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Liberation: Being the Adventures of the Slick Six After the Collapse of the United States of America
From the author of the literary pulp phenomenon Spaceman Blues comes a future history cautionary tale, a heist movie in the style of a hippie novel .
Liberation is a speculation on life in near-future America after the country suffers an economic cataclysm that leads to the resurgence of ghosts of its past such as the human slave trade. Our heroes are the Slick Six, a group of international criminals who set out to alleviate the worst of these conditions and put America on the road to recovery. Liberation is a story about living down the past, personally and nationally; about being able to laugh at the punch line to the long, dark joke of American history.
Slattery's prose moves seamlessly between present and past, action and memory. With Liberation , he celebrates the resilience and ingenuity of the American spirit.
Liberation is a speculation on life in near-future America after the country suffers an economic cataclysm that leads to the resurgence of ghosts of its past such as the human slave trade. Our heroes are the Slick Six, a group of international criminals who set out to alleviate the worst of these conditions and put America on the road to recovery. Liberation is a story about living down the past, personally and nationally; about being able to laugh at the punch line to the long, dark joke of American history.
Slattery's prose moves seamlessly between present and past, action and memory. With Liberation , he celebrates the resilience and ingenuity of the American spirit.
299 pages, Paperback
First published October 14, 2008
12 people are currently reading
738 people want to read
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Brian Francis Slattery
56 books99 followersEditor, reporter, musician, and writer living just outside of New Haven, CT.
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October 25, 2010
When confronted by the uncertain future, we look to our past. We look to it for answers, for enlightenment, for inspiration. Mostly we look to it because we have nowhere else to look. This is natural, but it's also dangerous, for we have a tendency to romanticize the past: everything was better before we had electricity, urbanization, automation; life was simpler, slower, satisfying. Sometimes we get caught up in that idyllic illusion of a pastoral existence and forget about the disease, the injustice, and the poverty of the past. Yearning for certain elements of the past is quite all right, but let's not pretend the past is a paradise from which we have been expelled.
In Liberation: Being the Adventures of the Slick Six After the Collapse of the United States of America the past, present, and future collide against the landscape of an altered America. Brian Francis Slattery presents us with a meditation on the state of the American consciousnesses following a devastating economic collapse. The great machine of the American dream has sputtered and run down, and those who survived the tumultuous revolts in the first days now look back and wonder if it was ever a reality. Slattery captures this feeling perfectly in a passage early in the book:
The back cover of my edition describes Liberation as "a heist movie in the style of a hippie novel." I'm too young to have a solid grasp on what being a hippie truly means, but I think I understand what the summary is implying. With its stream-of-consciousness narrative style and a healthy dose of magical realism, Liberation is a very self-aware story that tries to live in the moment and ignore the linearity of its own plot. Scene transitions are nonexistent; past and present mix as flashbacks spill over into the contemporary narrative; death is merely another state of being, and not a very troublesome one at that. It's rather trippy, actually, in a hippie, "everything is connected," sort of way. And normally I don't like such books, because I find them too difficult to read for too little in return. In this case, however, I can make an exception, for this style is quite essential to Liberation's themes. While I was confused, especially at the beginning, I was entertained and moved enough to persevere until the end.
On the subject of this being "a heist movie," I will have to disagree. If you go into this expecting a gang-reunion one-last-job style of story, you're going to be disappointed—I was. I can understand why the back cover is going for this comparison, because Liberation does feature the reunion of the Slick Six, a band of awesome criminals, and their one last job against their most potent enemy, the Aardvark. Frankly though, it's not much of a heist, and its heist elements are incidental to the rest of the story.
The core of Liberation is the dual perspective that Slattery gives us on the collapse of the United States. The proximal cause of the collapse is the economy, or rather, a loss of faith in the economy. The dollar became worthless, people could no longer buy anything, and the United States government crumbled. The ultimate cause, however, is the full weight of America's history finally catching up to it, "history curling up on itself," as Maggot Boy Johnson puts it. In his final confrontation with Marco, the Aardvark says:
Liberation is predicated upon this cyclical view of history. From the resurrection of the slave trade to the marauding of the New Sioux, everything seems to have its origins in the late 19th-century crucible from which sprang the modern United States. The ghosts of American cowboys and Indians and civil war veterans, spectres of a guilt-ridden past that seems chained to the collective American consciousness, constantly interrupt the events of the present day. There are some people who think they are better off after the collapse, people who have built a new society, started over, feel happy. Others, like Jeanette Winderhoek, miss the stability and civilized veneer of pre-collapse America. Both types of people, however, share a profound sense of loss, the idea that something about the United States has definitively ended. It's this vacuum that Marco and the rest of the Slick Six seek to fill with their plan to incite revolution; it's this vacuum to which the Aardvark refers in his fatalistic condemnation of Marco's victory.
And it is a victory, but it's not a very satisfying one for those personally involved. The Slick Six are not a ragtag bunch of criminals with hearts of gold, struggling against a great evil that has overtaken the United States. They are morally dubious at best, confidence tricksters and an assassin. Most of them don't even sign on to Marco's plot out of a sense of civic or patriotic duty; no, they sign up to take down the Aardvark so they can live the rest of their lives free from the threat of his vengeance. Marco himself is haunted by his past, by his own unlikely abilities that have allowed him to survive so long. Marco is more than a man; he's a myth, a legend whispered on the tongues of those who grabbed onto the pulley of America's collapse and rode its descent to the top. The Aardvark, once a client of Marco's, respects his deadliness enough to dispatch after him a nameless assassin who, upon confronting Marco, confesses to a healthy amount of awe for Marco's prowess.
These living, postmodern, post-collapse myths carry over to the rest of the narrative as well. The New Sioux, the Americoids, the Circus of Industrial Destruction, are all kinds of legends set against the backdrop of a failed United States. It is a smörgåsbord of post-apocalyptic enclaves, a choice of presentation that feels very realistic, which is in stark contrast to the more unrealistic aspects of the book.
Indeed, Slattery lathers on the lyrical prose that often accompanies magical realism. It is somewhat reminiscent of Salman Rushdie or Haruki Murakami: in the sense of the former, Liberation is almost a post-colonial ballad for America, the catharsis that the American Revolution never quite brought; of the latter, Slattery captures the tone of a book that has comfortably broken down the barriers between genres. If one wants to get pedantic, Liberation is certainly fantasy, in the sense that the living converse with the dead and some people have preternatural aptitude for killing. But it's fantasy in the sense that the entire story itself is a fable, beginning and ending with Marco and surveying the state of American society in between. When I said Liberation is a meditation by Slattery, I am not exaggerating; that lyrical prose is often too dense, too thoughtful, too much. It contributes to the confounding state sustained by his stream-of-consciousness style, and that is going to turn a lot of people away from this book. Which is a shame, really, because if one gets past this initial resistance, Liberation is completely worthwhile.
The first time Liberation seized me and wouldn't let go is when Slattery began describing the new slave trade. It is depressing even to entertain the notion that we could so quickly slide back into such a violation of human rights and dignity. Not only has slavery been reestablished, but thanks in part to help from the Aardvark, it is flourishing:
The above quotation is a good example of how Slattery can get carried away with his description, but it also demonstrates why this new slave trade is so sinister. This is not a foreign power that has occupied the United States and enslaved its citizens. Two members of the Slick Six sell themselves into slavery because they are starving. And the slaves are used as disposable labourers meant to be used up and tossed away. It is a harsh, depressing melody that Slattery has composed.
I keep on emphasizing how much I agree with this book's depiction of America's collapse, how much I like the use of history as the ultimate cause. But I do not want to be the haughty Canadian condemning the United States for its mistakes (Canada has made plenty of its own mistakes, believe you me). No big surprise: this book is not all lollipops and rainbows. It is in some ways an indictment of America's past, but because of the way in which Slattery manipulates past, present, and future, that is not all Liberation is. Rather, it is a look at life after the collapse that takes into account the effects of history on our consciousness, our culture, our way of thinking about how we live. The communities and lifestyles that Slattery depicts find their origin somewhere in America's past, whether it is the American Revolution, the Civil War, or the turn of the twentieth century. Because when the future fails you, where else can you turn but the past?
I find this very fascinating, because history and nostalgia are only now beginning to have any meaning for me. I am finally of an age where I can begin to appreciate the significance of events contemporary to my life. I cannot predict—no one can predict—how such events, like the September 11th attacks, will be judged by future generations. But I am old enough now to start glimpsing how these events influence the present day. As individuals, we are very much products of our generation, of the society that raises us and educates us. Slattery extends this to American society in general, proposing that it is a product of its own history.
As a novel Liberation is far from perfect. The structure is sloppy, almost non-existent; the villain is lacklustre; the plot is mostly a framework for Slattery's descriptions and ruminations, which make up most of the book. Yet it still managed to grab me and move me. This is what all fiction should aspire to do, and this is my golden standard of success. I cannot laud Liberation by calling it a masterpiece, or a tour-de-force, or any other of those terms often associated with technical brilliance. However, as I hope this review communicates to you, Liberation made me think and wonder about where we are today, as a society, and where we might be going in the future. That, to me, is an invaluable experience.
In Liberation: Being the Adventures of the Slick Six After the Collapse of the United States of America the past, present, and future collide against the landscape of an altered America. Brian Francis Slattery presents us with a meditation on the state of the American consciousnesses following a devastating economic collapse. The great machine of the American dream has sputtered and run down, and those who survived the tumultuous revolts in the first days now look back and wonder if it was ever a reality. Slattery captures this feeling perfectly in a passage early in the book:
The hippies knew it then…. They stopped, hey, what's that sound, and knew that the spiny skyscrapers reflected in the river, the chasms of concrete, the wide streets and sidewalks, the power lines cutting into the hills and mountains above missile silos, the highways drawing lines across the blank plains under enormous skies, the pupil of God's eye, would be the ruins that their grandchildren wandered among, the reminders that once there was always water in the faucet, there was electricity all the time, and America was prying off the shackles of its past. The vision opened up to them and winked out again, and those it blinded staggered through their lives unable to see anything else, while the rest of them wondered if they had only dreamed it.
