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.
