Don't Feed Me

Spoiler alert: I read the first 150, then Evelyn-Wooded to the end. And there are some things I hope I never see. So, skip the next paragraph if you don’t want details.

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As someone who’s been to an actual farm, the graphic images of the futuristic ‘farm’ were especially off-putting. I give credit to Anderson, though, for creating a universe so realistic that it sickens. And in fact that may be his point – the farm, the lesions, the graphic nature of Violet’s debilitating illness– all depictions of a sickened and sickening society.
Also, Titus’ reaction to Violet’s wish list and descent is predictable behavior even now for a teen unused to coping with reality, hooked on fun and consumerism. Anderson gets all of this right – the self-centeredness, probably driven into hyperdrive by the consumer culture – and then makes us believe in Titus’ transition, his growth in the novel due to his innate ‘otherness’ and because of what he eventually learns during his disconnect from the feed and his interaction with Violet. Nicely done.


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I think we’re seeing quite a bit of what Anderson describes here. Sure, we’re a long way from visiting the moon and finding it boring, but we’re being sold to, daily, with or without the feed. From politics to pop-tarts, we’re bombarded with sales pitches and monitored for consumer behavior. Often, we’re pushed and prodded and shaped into wanting the things and people that make up consumer culture. We’re branded: Starbucks or Dunkin’ Donuts? Coke or Pepsi? What we buy becomes who we are – and if we’re not buying it, or buying into it, we become disconnected – ‘out of touch’ – from society. Jacking us into the feed – like Johnny Mnemonic – is a perfect way for advertisers and corporations to achieve direct sales perfection. But it comes at a cost.

This is not desirable, even now, to me. While I tend to enjoy reading and seeing dystopian visions of the future, the point of these stories is to scare us out of the complacency that would allow such futures. The fact that everyone from Philip K. Dick to Anderson to William Gibson to Jack Womack is pointing that our future is one that is corporate-owned should give people more than food for thought.

By the way: this book, with its language and young protagonist, reminded me of Womack’s brilliant Random Acts of Senseless Violence. Sure, I have to laugh because he turns my native Long Island into a toxic disaster area, home to mutants – but his descriptions of what happens when a family loses its economic footing in New York, the subsequent disintegration of the American government, and the corporate takeover that follows is eerily relevant these days. Feed fits nicely into this bleak picture.