The back cover of my edition describes Liberation as "a heist movie in the style of a hippie novel." I'm too young to have a solid grasp on what being a hippie truly means, but I think I understand what the summary is implying. With its stream-of-consciousness narrative style and a healthy dose of magical realism, Liberation is a very self-aware story that tries to live in the moment and ignore the linearity of its own plot. Scene transitions are nonexistent; past and present mix as flashbacks spill over into the contemporary narrative; death is merely another state of being, and not a very troublesome one at that. It's rather trippy, actually, in a hippie, "everything is connected," sort of way. And normally I don't like such books, because I find them too difficult to read for too little in return. In this case, however, I can make an exception, for this style is quite essential to Liberation's themes. While I was confused, especially at the beginning, I was entertained and moved enough to persevere until the end.
On the subject of this being "a heist movie," I will have to disagree. If you go into this expecting a gang-reunion one-last-job style of story, you're going to be disappointed—I was. I can understand why the back cover is going for this comparison, because Liberation does feature the reunion of the Slick Six, a band of awesome criminals, and their one last job against their most potent enemy, the Aardvark. Frankly though, it's not much of a heist, and its heist elements are incidental to the rest of the story.
The core of Liberation is the dual perspective that Slattery gives us on the collapse of the United States. The proximal cause of the collapse is the economy, or rather, a loss of faith in the economy. The dollar became worthless, people could no longer buy anything, and the United States government crumbled. The ultimate cause, however, is the full weight of America's history finally catching up to it, "history curling up on itself," as Maggot Boy Johnson puts it. In his final confrontation with Marco, the Aardvark says:
We're history's agents and its slaves. It has made us do its bidding, made us go around the wheel again and take the whole country with us. But now it has no more use for us. Kill me. Then kill yourself. Then it's done, we go into a book somewhere, and everyone else can go on living their lives.
Liberation is predicated upon this cyclical view of history. From the resurrection of the slave trade to the marauding of the New Sioux, everything seems to have its origins in the late 19th-century crucible from which sprang the modern United States. The ghosts of American cowboys and Indians and civil war veterans, spectres of a guilt-ridden past that seems chained to the collective American consciousness, constantly interrupt the events of the present day. There are some people who think they are better off after the collapse, people who have built a new society, started over, feel happy. Others, like Jeanette Winderhoek, miss the stability and civilized veneer of pre-collapse America. Both types of people, however, share a profound sense of loss, the idea that something about the United States has definitively ended. It's this vacuum that Marco and the rest of the Slick Six seek to fill with their plan to incite revolution; it's this vacuum to which the Aardvark refers in his fatalistic condemnation of Marco's victory.
And it is a victory, but it's not a very satisfying one for those personally involved. The Slick Six are not a ragtag bunch of criminals with hearts of gold, struggling against a great evil that has overtaken the United States. They are morally dubious at best, confidence tricksters and an assassin. Most of them don't even sign on to Marco's plot out of a sense of civic or patriotic duty; no, they sign up to take down the Aardvark so they can live the rest of their lives free from the threat of his vengeance. Marco himself is haunted by his past, by his own unlikely abilities that have allowed him to survive so long. Marco is more than a man; he's a myth, a legend whispered on the tongues of those who grabbed onto the pulley of America's collapse and rode its descent to the top. The Aardvark, once a client of Marco's, respects his deadliness enough to dispatch after him a nameless assassin who, upon confronting Marco, confesses to a healthy amount of awe for Marco's prowess.
These living, postmodern, post-collapse myths carry over to the rest of the narrative as well. The New Sioux, the Americoids, the Circus of Industrial Destruction, are all kinds of legends set against the backdrop of a failed United States. It is a smörgåsbord of post-apocalyptic enclaves, a choice of presentation that feels very realistic, which is in stark contrast to the more unrealistic aspects of the book.
Indeed, Slattery lathers on the lyrical prose that often accompanies magical realism. It is somewhat reminiscent of Salman Rushdie or Haruki Murakami: in the sense of the former, Liberation is almost a post-colonial ballad for America, the catharsis that the American Revolution never quite brought; of the latter, Slattery captures the tone of a book that has comfortably broken down the barriers between genres. If one wants to get pedantic, Liberation is certainly fantasy, in the sense that the living converse with the dead and some people have preternatural aptitude for killing. But it's fantasy in the sense that the entire story itself is a fable, beginning and ending with Marco and surveying the state of American society in between. When I said Liberation is a meditation by Slattery, I am not exaggerating; that lyrical prose is often too dense, too thoughtful, too much. It contributes to the confounding state sustained by his stream-of-consciousness style, and that is going to turn a lot of people away from this book. Which is a shame, really, because if one gets past this initial resistance, Liberation is completely worthwhile.
The first time Liberation seized me and wouldn't let go is when Slattery began describing the new slave trade. It is depressing even to entertain the notion that we could so quickly slide back into such a violation of human rights and dignity. Not only has slavery been reestablished, but thanks in part to help from the Aardvark, it is flourishing:
Our peculiar institution is everywhere now. The slave markets are social events, with electricity, strings of Christmas lights, girls dressed in a hundred and five colors; bands made of junting guitars, spitting horns, skittering drums; carts with yellow umbrellas selling curried mutton and green beans, tamales with chiles; horses clapping their hooves against the ground, sweating in the heat while clowns on stilts with pump accordions let a flock of balloons escape into the sky. Jeannette Winderhoek is appalled. They should have gone through the proper procedures. They should have had the debates, covered the contingencies, resettled the uninhabited territory between individual and property rights. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of legal questions scream to be answered, and they'll keep screaming for Jeannette Winderhoek until she strangles the law inside her and burns the corpse.
The above quotation is a good example of how Slattery can get carried away with his description, but it also demonstrates why this new slave trade is so sinister. This is not a foreign power that has occupied the United States and enslaved its citizens. Two members of the Slick Six sell themselves into slavery because they are starving. And the slaves are used as disposable labourers meant to be used up and tossed away. It is a harsh, depressing melody that Slattery has composed.
I keep on emphasizing how much I agree with this book's depiction of America's collapse, how much I like the use of history as the ultimate cause. But I do not want to be the haughty Canadian condemning the United States for its mistakes (Canada has made plenty of its own mistakes, believe you me). No big surprise: this book is not all lollipops and rainbows. It is in some ways an indictment of America's past, but because of the way in which Slattery manipulates past, present, and future, that is not all Liberation is. Rather, it is a look at life after the collapse that takes into account the effects of history on our consciousness, our culture, our way of thinking about how we live. The communities and lifestyles that Slattery depicts find their origin somewhere in America's past, whether it is the American Revolution, the Civil War, or the turn of the twentieth century. Because when the future fails you, where else can you turn but the past?
I find this very fascinating, because history and nostalgia are only now beginning to have any meaning for me. I am finally of an age where I can begin to appreciate the significance of events contemporary to my life. I cannot predict—no one can predict—how such events, like the September 11th attacks, will be judged by future generations. But I am old enough now to start glimpsing how these events influence the present day. As individuals, we are very much products of our generation, of the society that raises us and educates us. Slattery extends this to American society in general, proposing that it is a product of its own history.
As a novel Liberation is far from perfect. The structure is sloppy, almost non-existent; the villain is lacklustre; the plot is mostly a framework for Slattery's descriptions and ruminations, which make up most of the book. Yet it still managed to grab me and move me. This is what all fiction should aspire to do, and this is my golden standard of success. I cannot laud Liberation by calling it a masterpiece, or a tour-de-force, or any other of those terms often associated with technical brilliance. However, as I hope this review communicates to you, Liberation made me think and wonder about where we are today, as a society, and where we might be going in the future. That, to me, is an invaluable experience.
November 22, 2008
This hippie Vonnegut Mad Max tale, reminded me of Tim Robbins writing about a Manhattan transformed like Romero's Pittsburgh in Land of the Dead, after an economic apocalypse much like the current crisis. The dollar dies. The government dissolves, and the action of the story takes place five years later, when the losers have lost their lives and the remaining are struggling to hold on to their own. Slattery's exposition is superb in a conversational manner, as if he's sitting the reader down and verbally telling them a history of the end days of America. The dialogue and action, the real meat of good fiction, fall a little short. His characters are often Ocean's Eleven cookies pushed through a hip sci-fi sensibility.
The Aardvark's tower, with its revolving spotlight, at different points in the book reminds me of Sauron's evil eye. That's how big of a nerd I am. I can't let go of the Tolkien. However, the Aardvark himself, a bit of a lame mystery like Doctor Claw, with his sexy Dutch lawyer chick always at hand. The Americoids, a traveling hippie troupe, like the Merry Pranksters doubly on acid, push this communal message of Slattery's a little too hard. It's as if Hunter S. Thompson's high water mark was just a dam that only broke the dollar did and flooded New York. Marco's origin in Bolivia shrouded in crime and slavery are especially vivid. The assassin, a lame ninja, is dispatched as abruptly as he deserved to be. Johanna, an east coast Patty Hearst type, champions a free state in, off all places, North Carolina. Texas, as desolate as ever, sweats grime and slavery. The African American reaction to this new post-apocalyptic development is dealt with briefly when Dayneesha watches a black man sold on an auction block. But aren't these the things that deserve more attention? Real slavery and real dire fanaticism? Slattery fails to get at the real human elements of this type of situation. The violence and the music and the imagery are all enthralling, but this type of story works best when it surprises us with brutal realities about how we'll act when every second our life lies in the balance. Slattery's America goes on bartering and trading and driving trucks only five years after society as we know has been flushed away. Okay. You eat it? We fry it.
