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AHMAD'S DISGUST WITH WESTERN CIVILIZATION MAPS NEATLY--NOT TOO NEATLY BUT MORE NEATLY THAN YOU'D EXPECT--ONTO THE CRITIQUE OF LATE 20TH CENTURY AMERICA THAT WE SAW IN THE RABBIT BOOKS: THE DISGUST WITH JUNK FOOD AND OBESITY AND POP CULTURE. And waste, the American waste. I find myself very disturbed lately by the fact that restaurants give you more than any sane person would want to eat, and food is packaged in bigger and bigger containers now so that you try to buy a mere quart of ginger ale and you have to buy a gallon of it that won't fit in the refrigerator. I'm very aware, almost for the first time in my life, of consumerism, being a dupe of consumerism.
In my old age, as my appetites lessen, I guess I'm more and more easily disgusted by the fact that we're living in this society committed to making us spend more than we have, or more than we should, for stuff we don't really need or want, and that furthermore is killing us slowly as well as filling all the landfills and making the birds sing less and so on.
THAT'S A RATHER BLEAK SENTIMENT. THIS NOVEL FEELS A LITTLE BLEAK TO ME TOO. Is it? I think novels always feel bleaker to the person that reads them than the person that writes them. I guess I do feel the decline of America, let's call it, and without being any less of an American myself, the piggishness of us all. Clearly, there's going to be a global crisis in the amount of petroleum in the world. There's only so much, and there are more people wanting it. No wonder the Third World is sore at us. We're spending the limited reserves of resources about as fast as we can. Our solution is to waste it all and then punt and see what we might do next. It's very easy to sort of look back and think that things were better then, that things were better, purer, more straightforward, honest, and there was a future.
BUT YOU DO FEEL THAT WAY? I THINK THAT'S GENUINELY HOW YOU FEEL. I don't buy into doom scenarios. I've lived through all that, living under the shadow of the A-bomb and the H-bomb, without getting discouraged or hopeless or frantic. It might just be a kind of mindless optimism, sort of more genetic than thought controlled. I do tend to trust this country to come up with the right answers eventually. And I tend to trust the people in government, even though I didn't vote for them. So in that way, I'm not a pessimist--I'm not a naysayer. On the other hand, when you look at the world as it evolves, you can't help but miss things.
THIS BOOK IS BEING PACKAGED AS A BIT MORE OF A THRILLER THAN YOUR OTHER BOOKS. It's not a way I've written often. But there is a kind of hearty pleasure in writing when something worse might happen than the woman stalking out and slamming the door. Somebody not going to bed with somebody. I've written so much circumscribed by the domestic reality and peacetime. I have very little experience--I haven't fought in any of the wars that I've been a passive witness to, and I haven't had much violence in my life--so there is a kind of a rush about actually trying to imagine violence and flesh it out, dramatize it. Because it does occur. You just avoid it as much as you can.