Our next book is Death with Interruptions by Jose Saramago

Saramago's philosophical page-turner hinges on death taking a holiday. And, Saramago being Saramago, he turns what could be the stuff of late-night stoner debate into a lucid, playful and politically edgy novel of ideas. For reasons initially unclear, people stop dying. There's much debate and discussion on the link between death, resurrection and the church, and while the clandestine traffic of the terminally ill into bordering countries leads to government collusion with the criminal self-styled maphia, death falls in love with a terminally ill cellist. Saramago adds two satisfying cliffhangers—how far can he go with the concept, and will death succumb to human love? The package is profound, resonant and—bonus—entertaining.

We'll be meeting to discuss this book on May 13th at the Main Library in Conference Rm 3 at noon. Feel free to bring a lunch.

Some thoughts about Class

- On page 18, Fussell states, “Americans find Knowing Where You Stand harder than do most Europeans.” He thinks because America is (at least on paper) a classless society we are more conscious of which class we belong to, and often have anxiety about fitting into the class of our choice. Do you agreed with his analysis?

- Fussell also asserts that class is not about money, but far more about taste, knowledge, and perceptiveness (presumably about class signals). What are some of the implications of this?

- One of the meatier sections of the book concerns the educational system. The author quotes Paul Blumberg (p. 134) “ ‘The educational system has been effectively appropriated by the upper strata and transformed into an instrument which tends to reproduce the class structure and transit inequality.’ ” True or not true?

- Fussell defines ‘prole drift’ (p. 172) as “the tendency in advanced industrialized societies for everything inexorably to become proletarianized. Prole drift seems an inevitable attendant of mass production, mass selling, mass communication, and mass education, and some of its symptoms are best-seller lists, films that must appeal to virtually everyone (except the intelligent, sensitive, and subtle), shopping malls, and the lemming flight to the intellectual and cultural emptiness of the Sun Belt.” Is culture really going in that direction? Isn’t Fussell’s complaint that of every generation about the generation that comes after it? AND any thoughts about his characterization of the Sun Belt?

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We'll be meeting to discuss this book on April 8th at the Main Library in Conference Rm 3 at noon. Feel free to bring a lunch.