Marco liberates everyone with a few well placed punches and bullets. Tyrone Fly, a minor character, shows some deep American magic when he beheads Myra Jong the slave master with the scythe from Kentucky, sprinkled with whiskey from the still of his dead brother. "You shall free them all." Here Slattery has created grace notes more interesting than his core melody. What makes the Slick Six any better than the Aardvark? Aren't all of these characters just opportunistic criminals who exploit weaknesses? I snickered at Slattery's Burning Man style freedom festival in the desert. Come on, man. Slavery is treated as a mortgage, something we buy into but can never buy out of again. The Vibe is corny. The Kansas scenes are like Cormac McCarthy. At this point in the book I really lost interest in what was going on in Asia. Cyclone Cal and his circus are crusty denizens of Thunderdome. Tyrone Fly turns out to be a sort of Tom Cullen savior, from The Stand, only he gets a personalized happy ending.
Slattery's style, conversational at times, quite fluid and lyrical throughout, saves this book. Hopefully he'll eschew some of the hippie nonsense for his next novel.
The Aardvark's tower, with its revolving spotlight, at different points in the book reminds me of Sauron's evil eye. That's how big of a nerd I am. I can't let go of the Tolkien. However, the Aardvark himself, a bit of a lame mystery like Doctor Claw, with his sexy Dutch lawyer chick always at hand. The Americoids, a traveling hippie troupe, like the Merry Pranksters doubly on acid, push this communal message of Slattery's a little too hard. It's as if Hunter S. Thompson's high water mark was just a dam that only broke the dollar did and flooded New York. Marco's origin in Bolivia shrouded in crime and slavery are especially vivid. The assassin, a lame ninja, is dispatched as abruptly as he deserved to be. Johanna, an east coast Patty Hearst type, champions a free state in, off all places, North Carolina. Texas, as desolate as ever, sweats grime and slavery. The African American reaction to this new post-apocalyptic development is dealt with briefly when Dayneesha watches a black man sold on an auction block. But aren't these the things that deserve more attention? Real slavery and real dire fanaticism? Slattery fails to get at the real human elements of this type of situation. The violence and the music and the imagery are all enthralling, but this type of story works best when it surprises us with brutal realities about how we'll act when every second our life lies in the balance. Slattery's America goes on bartering and trading and driving trucks only five years after society as we know has been flushed away. Okay. You eat it? We fry it.
Marco liberates everyone with a few well placed punches and bullets. Tyrone Fly, a minor character, shows some deep American magic when he beheads Myra Jong the slave master with the scythe from Kentucky, sprinkled with whiskey from the still of his dead brother. "You shall free them all." Here Slattery has created grace notes more interesting than his core melody. What makes the Slick Six any better than the Aardvark? Aren't all of these characters just opportunistic criminals who exploit weaknesses? I snickered at Slattery's Burning Man style freedom festival in the desert. Come on, man. Slavery is treated as a mortgage, something we buy into but can never buy out of again. The Vibe is corny. The Kansas scenes are like Cormac McCarthy. At this point in the book I really lost interest in what was going on in Asia. Cyclone Cal and his circus are crusty denizens of Thunderdome. Tyrone Fly turns out to be a sort of Tom Cullen savior, from The Stand, only he gets a personalized happy ending.
Slattery's style, conversational at times, quite fluid and lyrical throughout, saves this book. Hopefully he'll eschew some of the hippie nonsense for his next novel.
July 20, 2009
I don't remember where I read that this was one of the better science fiction books of last year. If that's truly the case, then I feel sorry for anyone who read the others. This was awful.
The story revolves around a group of high-end con-artist/thieves as they try to "get the band back together." This takes place in a future America that has been completely changed by the devaluation of the dollar. Apparently, the dollar is declared to have zero value. This results in the complete economic collapse of the U.S. (but not the rest of the world, somehow) and the return of slavery. That sounds interesting enough, until it's pointed out that all of this happened within five years. I know it's sci-fi, but that was too much for my suspension of disbelief.
The narrative style also has a sort of stream-of-consciousness feel to it that was rather distracting. Instead of breaks in the chapter, the author just seamlessly goes bouncing between different characters in different locations with little to no transition. And speaking of the characters, we were blessed with names like Felix Purple and Captain Dengue Saloon and many others I have thankfully forgotten.
There were many times during this book where I thought, "Maybe I just don't get it." Is it supposed to be a comedy? A satire? Is this Young Adult literature? I have no idea. And frankly, I don't care. This book was just plain dumb.
The story revolves around a group of high-end con-artist/thieves as they try to "get the band back together." This takes place in a future America that has been completely changed by the devaluation of the dollar. Apparently, the dollar is declared to have zero value. This results in the complete economic collapse of the U.S. (but not the rest of the world, somehow) and the return of slavery. That sounds interesting enough, until it's pointed out that all of this happened within five years. I know it's sci-fi, but that was too much for my suspension of disbelief.
The narrative style also has a sort of stream-of-consciousness feel to it that was rather distracting. Instead of breaks in the chapter, the author just seamlessly goes bouncing between different characters in different locations with little to no transition. And speaking of the characters, we were blessed with names like Felix Purple and Captain Dengue Saloon and many others I have thankfully forgotten.
There were many times during this book where I thought, "Maybe I just don't get it." Is it supposed to be a comedy? A satire? Is this Young Adult literature? I have no idea. And frankly, I don't care. This book was just plain dumb.
December 29, 2008
Note to authors: Please don't name drop real music acts in a fictional universe. It's annoying and pretentious. As much as R.L. Burnside is an amazing blues musician, I don't need to read about characters seeing his posters on the wall.
Anyhow, that gripe aside -- and it's a forgivable one at that -- my main problem with the book is his schizophrenic narrative style. On one hand I can appreciate his jumping back and forth between time-frames, but it's rarely smooth and with way too many characters to try and balance it; it just fails miserably.
I wanted to like the book on at least an entertainment level, but Christ it was just such a damn aggravating read.
Anyhow, that gripe aside -- and it's a forgivable one at that -- my main problem with the book is his schizophrenic narrative style. On one hand I can appreciate his jumping back and forth between time-frames, but it's rarely smooth and with way too many characters to try and balance it; it just fails miserably.
I wanted to like the book on at least an entertainment level, but Christ it was just such a damn aggravating read.
October 24, 2008
I unabashedly love this book!
Sure, it's about apocalypse (in this case socio-economic), and the story is spun around the reuniting of a group of master criminals, but at its core "Liberation" is about people, about the myth of America, and how normal people deal with calamity and find unexpected reserves of courage and goodness in the midst of it all.
Slattery, using the guise of an entity called the Vibe[edit], explores a splintered American landscape--horrors and private victories in equal measure--with dream-like prose and a gentle narrative arc. Unlike most dystopian stories, "Liberation" is suffused with hope...
Slattery's writing has a definite groove, a rhythm, it's beautiful to read, moreso out loud.
I recommend this book, and this author, to those who are looking for a jolt in their reading beyond clever plots and concepts, for something that strikes at the center of why we pick up books in the first place...
Sure, it's about apocalypse (in this case socio-economic), and the story is spun around the reuniting of a group of master criminals, but at its core "Liberation" is about people, about the myth of America, and how normal people deal with calamity and find unexpected reserves of courage and goodness in the midst of it all.
Slattery, using the guise of an entity called the Vibe[edit], explores a splintered American landscape--horrors and private victories in equal measure--with dream-like prose and a gentle narrative arc. Unlike most dystopian stories, "Liberation" is suffused with hope...
Slattery's writing has a definite groove, a rhythm, it's beautiful to read, moreso out loud.
I recommend this book, and this author, to those who are looking for a jolt in their reading beyond clever plots and concepts, for something that strikes at the center of why we pick up books in the first place...
December 16, 2008
Buh-buh-buh-bitchin'. A cracking good adventure story with beguilingly poetic prose. Slattery weaves an entrancing magpie future America out of the myth and ephemera of the one we live in, and inhabits it with a cast of characters that are drawn half from superhero comics and James Bond movies and half from heroic epic. Which half is which I'm not sure.
August 13, 2015
Yet again, I started reading a Slattery book only to glance up and realise that I was 100 pages in; yet again, I steamrolled through it in one week. In Liberation, he takes his stylistic traits and motifs from Spaceman Blues and amplifies them even more: lyrical, frenetic prose; a POV shifting seamlessly between past, present, and future; an even larger cast with sprawling, coincidental overlaps; strange locales; pulpy, comic book-esque action; music, food, and parties. This time, he even hops between characters/locations all over the world without pagebreaks, making for an even more stream-of-consciousness-esque read.
But where Spaceman Blues was pretty meandering, Liberation is anchored by a much stronger plot, three-act structure, and a heist setup ("let's get the old gang together"). It's set in the post-apocalyptic dregs of America after financial collapse -- which makes this book amazingly well-timed, considering it was published in 2008 and the recession/financial crisis got rolling in, what, 2007? 2008? What happens in Liberation, though, is that the worst has happened and then... life keeps going. People carve a new existence out of the ashes. And worst of all, slavery tiptoes its way back to the fore, and America lurches itself back into its own past. Cyclicity is one of the book's main themes, as everything loops back in on itself and American society returns to a sort of colonial, Western feel.
That's another thing I liked: in his debut novel, the past-present-future melding was a quirky stylistic touch. But here, it's a much more targeted look at America's past curling in on itself, overseen by probably the weirdest, most inexplicable, hippiest aspect of the book: 'the Vibe', which is, essentially, Fate guiding each character, granting them epiphanies and precognitive visions, etc. Part of the magical realism is the constant presence of America's ghosts, both literal and figurative; characters chat to ghosts who pop up to say hullo, dead ancestors try to wave to their descendants. The past literally comes out of the woodwork. I loved it.
And for being post-apocalyptic, the book is surprisingly cheerful and joyous. Don't get me wrong, post-collapse America is a messed up place (Cyclone Cal and the Circus of Industrial Destruction is fucking terrifying nightmare fuel), and certain sections -- dealing with loss, desperation and slavery, the angry ghosts of slaves, the retributive rage of the Native Americans, the planet trying to buck us off its back for all we've done to it -- honestly brought me close to tears. But there's happiness to be found between the cracks. A lot of characters make the point that they're actually happier now and that they prefer it this way. Nature makes a return, pollution goes away, people return to local craftsmanship, to sitting around the fire, to backyard farming and cooking, to a sense of community. They party and they love. Slattery's description of decaying America fromc oast-to-coast was really quite beautiful, and picturing New York after the fall is such an interesting thought exercise (helped in part by having seen I Am Legend, I guess); a lawyer ruminating on how she misses the crowded streets got me especially verklempt.
