Literatura americana. NOVELA

One of my most favorite Taylor Caldwell books. Mesmerizing. ( )

A surprizing book by a very mainstream novelist. America has been starkly divided between a group of plutocrats, and a largely disenfranchised majority. Our hero has to rally the forces of the populace to regain a useful form of democracy. But, it has not clung very well to my memory. ( )

A long time since read. Interesting that there are several other books written by others using this title as well as a film based on Morris West's book. Written in 1950s with a futuristic perspective of what American and world totalitarianism and socialism would look like and how it is overthrown. ( )

Really? You really think that, in 1952, the US was headed to a fascist state because of the New Deal? Really? Did you not starve in 1929-1939 like the rest of the US inhabitants?

Caldwell wrote this pseudo-distopian view of what happens to the US because of government help with things like food and jobs, and how the citizens gave up all their rights and became starving, mindless inhabitants of cities from the 1940's till the events of the novel, about 1968-1970. Her New York is a city where the roads are torn up because there is no one there (like the government) to fix them. Seems this government creates wars to keep people working on the war effort so that they are working too hard to protest their lot. Sounds a lot like the folks who have 2 hour daily commutes, in fact.

The timeline for the events of this book are the 1970's - boy, Caldwell must have been shocked when she saw people, young, vibrant, healthy people, taking to the streets in protest of so many things the government was doing. Like sending young men (but only the men of the poorer classes, as Caldwell does describe fittingly) to a war in which they had no choice.

Seems like the past 8 years have shown a US in which citizens have their rights torn from them by virtue of the Patriot Act and similar measures to keep the populace perpetually frightened. Guess we all caught up with that mess of lies, eh? And the farmers whom Caldwell describes as fat and independent have also lost much of their power with the advent of factory farms, too. Thank goodness that the idea of food miles" has entered the vocabulary.

Guess I'll continue to read it so that I can argue Caldwell and Ayn Rand with these authoritarian followers of modern John Galts and the (fictionalized) Minute Men. Yech! This book just leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth when I'm not laughing so hard at the naivete in Caldwell's penned book." ( )