've made progress. I haven't been diligent about posting, but here goes.

Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro. Are we products of our environment? Can the will to live be bred out of humans or have it negated through environment? Those are just a couple of the questions raised in this book of a dystopian society. As far as I know, no one has successfully cloned a human, but it's bound to happen some day. Will there come a time when the anti-social members of society are cloned so that their clones can serve as incubators for spare body parts?

One of the questions raised in the book is whether such cloned people would have souls. I think they would, but would they be so placid about their fate, knowing that they live to make "donations" until such time as they "complete?" What kind of society could tolerate such a concept, even in the shadows? Or maybe, we're there already, given that the world knows that Chinese prisoners are often executed for their organs. There's some talk about human rights violations, but there's no loud hew and cry over the practice. And I have little doubt that many a wealthy Westerner would gladly pay for the organs of some pour, desolate (spiritless??) individual if it meant saving their own lives.

Perhaps the premise in the book can be likened to slavery or even to to holocaust, where once the slaves and Jews were dehumanized, it was easy to do unspeakable things to them, right Dr. Mengele? There were always a few who thought it proper to treat these people "humanely" but who weren't willing to advocate for them to have the full panoply of human rights.

Maybe it's a good thing that I didn't post shortly after I finished this book. It's been a couple of weeks since I inished it, but its depth continues to resonate with me.

Revolutionary Road, by Richard Yates. Alex loved this book. It was okay. Life in the suburbs can be vacuous and it is real easy to get lost in the great emptiness. Frank and April managed to lose everything that might have helped them avoid their fate, almost escaping for a brief moment before losing their derring-do. Maybe they never had a streak of adventure, or maybe, like Babbitt, they never learned to step away from conformity to find and be who they wanted be. John Givings, the character who's suffered through 37 or so electo-shock treatments seems to be the most honest of the characters, and perhaps the most sane. But, he's the one in the insane asylum. As a suburbanite,rather depressing on one hand; inspirational on the other.

Still listening to: Atlas Shrugged.
Reading on Nook: Lady Chatterly's Lover.