I suspect Liberation is hit-or-miss, though: either you'll love his lyrical, frenetic prose or you'll hate it, and I can't fault you if you do. It's not everyone's cup of tea; Slattery marinates in his description sometimes, which is good if you're loving his description, but less-so if you're hating the indulgence. And I see that some people hated his melding of location & past/present/future, when that's one of the exact facets that I adore -- and IMO, it's used to such great effect here, what with all time essentially being one. The future is the past.
And I just realised I haven't even gotten to the characters--! But I almost don't want to, because when I started reading, I didn't know anything about the cast and therefore got to meet them at the book's pace, slowly learning more about each of the Slick Six as they came skidding onto the stage. So I'm not going to say anything. Either you're sold on this by now, or you're not.
As usual, a couple of my favourite quotes below from the pages that I dog-eared. These aren't really spoilery, since hell, the collapse of the United States of America is in the very title:
But where Spaceman Blues was pretty meandering, Liberation is anchored by a much stronger plot, three-act structure, and a heist setup ("let's get the old gang together"). It's set in the post-apocalyptic dregs of America after financial collapse -- which makes this book amazingly well-timed, considering it was published in 2008 and the recession/financial crisis got rolling in, what, 2007? 2008? What happens in Liberation, though, is that the worst has happened and then... life keeps going. People carve a new existence out of the ashes. And worst of all, slavery tiptoes its way back to the fore, and America lurches itself back into its own past. Cyclicity is one of the book's main themes, as everything loops back in on itself and American society returns to a sort of colonial, Western feel.
That's another thing I liked: in his debut novel, the past-present-future melding was a quirky stylistic touch. But here, it's a much more targeted look at America's past curling in on itself, overseen by probably the weirdest, most inexplicable, hippiest aspect of the book: 'the Vibe', which is, essentially, Fate guiding each character, granting them epiphanies and precognitive visions, etc. Part of the magical realism is the constant presence of America's ghosts, both literal and figurative; characters chat to ghosts who pop up to say hullo, dead ancestors try to wave to their descendants. The past literally comes out of the woodwork. I loved it.
And for being post-apocalyptic, the book is surprisingly cheerful and joyous. Don't get me wrong, post-collapse America is a messed up place (Cyclone Cal and the Circus of Industrial Destruction is fucking terrifying nightmare fuel), and certain sections -- dealing with loss, desperation and slavery, the angry ghosts of slaves, the retributive rage of the Native Americans, the planet trying to buck us off its back for all we've done to it -- honestly brought me close to tears. But there's happiness to be found between the cracks. A lot of characters make the point that they're actually happier now and that they prefer it this way. Nature makes a return, pollution goes away, people return to local craftsmanship, to sitting around the fire, to backyard farming and cooking, to a sense of community. They party and they love. Slattery's description of decaying America fromc oast-to-coast was really quite beautiful, and picturing New York after the fall is such an interesting thought exercise (helped in part by having seen I Am Legend, I guess); a lawyer ruminating on how she misses the crowded streets got me especially verklempt.
I suspect Liberation is hit-or-miss, though: either you'll love his lyrical, frenetic prose or you'll hate it, and I can't fault you if you do. It's not everyone's cup of tea; Slattery marinates in his description sometimes, which is good if you're loving his description, but less-so if you're hating the indulgence. And I see that some people hated his melding of location & past/present/future, when that's one of the exact facets that I adore -- and IMO, it's used to such great effect here, what with all time essentially being one. The future is the past.
And I just realised I haven't even gotten to the characters--! But I almost don't want to, because when I started reading, I didn't know anything about the cast and therefore got to meet them at the book's pace, slowly learning more about each of the Slick Six as they came skidding onto the stage. So I'm not going to say anything. Either you're sold on this by now, or you're not.
As usual, a couple of my favourite quotes below from the pages that I dog-eared. These aren't really spoilery, since hell, the collapse of the United States of America is in the very title:
Nerve couldn't so much see the collapse as feel it in the roughening of the air, hear it in the car horns breeding car horns sliding together into a long, dense drone, and weaving through it, the roar of a stadium, of millions of people screaming and stomping their feet at once, everywhere, all around him. His phone rang. It was a business associate in Morocco; she had heard the news. What is it like? she asked, and he held his phone to the mouth of the city, broadcasting the sound of panic, so much like the sound of celebration.
---
And the ghosts of the South writhe in the ground, spit the dirt from their mouths to speak: No, doctor, you have it all wrong. We have been fighting for more than a hundred years, and we will keep fighting until our bones turn to earth, and the Earth falls into the sun.
---
The effects were at first euphoric, then nauseating. The Last True Chief laughed when the assassin vomited his chicken with garlic and milk onto the van's tires. For the next hour, the assassin had the deep and peaceful conviction that his stomach would crawl out of his throat and drag his liver with it, that he would die watching the two organs wrestle in the dust.
November 6, 2011
Ever since stumbling across this book's title on a year's best list compiled by Cory Doctorow I have been excited to read it. I mean, look at that title! Who wouldn't be intrigued by this? It sounds like exactly the rollicking yarn that I crave from my post-apocalyptic fiction. As such, when the time came to choose a few books for a long plane ride, this jumped to the top of the stack.
It did not disappoint. An exceptionally quick read written in a slapdash fashion that would work well for sitting around a campfire and swapping yarns, this was indeed a rollicking good yarn. Marco is one of the Slick Six, a gang of con artists, thieves and mercenaries who pulled off some of the most legendary crimes the world had ever seen in the fiddling days before America's final collapse. After being betrayed and imprisoned on a ship for several years, riding out the global collapse in relative comfort, he steers the ship back to New York to see what the old gang has been up to.
The America he returns to, though, bares little resemblance to the one he once rode roughshod over. Slavery has made a resurgence, with former city-dwellers willingly selling themselves into feudal serfdoms for the promise of a bit of food and a roof over their heads. The plains are ruled over by bands of roving Sioux, who have left their reservations and reclaimed their warrior heritage. Las Vegas has morphed into a solar-powered non-stop Burning Man. Ruling over all of them is Marco's former nemesis, the Aardvark, a classic villain who rules over his slave empire from a rooftop penthouse in midtown Manhattan.
Finally free after his years at see, Marco begins getting the old gang back to together for one last great score- taking down the Aardvark once and for all. What follows is a fast-paced cliche of a story, one that never pauses to take itself too seriously or to let the reader realize the sheer ridiculousness of what they're accepting at face value. While Slattery's post-fall America is a vivid depiction of one possible future, a well-rendered world that I would be interested in seeing described in deeper detail, the events that sweep up his characters (if such two-dimensional constructs can be called so) are on a "buying magic beans" level of unbelievable. I'm not exactly the most skeptical of readers, but this story pulled me up short. Still it was a wild ride of excitement and one I was glad I read.
It did not disappoint. An exceptionally quick read written in a slapdash fashion that would work well for sitting around a campfire and swapping yarns, this was indeed a rollicking good yarn. Marco is one of the Slick Six, a gang of con artists, thieves and mercenaries who pulled off some of the most legendary crimes the world had ever seen in the fiddling days before America's final collapse. After being betrayed and imprisoned on a ship for several years, riding out the global collapse in relative comfort, he steers the ship back to New York to see what the old gang has been up to.
The America he returns to, though, bares little resemblance to the one he once rode roughshod over. Slavery has made a resurgence, with former city-dwellers willingly selling themselves into feudal serfdoms for the promise of a bit of food and a roof over their heads. The plains are ruled over by bands of roving Sioux, who have left their reservations and reclaimed their warrior heritage. Las Vegas has morphed into a solar-powered non-stop Burning Man. Ruling over all of them is Marco's former nemesis, the Aardvark, a classic villain who rules over his slave empire from a rooftop penthouse in midtown Manhattan.
Finally free after his years at see, Marco begins getting the old gang back to together for one last great score- taking down the Aardvark once and for all. What follows is a fast-paced cliche of a story, one that never pauses to take itself too seriously or to let the reader realize the sheer ridiculousness of what they're accepting at face value. While Slattery's post-fall America is a vivid depiction of one possible future, a well-rendered world that I would be interested in seeing described in deeper detail, the events that sweep up his characters (if such two-dimensional constructs can be called so) are on a "buying magic beans" level of unbelievable. I'm not exactly the most skeptical of readers, but this story pulled me up short. Still it was a wild ride of excitement and one I was glad I read.
February 27, 2009
From pg. 51:
The building and all its books are still intact, she knows; the employees of the library madea spontaneous pact to defend it as soon as the police force stopped working, and now they just live in the building. They hauled beds into the offices and corners of the huge reading rooms, put plaid couches against the marble walls. An army of cats patrols the halls, has litters on the stairs. She imagines that some of the librarians are fulfilling a long cherished fantasy. It’s just them and the books now, the stamped serifs, the margins smudged with fingerprints. You can still go to the library, to the yards of windows casting long stripes of light acrosss the stone floor, the long tables, the wood paneling, the paintings on the walls. You can still go and read the books. Except for the large friearms taht the librarians carry, it’s like nothing happened, as if every noon, businessmen are still eating their lunches with the lions.
I admit that being a librarian that passage resonated quite a bit for me. The imagery is even further enhanced by the fact that I’ve visited and used the New York Public Library and I have even had lunch with the lions so to speak (though I think Bryant Park is a more ideal lunching spot). That is the thing about Liberation that despite its near-future setting and ripped-from-the-headlines economic disaster it manages to combine the familiar with the strange to create an eerie resonance (or perhaps disonance). It blends past and present together in a strange amalgamation to the point where one is frequently indistinguishable from the other.
Read on for more...
