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Feed/House of the Scorpion
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From: robinsmith59 at comcast.net <robinsmith59>
Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2003 12:36:59 -0600
In response to KT's query:
I've read both Feed and The House of the Scorpion, though it was several months ago and I'm scrambling to recollect.... I liked them both, a lot. Feed has the feel of a future classic, in the line of Brave New World, 1984, and others. It is such an utterly fun, and appalling, vision! What a work of the imagination -- the language, the descriptions of things such as city neighborhoods piled up on top of each other, vacationing on the moon, the frenetic craziness of it all. And yet, it doesn't seem so farfetched to me, an easy extrapolation from today's teen and consumer culture. Of the two novels, it seems to be for a bit older audience, and if I taught high school, I'd love to teach it with other dystopian novels.
My daughter is 18 and she read it while here on her Christmas break. It was one of the two or three books she chose when she finally had time to read books not assigned. (Another was Gregory Maguire's Wicked.) The one thing I remember wishing was that Feed had a stronger sense of dissidence, that Violet and her father were more rebellious; but it may well be one of the points of the novel that dissidence is not easy, or I just may not be remembering very well. I do plan to reread this.
I read House of the Scorpion in galleys, and found it totally involving. Where Feed is more of a portrait of a future time, I see House of the Scorpion as a good story about a quest for identity. Such a quest, finding who you are as an individual, is a tricky thing when you are a clone -- a copy of another being. Since I teach 7th and 8th grade, this is the one I'd be more likely to teach, though I already teach Nancy Farmer's The, Ear, the Eye, and the Arm back-to?ck with The Giver. It would actually fit with those novels as quests for identity in future worlds, though both of Farmer's books are quite big and could take over a fair portion of a semester.
The tone of the two books is different. Feed is more like A Clockwork Orange in its wild flights of imagination and some of the portrayals of the casual nastiness of the future. House of the Scorpion is a more reflective, slow-moving (in the good sense) read, developing the character as he learns who he is and what his world is like. In this one sense at least, it reminds me of A Wizard of Earthsea
(maybe partly because LeGuin is quoted on the back of the book).
I'm not the biggest fan of science fiction or fantasy, yet I loved both of these books. They are excellent novels in their own right -- not, I'm sure, without their flaws (such as the murkier chain of events toward the end of House) -- and would be excell ent to teach together in a course on Imaginary Worlds or Visions of the Future.
Dean Schneider Ensworth School Nashville, TN 37205 schneiderd at ensworth.com
Received on Fri 17 Jan 2003 12:36:59 PM CST
Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2003 12:36:59 -0600
In response to KT's query:
I've read both Feed and The House of the Scorpion, though it was several months ago and I'm scrambling to recollect.... I liked them both, a lot. Feed has the feel of a future classic, in the line of Brave New World, 1984, and others. It is such an utterly fun, and appalling, vision! What a work of the imagination -- the language, the descriptions of things such as city neighborhoods piled up on top of each other, vacationing on the moon, the frenetic craziness of it all. And yet, it doesn't seem so farfetched to me, an easy extrapolation from today's teen and consumer culture. Of the two novels, it seems to be for a bit older audience, and if I taught high school, I'd love to teach it with other dystopian novels.
My daughter is 18 and she read it while here on her Christmas break. It was one of the two or three books she chose when she finally had time to read books not assigned. (Another was Gregory Maguire's Wicked.) The one thing I remember wishing was that Feed had a stronger sense of dissidence, that Violet and her father were more rebellious; but it may well be one of the points of the novel that dissidence is not easy, or I just may not be remembering very well. I do plan to reread this.
I read House of the Scorpion in galleys, and found it totally involving. Where Feed is more of a portrait of a future time, I see House of the Scorpion as a good story about a quest for identity. Such a quest, finding who you are as an individual, is a tricky thing when you are a clone -- a copy of another being. Since I teach 7th and 8th grade, this is the one I'd be more likely to teach, though I already teach Nancy Farmer's The, Ear, the Eye, and the Arm back-to?ck with The Giver. It would actually fit with those novels as quests for identity in future worlds, though both of Farmer's books are quite big and could take over a fair portion of a semester.
The tone of the two books is different. Feed is more like A Clockwork Orange in its wild flights of imagination and some of the portrayals of the casual nastiness of the future. House of the Scorpion is a more reflective, slow-moving (in the good sense) read, developing the character as he learns who he is and what his world is like. In this one sense at least, it reminds me of A Wizard of Earthsea
(maybe partly because LeGuin is quoted on the back of the book).
I'm not the biggest fan of science fiction or fantasy, yet I loved both of these books. They are excellent novels in their own right -- not, I'm sure, without their flaws (such as the murkier chain of events toward the end of House) -- and would be excell ent to teach together in a course on Imaginary Worlds or Visions of the Future.
Dean Schneider Ensworth School Nashville, TN 37205 schneiderd at ensworth.com
Received on Fri 17 Jan 2003 12:36:59 PM CST
