Day 816, Quasi-Quarantine: Meandering "Anthem" A Poignant Commentary With A Missing Point -- Which May Be The Point

"Perceived loss of standing had torn our country apart. The fear of losing ground to those beneath us ... Rather than elevate those they perceived as lower status to their own level. Deep down, it seemed, many Americans were convinced that a gain for others was a loss for themselves."

This apocalyptic novel delves into long essays at various points during the narrative, but Noah Hawley has painted a dark, vivid, oppressive picture in "Anthem" -- and one that is ripped from our incessant news cycles.

"In simpler times this would have been called irony, but your author would like to point out, dear reader, that the times in which he lives stopped being simple long ago. In the new times -- the Age of Tribal Thinking, the Age of Inverted Reality -- irony has been stripped of its humor.

"And irony without humor is violence."

"The internet, invented to 'democratize information,' has turned out, instead, to be a tool of self-affirmation. Whether you believe you're suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome or that 9/11 was an inside job, the World Wide Web exists to tell you you're right.

"You're always right."

Despite a problematic ending, Hawley has captured a disaffected generation as they come to terms with the lies and broken promises handed down to them by their parents and grandparents. A broken planet, rampant abuse of power, and a mind-numbing war on reality itself are the legacies transferred to contemporary teenagers, and the author finds fertile ground with which to work.

The through-line is a hive-mind group suicide phenomenon, which has rendered parents captors and families beating to the march of a perpetual egg timer.

"Suicide, you see, is an idea. And like any idea, it can spread from person to person to person. Anyone who has ever stood at a great height and felt the impulse to jump recognizes the draw. And what is adolescence if not a great height from which we are all expected to jump? A precipice of hormones and doubt, of alienation and longing. No longer a child. Not yet grown. Trapped in the pain of becoming.

"But what if you could make the pain stop?

"What if the answer was not to endure the transition and all its adjacent misery but to end it?"

While the occasional humor and -- for some of us -- joy-inducing Stephen King references soften some blows, the reading can be difficult and disturbing. 

"I am Randall Flagg, the Walking Dude, the Ageless Stranger, who can call beast and fowl alike to my defense, who haunts the dreams of mortal men. Randall Flagg, the Man in Black, Old Creeping Judas, the Grinning Man. Only an atom bomb can kill me."

"Anthem" falls short of what it purports to be, offering no answers, no encouragement, and no haven -- just a mirror held up to who we are and a hint at what lies along the smoldering path.

"'I figured it out,' he repeats. 'It's grief. The five stages of death, right? Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, but we're all trapped in the first two stages. The whole country, or maybe the Earth. We're in denial and we're pissed, because something we love is dead, except, for half the country, what they're grieving is the past they think they've lost, and the other half is mourning the progress they thought they'd made, but everyone feels the same way. Like someone they love has died.'"