The building and all its books are still intact, she knows; the employees of the library madea spontaneous pact to defend it as soon as the police force stopped working, and now they just live in the building. They hauled beds into the offices and corners of the huge reading rooms, put plaid couches against the marble walls. An army of cats patrols the halls, has litters on the stairs. She imagines that some of the librarians are fulfilling a long cherished fantasy. It’s just them and the books now, the stamped serifs, the margins smudged with fingerprints. You can still go to the library, to the yards of windows casting long stripes of light acrosss the stone floor, the long tables, the wood paneling, the paintings on the walls. You can still go and read the books. Except for the large friearms taht the librarians carry, it’s like nothing happened, as if every noon, businessmen are still eating their lunches with the lions.
I admit that being a librarian that passage resonated quite a bit for me. The imagery is even further enhanced by the fact that I’ve visited and used the New York Public Library and I have even had lunch with the lions so to speak (though I think Bryant Park is a more ideal lunching spot). That is the thing about Liberation that despite its near-future setting and ripped-from-the-headlines economic disaster it manages to combine the familiar with the strange to create an eerie resonance (or perhaps disonance). It blends past and present together in a strange amalgamation to the point where one is frequently indistinguishable from the other.
Read on for more...
April 8, 2009
A little tough to read during "the greatest economic crisis" of our generation, i.e. - the bleakness felt way too close to home. Some interesting ideas here, just nothing all that NEW. Collapse meets Snow Crash with a dash of Burning Man. And when presented in a fuzzy, too-many-tangents stream of consciousness writing style it all adds up to... meh.
September 19, 2012
He has a weird, overly long style that seems to emphasize wordy weirdness over plot. I was tempted to give up in the first 10 pages and should have, but didn't. It got better early on, but then was much of the same.
July 4, 2020
While recognizing the intelligence and creativity author Brian Francis Slattery injects into his story, "Liberation," it was with great difficulty that I turned one page, continuing to another, during the week-and-a-half I spent with this book.
I almost wonder if the satirical, near-future tale Slattery tells isn't a little too clever for its own good. After three hundred pages, I couldn't have cared less about a single character, in a book populated with many. I suppose the main villain, the Aardvark, is the most interesting, though we don't get a lot of time with him.
Most of the narrative concerns a band of outlaws called the Slick Six (pointed out in the full version of the title, the obnoxiously pretentious "Liberation: Being the Adventures of the Slick Six After the Collapse of the United States of America"). There are amusing passages in this novel, but they don't come often enough to make "Liberation" anything close to an enjoyable read.
I almost wonder if the satirical, near-future tale Slattery tells isn't a little too clever for its own good. After three hundred pages, I couldn't have cared less about a single character, in a book populated with many. I suppose the main villain, the Aardvark, is the most interesting, though we don't get a lot of time with him.
Most of the narrative concerns a band of outlaws called the Slick Six (pointed out in the full version of the title, the obnoxiously pretentious "Liberation: Being the Adventures of the Slick Six After the Collapse of the United States of America"). There are amusing passages in this novel, but they don't come often enough to make "Liberation" anything close to an enjoyable read.
February 19, 2009
I really hope Slattery's late Bush-era vision isn't prescient. Beneath the frantic activity, funny names and prolix chapter headings, Liberation harbors deep sadness and considerable desperation - it's McCarthy's The Road with a clown mask on, both manic and frightening.
The scenario certainly seems all too plausible. The Apocalypse this time is economic. The American dollar collapses abruptly and drags down most of the world's economy with it. The rule of law is ended. In a few short years the formerly United States have fragmented. Millions of refugees flee its shores; millions more are unable even to make it that far. And - due largely to the efforts of a former crime boss ("former" only because without law, there are no criminals - right?) squatting in a ramshackle tower in Manhattan - human slavery is once more an open institution. Slattery lingers vividly (and, perhaps, overmuch) on scenes of post-apocalyptic devastation, from sea to formerly-shining sea.
And in opposition to this rising tide of anarchy? A tiny band of colorful rebels with superhuman abilities, a troupe known to the masses as the Slick Six. The Six are led by Marco, who starts out the novel incarcerated on a roving prison ship although this is apparently by his own choice, as he could escape pretty much any time he wants. The rest of the Six are scattered across the continent, but even the ones who are currently slaves seem to be just doing it for fun, hanging around a redwood-cutting slave camp in California only until they can spark a slave rebellion and rejoin the rest.
I hate to say it, but Liberation could probably have benefited from a little more realism. The Slick Six get out of their scrapes altogether too easily, it seems to me. They possess knowledge and powers well beyond those with which we mere humans must address our very real economic and social problems.
Sure, we don't have to deal (at least, not yet) with the collapse of the dollar and the resurgence of slavery, but we also don't have the so-called "Vibe" whispering in our ears whenever things are going south, nor can we teleport ourselves (or as good as) away from prisons or slavers the way the Dirty Half-Dozen appear to be able to. To have Slattery mix such things with an all-too-realistic scenario of economic collapse seems facile and, often, annoying; the ending smacks more than a little of deus ex machina.
*
It sounds as if I didn't like this book, but that's not strictly true. It's certainly vividly written, and it's received a lot of flattering publicity. In many ways, it's a rollicking good adventure. I just wanted to like it much more than I did.
The scenario certainly seems all too plausible. The Apocalypse this time is economic. The American dollar collapses abruptly and drags down most of the world's economy with it. The rule of law is ended. In a few short years the formerly United States have fragmented. Millions of refugees flee its shores; millions more are unable even to make it that far. And - due largely to the efforts of a former crime boss ("former" only because without law, there are no criminals - right?) squatting in a ramshackle tower in Manhattan - human slavery is once more an open institution. Slattery lingers vividly (and, perhaps, overmuch) on scenes of post-apocalyptic devastation, from sea to formerly-shining sea.
And in opposition to this rising tide of anarchy? A tiny band of colorful rebels with superhuman abilities, a troupe known to the masses as the Slick Six. The Six are led by Marco, who starts out the novel incarcerated on a roving prison ship although this is apparently by his own choice, as he could escape pretty much any time he wants. The rest of the Six are scattered across the continent, but even the ones who are currently slaves seem to be just doing it for fun, hanging around a redwood-cutting slave camp in California only until they can spark a slave rebellion and rejoin the rest.
I hate to say it, but Liberation could probably have benefited from a little more realism. The Slick Six get out of their scrapes altogether too easily, it seems to me. They possess knowledge and powers well beyond those with which we mere humans must address our very real economic and social problems.
Sure, we don't have to deal (at least, not yet) with the collapse of the dollar and the resurgence of slavery, but we also don't have the so-called "Vibe" whispering in our ears whenever things are going south, nor can we teleport ourselves (or as good as) away from prisons or slavers the way the Dirty Half-Dozen appear to be able to. To have Slattery mix such things with an all-too-realistic scenario of economic collapse seems facile and, often, annoying; the ending smacks more than a little of deus ex machina.
*
It sounds as if I didn't like this book, but that's not strictly true. It's certainly vividly written, and it's received a lot of flattering publicity. In many ways, it's a rollicking good adventure. I just wanted to like it much more than I did.
April 5, 2009
Slattery writes of an anarchic United States after the dollar has collapsed and the country has ripped itself apart. Slavery has returned as an organized venture (people on the verge of starving to death sell themselves into slavery, and slavers capture refugees from war torn areas), and the Slick Six, a gang of master criminals, has to figure out how to navigate the wasteland.
The characters and story throb with a wealth of detail: Slattery imagines a variety of social and societal structures emerging from the cataclysm, from a “free state” that forbids slavery, to a chaotic New York ruled by a mysterious corporate raider known as “The Aardvark.”
The most captivating ideas for me, by far, were the two spontaneous gatherings that emerged from the Central states. On one hand, you have the “Seven Days of Light,” a Burning-Man kind of party in the desert where people gather under strings of lights and rave for days. On the other hand, there’s a chaotic gathering of circus animals and performers, a whirling cyclone of death that rips through towns and destroys them, ravaging the people and murdering or eating them. It’s a reaver colony in the midwest. Slattery calls it the Carnival of Industrial Destruction.
It’s an enjoyable book laced through with chaos and violence as well as a little Utopianism. 4 stars out of 5
The characters and story throb with a wealth of detail: Slattery imagines a variety of social and societal structures emerging from the cataclysm, from a “free state” that forbids slavery, to a chaotic New York ruled by a mysterious corporate raider known as “The Aardvark.”
The most captivating ideas for me, by far, were the two spontaneous gatherings that emerged from the Central states. On one hand, you have the “Seven Days of Light,” a Burning-Man kind of party in the desert where people gather under strings of lights and rave for days. On the other hand, there’s a chaotic gathering of circus animals and performers, a whirling cyclone of death that rips through towns and destroys them, ravaging the people and murdering or eating them. It’s a reaver colony in the midwest. Slattery calls it the Carnival of Industrial Destruction.
It’s an enjoyable book laced through with chaos and violence as well as a little Utopianism. 4 stars out of 5
November 8, 2017
this book is pretty much awesome. it is kind of like oceans eleven teams up with wolverine. and then there is the economic collapse in the united states which leads to a state of bedlam.
the rest of the world ticks on. and this is one of the reasons i liked this book so much - because the rest of the world ticked on. generally, as i recall, dystopian or post-apocalyptic books set in the u.s. dont ever give a real clear picture of whats happening in the rest of the world and the reader just has to assume that the rest of the world is as bad or worse becuase, at least here, we are getting stories.
but that is just the last remnants of imperialism or control or whatever in writing. the rest of the world is doing pretty well in this book and we visit other places often. everything isnt destroyed and no one is rushing to help the united states.
it is an economic collapse - much like the one we should have had two years or so ago. and i hope we will still get one day. anyway. this book is great, and i want to share it with many other folks.
the rest of the world ticks on. and this is one of the reasons i liked this book so much - because the rest of the world ticked on. generally, as i recall, dystopian or post-apocalyptic books set in the u.s. dont ever give a real clear picture of whats happening in the rest of the world and the reader just has to assume that the rest of the world is as bad or worse becuase, at least here, we are getting stories.
but that is just the last remnants of imperialism or control or whatever in writing. the rest of the world is doing pretty well in this book and we visit other places often. everything isnt destroyed and no one is rushing to help the united states.
it is an economic collapse - much like the one we should have had two years or so ago. and i hope we will still get one day. anyway. this book is great, and i want to share it with many other folks.
