For years, Lionel Shriver has poked the ‘political-correctness-bear’. In her latest novel, Mania, she does more than poke it – she opens the cage and goes into battle.
Mania is set in a re-imagined present and future, where the Mental Parity Movement has taken hold. It’s a time of ‘intellectual egalitarianism’ – everyone is equally clever, and discrimination based on intelligence is ‘the last great civil rights fight’. As such, words such as ‘stupid’ and ‘dumb’ are illegal (children are expelled for saying the S-word and encouraged to report parents for using it).
“…it’s not like we don’t all know which kids are total pea-brains. The teachers are always calling on them, and no matter what they say it’s always, ‘Ooh, Jennifer, that’s so wise!’ And then when one of the thickos claims five times seven is sixty-two, our math teacher says, ‘Excellent! That’s one answer, and a very good answer. So would anyone else like to contribute a different answer?'”
Exams, tests and grades are all discarded; university courses are open to all; and actual ‘qualifications’ are a thing of the past. Smart phones are rebranded. Books, TV shows, and movies are censored or abolished (from Dostoevsky’s The Idiot and Jim Carrey’s Dumb & Dumber, to the board game Mastermind).
The Simpsons was damned twice over, for Homer the doofus and his bookish daughter, Lisa. Gilligan’s Island played on the now unacceptable opposition of The Professor versus the airhead first mate. The Road Runner Show relied on the same cognitive polarity, so even sly ground cuckoos and less than wily coyotes weren’t safe.
Those who are, ahem, ‘cognitively subpar’ are referred to as people with ‘alternative processing’ – anything else would be branded ‘cognitive discrimination’.
The story focuses on Pearson, her partner and three children, and Pearson’s life-long friend, Emory. Pearson and Emory find themselves on opposing sides of this new culture war. Emory, a radio personality, has built her career on riding the tide of popular thought, and much to Pearson’s shock, she continues to tow the line. Pearson, a university English teacher, believes the whole thing is ludicrous, and becomes increasingly vocal about it, to the point where she endangers her family, and risks her job.
Most readers have an opinion about Lionel Shriver. I don’t agree with all of her views but I do enjoy her knack for capturing the zeitgeist of middle-class Western society. Her novels are always uncomfortable moral thrillers.
There were sections of Mania that felt very much like Shriver having a rant (which she is entitled to do, it’s her book) and I wondered how she would progress the story. I needn’t have worried – a plot twist and the ending are clever, scathing, and entirely fitting.
Was the satire a shade heavy-handed in parts? Yes. But I also laughed at the small details (Shriver’s knack for naming characters is brilliant – for example, Pearson’s son is called Darwin).
So to the ‘uncomfortable truths’ (or rather, the bit that resonated for me) – it was Pearson’s complaints about the university system, where students are essentially ‘customers’ and ‘customers are always right’, that struck a chord.
Having spent many years studying at the tertiary level (undergraduate and post-grad), I fear this is now true of universities in Australia. There are second, third and fourth chances on assessments, options to repeat subjects (if you have the dollars), and remarkable flexibility in course structure. Some of this might be a good thing but at a certain point, the quality of graduates will come under the microscope (and when it does, Australia as a destination for international students will diminish, and with that the huge amount of money they bring will disappear – the money that keeps universities afloat…).
And there are more uncomfortable truths. Shriver’s veiled commentary on the US political and voting system; genetic selection; and censorship in the media makes her position clear – this stuff isn’t dystopian, it’s happening now.
Overall, this cautionary tale is not as terrifying as something like Atwood’s classic, The Handmaid’s Tale, but nevertheless feels dangerously close to reality.
3.5/5
I’d also put out beet and parsnip chips, though the plain old salt-and-vinegar potato kind were better.
I find it scarier than Handmaid’s Tale because I can see it happening in schools and universities here in the U.K. It’s bad enough in the arts but now medical degrees are also being simplified and that’s plain terrifying.
Without spoilers, there’s a scene in the book that relates exactly to what you are talking about and it is terrifying.
She”s such a keen observer, isn’t she. And incisive on relationships, small cruelties. Did you make your own chips? Mine are never thin enough or crispy enough.
Confession – I rarely make the dishes I post with book reviews (so no, didn’t make the chips!). I choose the recipes based on whatever food is mentioned in the book.
LOL Kate, I remembered where Shriver caused a stir here (at the 2012 Brisbane LitFest) but could not remember what it was about! Your review of this one (which sounds hilarious but relevant), prompted me to search Shriver online and so I found now what I could not find at the time: the full text of her speech. Reading it now after all these years, when (I think) most people have moved on a bit from hardline opposition to so-called cultural appropriation in fiction) makes it all the more interesting that at the time, reporting about the issue was always about the critic who walked out on Shriver’s speech and then attacked her PoV. If you weren’t at the festival, you couldn’t find out what Shriver had actually said.
I’ve just read an essay which has made me even more distrustful of the one-sidedness of our media. Often, I’m not ‘on a side’, but I want to know what both sides are.
PS It wasn’t 2012, it was 2016.
Luckily for us, Bill posted a summary of the whole debacle (I have looked back on it periodically over the years) – https://theaustralianlegend.wordpress.com/2016/09/16/the-shriver-kerfuffle/
Sounds interesting. I read We Need to Talk About Kevin and really liked it.
Kevin was the first of hers that I’d read and I went in knowing nothing about it or Shriver – needless to say it shook me to my core!
Definitely a very shocking book, that’s for sure.
I enjoy the fact that Shriver causes a stir, even if I don’t agree with what she says. We need more contrarians like her I think. I heard her speak at the Dalkey Book Festival about four years ago and she was so funny and dry and sharp that she won me over.
I have heard her speak a few times (for some reason, Australia was always on her tour list in the early days, and I saw her at some relatively small venues) but I agree, she is sharp and challenging and I’m okay with being challenged (doesn’t mean I have to agree!).
We’ve pondered reading a Shriver in book club. I think something of hers would certainly prompt a good discussion! I’m most keen to reread Kevin. The descriptions of her more recent novels have left a bad taste in my mouth.
We have done a few of her books for book group and there’s ALWAYS loads of debate.
I loved the phrasing and incisive descriptors she used in Something about Kevin. I hope this novel doesn’t disappoint. I am keen to read it and will check out the speech link.
I can already imagine the message you suggest she is sending playing out. What a world
I was motivated to read two or three of Shriver’s works after her dust-up here with Yassmin Abdel-Magied (8 years ago!) – and I think you may have seen her speak back then, at MWF.
I still disagree strongly with her views on appropriation, so I’m a bit disconcerted to find that I’m more with her than agin her on the subject of treating all answers as equal.
Thanks, sounds intriguing. I had not heard about it