August 21, 2014
The American economy collapses, a warlord rises to rule New York, and a group of ex-conman work to overthrow him. You could call it a hippie mash up of Oceans 11 in a post-apocalyptic world, but that's leaving out a lot. It has a unique prose that is both a joy and a chore to read.
A lot of cool ideas are tossed around in this book, but the story is hurt in the process. There are tangents and characters that are fun in themselves, but they do nothing to advance the overall plot.
My biggest gripe about this book is the ridiculous overuse of geographic references. Nearly every page contains something along the lines of "As they pull into the restaurant along the South Dakota board, a band is playing Swedish fiddle music in the background while Doctor San Diego eats imported mangoes from Burma." I don't know if this is supposed to be some kind of satire? I made kind of a game for myself to see how many sentences I could make it before encountering another geographic reference.
A lot of cool ideas are tossed around in this book, but the story is hurt in the process. There are tangents and characters that are fun in themselves, but they do nothing to advance the overall plot.
My biggest gripe about this book is the ridiculous overuse of geographic references. Nearly every page contains something along the lines of "As they pull into the restaurant along the South Dakota board, a band is playing Swedish fiddle music in the background while Doctor San Diego eats imported mangoes from Burma." I don't know if this is supposed to be some kind of satire? I made kind of a game for myself to see how many sentences I could make it before encountering another geographic reference.
Want to read
November 20, 2008saw this on boing boing
December 28, 2018
Sometimes reading this book felt like I had to be on some sort of drug. The prose has long series of images, ideas, possibilities, all flowing between the past, present, and future. It does not always seem to make sense, but it builds a world, the way people live in and experience that world. So it doesn't just tell you, it shows you the world Slattery's made in the US after financial collapse.
As a heist story, it's a slow moving one, so slow and rumbling and building, that even the main characters don't know what the heist will be for much of the book. It's just gathering speed and imagery of the former United States. And at the middle, pushing and pulling it all along are complex characters, tied together and pulling apart. There is "the Vibe" which works through people and raises questions of free will versus fate. But in the end, everything happens because of a wide web of choices, choices framed in and shaped by the past, by what choices people think they have, and what they can do, what they want to do.
As a heist story, it's a slow moving one, so slow and rumbling and building, that even the main characters don't know what the heist will be for much of the book. It's just gathering speed and imagery of the former United States. And at the middle, pushing and pulling it all along are complex characters, tied together and pulling apart. There is "the Vibe" which works through people and raises questions of free will versus fate. But in the end, everything happens because of a wide web of choices, choices framed in and shaped by the past, by what choices people think they have, and what they can do, what they want to do.
September 6, 2019
Took a punt on this given it's packaged to look like a young adult dystopian novel. But it's so much better than that. There's a bit of Pynchon here, a bit of Gibson, but that's also unfair - Slattery has his own style, sometimes his turns of phrase are breath-takingly good, and the epic structure, the jumps from character to character within each chapter, the time shifts interweaving the dead from the past into living plot events, all combine into something unique and quite special. A scout around the internet suggests this book didn't get the attention it deserved. I am really looking forward to reading more of Slattery's work.
December 19, 2022
You either love the writing style of this book, or hate it. For me it was interesting at first, but as time went on the author kept switching focus between forwarding the plot and giving lore to the world. It feels like the author was getting excited about world building and going into detail about the environment, and the plot was an afterthought. What I liked about the book was the characters and how they each dealt with the apocalypse in different ways. I thought it was cool that a group of invincible criminals were struggling in a world where the law is gone, since you would think they would thrive in that environment. Instead they are scattered across the country struggling to survive. It would have been more interesting if the author focused more on the plot and advancing the story instead of going into page long descriptions of the world, interrupting the story.
October 18, 2018
This book started off strong with a good setting and engaging character, and then it kind of whimpered to the end. The set up for the first adventures made up about 2/3rd of the book, and the final adventures was rushed in the remaining 1/4th.
November 12, 2015
Mind-bendingly fresh, unique, eerie, opinionated, macabre, and touching -- what a parable about slavery and revolution would be like if America withered under economic collapse, you threw in Ocean's 11, hints of the Odyssey, a serious love for music, and a whopping hit of acid.
I read about 70% of this book in one sitting and got so lost in it I felt like I needed to come up for air. Slattery's characters, references, and lexicon are memorable, unique, and entirely consistent with his freaky, psychedelic*, dream-fugue of a universe. As I do with all books like this, I OD'd and then had to wait for a few months and start over because I wanted so badly to do it all over again.
Language aside, what is most memorable about Liberation is its visceral depiction of desperation and resilience and its probing, relentless description of things falling apart piece by piece and then being built back up again.
Excerpts below:
"In the days after the collapse, when the lights blinked out and the alarms went off, and police cars slept on their sides in the street, there was blood on the walls of their towns, men with rifles walking from house to house, whistling come on, come on, we won't hurt you, while the brewer and his neighbors crouched in a ditch, water up to their shoulders, hands over their children's mouths. They watched small wars break out and die, a man killing his boss with a chisel for sleeping with his sister, two families sharpshooting at each other through the windows of their houses over the unsettled lay of a property line. Two women knifed to death in the pink booth of a family restaurant; nobody every knew why. A chain of exploding barns; machinery gutted and dismembered; the tension that law enforcement stifled, released at last, scraping across the country, peeling of years of progress. They slept in shifts, remembered to duck, taught their kids algebra, told each other to hang on. Now the wars are over and the apples are tart and sweet, the wells filled with clear water, and they shoot deer with arrows from the roof of their garage, hand the animals from their porches and invite fifteen people to share the meat. They throw parties in the winter that last for five days, hours of firewood and dancing, windows fogging with steam and smoke, a band doing their best James Brown with the accordion and guitar, motor parts, an old trombone, and everyone shouting about getting on up, clapping their hands on the two and four until the rain stops and dawn comes. They ride horses home, cars rigged to run on batteries; they walk long the quite, cracking highways with groggy children on their shoulders, tugging their hair, and thing, this is what they survived for."
"She walks to the brass telescope mounted on a table, angles it and gazes down the row of derelict office buildings on Madison Avenue, fastens onto the corner of the public library, the outside of which is being cleaned by volunteers. The building and all of its books are still intact, she knows; the employees of the library made a spontaneous pact to defend it as soon as the police force stopped working, and now they just live in the building. They hauled beds into the offices and corners of the huge reading rooms, put plaid couches against the marble walls. An army of cats patrols the halls, has litters on the stairs. She imagines that some of the librarians are fulfilling a long-cherished fantasy. It's just them and the books now, the stamped serifs, the margins smudged with fingerprints. You can still go to the library, to the yards of windows casting long stripes of light across the stone floor, the long tables, the wood paneling, the paintings on the walls. You can still go and read the books. Except for the large firearms that the librarians carry, it's like nothing happened, as if every noon, businessmen are still eating their lunches under the lions."
*in my memory this is the only time I've ever been compelled to use this word, let alone in a positive way
I read about 70% of this book in one sitting and got so lost in it I felt like I needed to come up for air. Slattery's characters, references, and lexicon are memorable, unique, and entirely consistent with his freaky, psychedelic*, dream-fugue of a universe. As I do with all books like this, I OD'd and then had to wait for a few months and start over because I wanted so badly to do it all over again.
Language aside, what is most memorable about Liberation is its visceral depiction of desperation and resilience and its probing, relentless description of things falling apart piece by piece and then being built back up again.
Excerpts below:
"In the days after the collapse, when the lights blinked out and the alarms went off, and police cars slept on their sides in the street, there was blood on the walls of their towns, men with rifles walking from house to house, whistling come on, come on, we won't hurt you, while the brewer and his neighbors crouched in a ditch, water up to their shoulders, hands over their children's mouths. They watched small wars break out and die, a man killing his boss with a chisel for sleeping with his sister, two families sharpshooting at each other through the windows of their houses over the unsettled lay of a property line. Two women knifed to death in the pink booth of a family restaurant; nobody every knew why. A chain of exploding barns; machinery gutted and dismembered; the tension that law enforcement stifled, released at last, scraping across the country, peeling of years of progress. They slept in shifts, remembered to duck, taught their kids algebra, told each other to hang on. Now the wars are over and the apples are tart and sweet, the wells filled with clear water, and they shoot deer with arrows from the roof of their garage, hand the animals from their porches and invite fifteen people to share the meat. They throw parties in the winter that last for five days, hours of firewood and dancing, windows fogging with steam and smoke, a band doing their best James Brown with the accordion and guitar, motor parts, an old trombone, and everyone shouting about getting on up, clapping their hands on the two and four until the rain stops and dawn comes. They ride horses home, cars rigged to run on batteries; they walk long the quite, cracking highways with groggy children on their shoulders, tugging their hair, and thing, this is what they survived for."
"She walks to the brass telescope mounted on a table, angles it and gazes down the row of derelict office buildings on Madison Avenue, fastens onto the corner of the public library, the outside of which is being cleaned by volunteers. The building and all of its books are still intact, she knows; the employees of the library made a spontaneous pact to defend it as soon as the police force stopped working, and now they just live in the building. They hauled beds into the offices and corners of the huge reading rooms, put plaid couches against the marble walls. An army of cats patrols the halls, has litters on the stairs. She imagines that some of the librarians are fulfilling a long-cherished fantasy. It's just them and the books now, the stamped serifs, the margins smudged with fingerprints. You can still go to the library, to the yards of windows casting long stripes of light across the stone floor, the long tables, the wood paneling, the paintings on the walls. You can still go and read the books. Except for the large firearms that the librarians carry, it's like nothing happened, as if every noon, businessmen are still eating their lunches under the lions."
*in my memory this is the only time I've ever been compelled to use this word, let alone in a positive way
June 22, 2012
I know what you're wondering. What would it have been like had Kurt Vonnegut and Thomas Pynchon wrote mashed up novelizations of Escape From New York and Ocean's 11? Wonder no more. Brian Francis Slattery has you covered.
Slattery's novel figures an elite crew of criminals trying to find their place in a lawless approximation of the American landscape following a catastrophic economic crash that renders the dollar worthless, the Federal Government powerless and an ad hoc economy that involves the free trade of human slaves. The criminals, The Slick Six, once staged daring heists around the world, thwarting the equally criminal advances of the mastermind known as The Aardvark, who in this improvised post-economy, finds himself in the administrative controls of New York City and just as lost as the Six are without a rigid system of law to rail against. Naturally, these two forces are destined to clash one last time in a most unexpected way.
Liberation, often glosses over character development, namedrops a catalog of musicians and genres that would make an indie record store employee feel substantially inadequate, imbues certain characters with a deliberately mystical quality that allows them to cheat death and deal it out in ridiculous measure and romanticizes social collapse in such a way that makes the end American culture sound like a gigantic orgy of sex, drugs and rock and roll. It's uneven and sometimes frustrating to such a degree that the novel feels like several short stories stitched together into a single disjointed narrative.
In spite of its sometimes glaring flaws, it is appropriately gonzo and chaotic bringing to mind the madcap adventure of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test in a single tear. Slattery has a mastery of language that's fun to read so that even when the gaping holes in the plot leap to the fore, the way he fails to explain his characters in full detail is at least fascinating to see written on the page.
There is plenty of dreary post-apocalypse fiction out there to read but it's a summary bummer to take in. The actual end of order and economy in the United States doesn't feel all that far off these days, so it's nice to read a work of pure fantasy that gives that potential reality a soft landing where pockets of disorder are mostly contained by a mutually inclusive civilization that returns to simple American folk tradition. Liberation is psychedelic to an authentic note and ultraviolent to a satisfying degree. At it's core, it's a heist novel but surrounding it are layers of nonsense and weirdness that are a lot of fun to read and not often found in other books.
Slattery's novel figures an elite crew of criminals trying to find their place in a lawless approximation of the American landscape following a catastrophic economic crash that renders the dollar worthless, the Federal Government powerless and an ad hoc economy that involves the free trade of human slaves. The criminals, The Slick Six, once staged daring heists around the world, thwarting the equally criminal advances of the mastermind known as The Aardvark, who in this improvised post-economy, finds himself in the administrative controls of New York City and just as lost as the Six are without a rigid system of law to rail against. Naturally, these two forces are destined to clash one last time in a most unexpected way.
Liberation, often glosses over character development, namedrops a catalog of musicians and genres that would make an indie record store employee feel substantially inadequate, imbues certain characters with a deliberately mystical quality that allows them to cheat death and deal it out in ridiculous measure and romanticizes social collapse in such a way that makes the end American culture sound like a gigantic orgy of sex, drugs and rock and roll. It's uneven and sometimes frustrating to such a degree that the novel feels like several short stories stitched together into a single disjointed narrative.
In spite of its sometimes glaring flaws, it is appropriately gonzo and chaotic bringing to mind the madcap adventure of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test in a single tear. Slattery has a mastery of language that's fun to read so that even when the gaping holes in the plot leap to the fore, the way he fails to explain his characters in full detail is at least fascinating to see written on the page.
There is plenty of dreary post-apocalypse fiction out there to read but it's a summary bummer to take in. The actual end of order and economy in the United States doesn't feel all that far off these days, so it's nice to read a work of pure fantasy that gives that potential reality a soft landing where pockets of disorder are mostly contained by a mutually inclusive civilization that returns to simple American folk tradition. Liberation is psychedelic to an authentic note and ultraviolent to a satisfying degree. At it's core, it's a heist novel but surrounding it are layers of nonsense and weirdness that are a lot of fun to read and not often found in other books.
March 6, 2011
"There are no more Monday mornings. This is what you get."
Liberation is a story of an America struggling to forget its past as it moves forward into an uncertain future. America's government and society have collapsed - not due to nuclear war, or supervirus pandemic, but under the weight of its crushing foreign debts. Given the state of current affairs in the world, this outcome doesn't seem all that far-fetched, and it helps ground the book and make it seem more immediate and disturbing.
As society and its laws have receded from the American continent, in its place is an every-man-for-himself mentality, with slavery making an unwelcome return. The story focuses on The Aardvark, a crime lord and slaveholder who becomes the most powerful man in post-society America, and the Slick Six, a group of criminals who set out to overthrow him.
And...that's pretty much it. Slattery's prose is very good, and he spends a lot of time world-building here. He likes to describe what happened to, say, Los Angeles, or Las Vegas, or Asheville, NC, but I almost felt like telling a story was a nuisance for him. The storytelling flow is frequently interrupted: we might have a few pages to tell us where Marco is going next, and then he'll go, "oh, but I didn't tell you about what happened to Denver, did I, so let's do that now," and four pages later, he finally gets around to saying what happened to Marco.
It's a neat premise, and I was impressed that he managed to destroy society in a fairly innovative, fresh way - one that seems plausible, even. But I just couldn't get into the book easily, and I wanted to like it more than I did. Very few of the characters are fleshed out or distinguishable from each other at all - I honestly had trouble keeping Carolyn, Jeanette, and Johanna separate from one another until almost the end of the book, even though they are all off doing different things the whole time. At only 300 pages, there's not much room for an intricate plot, but the plot in Liberation is as thin as they get. I liked Slattery's vision, but this book needed more meat on its bones to really be exceptional.
Liberation is a story of an America struggling to forget its past as it moves forward into an uncertain future. America's government and society have collapsed - not due to nuclear war, or supervirus pandemic, but under the weight of its crushing foreign debts. Given the state of current affairs in the world, this outcome doesn't seem all that far-fetched, and it helps ground the book and make it seem more immediate and disturbing.
As society and its laws have receded from the American continent, in its place is an every-man-for-himself mentality, with slavery making an unwelcome return. The story focuses on The Aardvark, a crime lord and slaveholder who becomes the most powerful man in post-society America, and the Slick Six, a group of criminals who set out to overthrow him.
And...that's pretty much it. Slattery's prose is very good, and he spends a lot of time world-building here. He likes to describe what happened to, say, Los Angeles, or Las Vegas, or Asheville, NC, but I almost felt like telling a story was a nuisance for him. The storytelling flow is frequently interrupted: we might have a few pages to tell us where Marco is going next, and then he'll go, "oh, but I didn't tell you about what happened to Denver, did I, so let's do that now," and four pages later, he finally gets around to saying what happened to Marco.
It's a neat premise, and I was impressed that he managed to destroy society in a fairly innovative, fresh way - one that seems plausible, even. But I just couldn't get into the book easily, and I wanted to like it more than I did. Very few of the characters are fleshed out or distinguishable from each other at all - I honestly had trouble keeping Carolyn, Jeanette, and Johanna separate from one another until almost the end of the book, even though they are all off doing different things the whole time. At only 300 pages, there's not much room for an intricate plot, but the plot in Liberation is as thin as they get. I liked Slattery's vision, but this book needed more meat on its bones to really be exceptional.
June 27, 2010
It's all but impossible to read a book about the collapse of the United States without looking out the window and wondering, what if? How would we manage? Where would we go, or would we stay right here? What would we be willing to do to survive? Has the relative ease of our current lives ruined us for survival in such a world? Just how bad would things get?
My suspicion is things would get pretty bad. We don't exactly have the most just society in the world, so if the old rules were to all of a sudden lose their teeth, if the prisoners were set free and the wardens were locked up, if money suddenly became nothing more than green-tinted pictures of dead presidents, then it's not hard to imagine that chaos would ensue as people scrambled to get their hands on what they needed to take care of their own.
Which is basically what happens in this book. When the country falls, it falls hard, landing flat on its back in a muddy bloody puddle of its own history, soaked to the bone with every act ever committed to make the nation what it is, or was, be it good, bad, or indifferent. "History folding in on itself" is a phrase that appears throughout. I think Slattery's biggest accomplishment here is that he makes that happen.
One of the cleverest things about this book is that it is told from the point of view of a gang of high-end criminals, the Slick Six mentioned in the title. They're experts at making a killing by playing the system off of itself. They're incredibly smart talented people who produce nothing, give nothing, offer nothing to the world; they simply use and take. So when society falls, so do the cracks in which they played their little games. The story essentially becomes criminal against criminal, hustler vs. hustler, with one side trying to liberate the hustled, to do right by the past. Every character is forced to take a look at who they were before the collapse and who they are now and try to make sense of how they got there. History folding in.
It's a fast read that manages to be both fun and thought-provoking. Pick it up. Dig it.
My suspicion is things would get pretty bad. We don't exactly have the most just society in the world, so if the old rules were to all of a sudden lose their teeth, if the prisoners were set free and the wardens were locked up, if money suddenly became nothing more than green-tinted pictures of dead presidents, then it's not hard to imagine that chaos would ensue as people scrambled to get their hands on what they needed to take care of their own.
Which is basically what happens in this book. When the country falls, it falls hard, landing flat on its back in a muddy bloody puddle of its own history, soaked to the bone with every act ever committed to make the nation what it is, or was, be it good, bad, or indifferent. "History folding in on itself" is a phrase that appears throughout. I think Slattery's biggest accomplishment here is that he makes that happen.
One of the cleverest things about this book is that it is told from the point of view of a gang of high-end criminals, the Slick Six mentioned in the title. They're experts at making a killing by playing the system off of itself. They're incredibly smart talented people who produce nothing, give nothing, offer nothing to the world; they simply use and take. So when society falls, so do the cracks in which they played their little games. The story essentially becomes criminal against criminal, hustler vs. hustler, with one side trying to liberate the hustled, to do right by the past. Every character is forced to take a look at who they were before the collapse and who they are now and try to make sense of how they got there. History folding in.
It's a fast read that manages to be both fun and thought-provoking. Pick it up. Dig it.
July 20, 2012
A Riveting Near Future Economic Dystopian United States Courtesy of Brian Francis Slattery
Some say that the world will end in fire; some say in ice. And there are some who contend that our downfall will be due to an alien invasion (H. G. Wells' "The War of the Worlds" or John Wyndham's "The Day of the Triffids" as among the most notable examples) or by a drastic change in our planet's rotation (Karen Thompson Walker's "The Age of Miracles"). But Brian Francis Slattery says it will end in the economic collapse of the United States; a collapse so suddenly swift and merciless, that it will leave the United States not only as financially destitute as any Third World country, but one in which slavery and starvation reign. In "Liberation: Being The Adventures of the Slick Six After the Collapse of the United States of America", Slattery offers his hallucinogenic Pynchonesque vision of an economic dystopian near future United States; a dark vision all the more plausible due to the current economic woes confronting the United States and the rest of the world. While his is a vision that has more in common with the magical realism of Jorge Luis Borges than with more realistic recent fiction by William Gibson ("Pattern Recognition", "Spook Country", "Zero History") and Bruce Sterling ("Distraction", "Zeitgeist") , it remains among the most credible and compelling dystopian fiction I have read recently, with far more realism than I have seen in the work of such highly touted authors as Ernest Cline ("Ready Player One"), Colson Whitehead ("Zone One") and Karen Thompson Walker, told in a Pynchonesque literary style that is far more compelling and memorable than any of theirs. Though I regard his literary debut "Spaceman Blues" as a substantially more satisfying work of literary dystopian science fiction, Slattery demonstrates again that he remains one of the most fascinating prose stylists not only in modern American science fiction, but in all of contemporary Anglo-American fiction, and certainly among the most memorable writers of his generation.
Some say that the world will end in fire; some say in ice. And there are some who contend that our downfall will be due to an alien invasion (H. G. Wells' "The War of the Worlds" or John Wyndham's "The Day of the Triffids" as among the most notable examples) or by a drastic change in our planet's rotation (Karen Thompson Walker's "The Age of Miracles"). But Brian Francis Slattery says it will end in the economic collapse of the United States; a collapse so suddenly swift and merciless, that it will leave the United States not only as financially destitute as any Third World country, but one in which slavery and starvation reign. In "Liberation: Being The Adventures of the Slick Six After the Collapse of the United States of America", Slattery offers his hallucinogenic Pynchonesque vision of an economic dystopian near future United States; a dark vision all the more plausible due to the current economic woes confronting the United States and the rest of the world. While his is a vision that has more in common with the magical realism of Jorge Luis Borges than with more realistic recent fiction by William Gibson ("Pattern Recognition", "Spook Country", "Zero History") and Bruce Sterling ("Distraction", "Zeitgeist") , it remains among the most credible and compelling dystopian fiction I have read recently, with far more realism than I have seen in the work of such highly touted authors as Ernest Cline ("Ready Player One"), Colson Whitehead ("Zone One") and Karen Thompson Walker, told in a Pynchonesque literary style that is far more compelling and memorable than any of theirs. Though I regard his literary debut "Spaceman Blues" as a substantially more satisfying work of literary dystopian science fiction, Slattery demonstrates again that he remains one of the most fascinating prose stylists not only in modern American science fiction, but in all of contemporary Anglo-American fiction, and certainly among the most memorable writers of his generation.
December 4, 2009
This is a wonderful book that needs to be read by lots more people.
Brian Francis Slattery turns what could have been a run-of-the-mill post-apocalyptic adventure into a great and varied tapestry of events that never loses contact with the ground. The stories are plausible, the mythology tight, and the characters as wide-ranging as the United States itself.
The story starts five years after an apocalyptic meltdown of the US financial system. Brian Slattery has a day job as an economist, so his accounts of the causes and effects of the collapse are chillingly realistic (and oddly prescient since he wrote this before the various crises of the past two years hit). The fact that the story he tells didn't unfold in real life is no comfort, because one always has the impression that it very well could have.
The story revolves around the Slick Six-- a disbanded band of outlaws for hire. The main protagonist, Marco, is an assassin haunted by his past-- not his past assassinations, but his abusive childhood. We follow Marco closely, but not exclusively, through his quest to reunite with his friends. What starts out as a personal mission takes on immense significance for the country as The Vibe (often referred to, but never explained) starts to influence the actions of the Six along with various people across the broken landscape to reach for something greater.
The Vibe deftly weaves those who are not aware if It as well as those who are-- from a caravan of hippies, to a revived Sioux Nation, to men grown immensely wealthy in the newly revived slave market. The characters are heroic and cowardly, lovable and despicable. This book is a brilliant, unvarnished expression of the American spirit. Very rewarding to read.
Brian Francis Slattery turns what could have been a run-of-the-mill post-apocalyptic adventure into a great and varied tapestry of events that never loses contact with the ground. The stories are plausible, the mythology tight, and the characters as wide-ranging as the United States itself.
The story starts five years after an apocalyptic meltdown of the US financial system. Brian Slattery has a day job as an economist, so his accounts of the causes and effects of the collapse are chillingly realistic (and oddly prescient since he wrote this before the various crises of the past two years hit). The fact that the story he tells didn't unfold in real life is no comfort, because one always has the impression that it very well could have.
The story revolves around the Slick Six-- a disbanded band of outlaws for hire. The main protagonist, Marco, is an assassin haunted by his past-- not his past assassinations, but his abusive childhood. We follow Marco closely, but not exclusively, through his quest to reunite with his friends. What starts out as a personal mission takes on immense significance for the country as The Vibe (often referred to, but never explained) starts to influence the actions of the Six along with various people across the broken landscape to reach for something greater.
The Vibe deftly weaves those who are not aware if It as well as those who are-- from a caravan of hippies, to a revived Sioux Nation, to men grown immensely wealthy in the newly revived slave market. The characters are heroic and cowardly, lovable and despicable. This book is a brilliant, unvarnished expression of the American spirit. Very rewarding to read.
September 30, 2010
This is a fun book, a page-turner, but also very thought-provoking about the end of the industrial and political United States.
Anyone who is thinking about possible ways things could go after industrial collapse would do well to read this. It doesn't provide a wholly realistic vision, but it provides a lot of little scenarios, different characters and communities that react to the collapse and survive (or don't) in various ways.
The big flaw of the story is the premise that the rest of the world does not collapse. This is highly unlikely, given how the global economy is so tightly coupled together. When the U.S. economy explodes, everyone else will be caught in the blast, unless steps are taken in the coming years before the collapse in which other major economies (the EU, China, etc) start to disconnect from the U.S. But this will be difficult and might even *cause* collapse.
So we have a fundamental lack of realism, but other than that there are lots of compelling little situations that are worth thinking about. Tiny farm collectives, hippy travellers, "free states", the return of slavery, warlords and revolutionaries, etc etc...
The writing is fluid and artful and full of poetic imagery, and the story careens along like an epic superhero comic book. It's fun and it's relevant. who could ask for much more?
Anyone who is thinking about possible ways things could go after industrial collapse would do well to read this. It doesn't provide a wholly realistic vision, but it provides a lot of little scenarios, different characters and communities that react to the collapse and survive (or don't) in various ways.
The big flaw of the story is the premise that the rest of the world does not collapse. This is highly unlikely, given how the global economy is so tightly coupled together. When the U.S. economy explodes, everyone else will be caught in the blast, unless steps are taken in the coming years before the collapse in which other major economies (the EU, China, etc) start to disconnect from the U.S. But this will be difficult and might even *cause* collapse.
So we have a fundamental lack of realism, but other than that there are lots of compelling little situations that are worth thinking about. Tiny farm collectives, hippy travellers, "free states", the return of slavery, warlords and revolutionaries, etc etc...
The writing is fluid and artful and full of poetic imagery, and the story careens along like an epic superhero comic book. It's fun and it's relevant. who could ask for much more?
March 13, 2009
I didn't know much about this book except it was recommended by boingboing. Let me be the first to say I find a bit of Cory Doctorow's taste to be quite different from my - I think I'm less of a fanboy. That said, this was one of the good ones. It was reading a book premised on the collapse of America (it's right there in the title) as we watch our economy collapse and can see the writing on the wall that our empire is at an end. And thank god. Liberation is in many ways a sobering look, humorous and then ultimately comforting in its past America way. It is a book that extols the virtues of being American and getting over the idea of America as some kind of a thing itself, a perfectable other that we mistake for what this country is - a collection of citizens and ideas. It's why I'm all for flag burning.
The book is occasionally too cute and all too brief but Slattery often has a way with language that is breathtaking and truly inventive. If you're looking for deep characters and much nuance look elsewhere, but if you're looking for a very good ride, this book comes recommended.
The book is occasionally too cute and all too brief but Slattery often has a way with language that is breathtaking and truly inventive. If you're looking for deep characters and much nuance look elsewhere, but if you're looking for a very good ride, this book comes recommended.
March 21, 2009
An imagining of the US after a complete spontaneous economic breakdown. The topic might be a little *too* relevant to the present time for some.
What does this bankrupt American wasteland look like? Starvation and violence has killed the majority of the population. A drug lord rules Manhattan. Slavery is back with a vengenance. But there are signs of hope--people are eeking out an existence, and perhaps the country could return to some level of normalcy, if only there were a group of six intrepid heroes to push the country back on track.
My main beef with the book is that it stretches my ability to suspend disbelief. The post-United-States American landscape is convincing only some of the time, and the abilities of the Slick Six are a little too competant to be believable. This may have been what Slattery was going for, but I just couldn't fully get down with it.
What does this bankrupt American wasteland look like? Starvation and violence has killed the majority of the population. A drug lord rules Manhattan. Slavery is back with a vengenance. But there are signs of hope--people are eeking out an existence, and perhaps the country could return to some level of normalcy, if only there were a group of six intrepid heroes to push the country back on track.
My main beef with the book is that it stretches my ability to suspend disbelief. The post-United-States American landscape is convincing only some of the time, and the abilities of the Slick Six are a little too competant to be believable. This may have been what Slattery was going for, but I just couldn't fully get down with it.
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