Freedom (TM)

Freedom (TM), another high-tech thriller by Daniel Suarez, is the sequel to Daemon, which I read earlier this summer.  In Daemon, Matthew Sobol, a computer genius and video game designer, creates a program that goes into effect when triggered by his death.  The program (or daemon) manages to create nightmares of network security, kill a lot of people, pretty much bring down the infrastructure of society and take over the world.  It hacks the data of major corporations, banks and the government, manipulating people and institutions who must either do his bidding or...well, die. Sobol leaves video records that guide the investigation into his crimes.  At the end of Daemon, Sobol's motives are still not enitrely clear to the reader.  While he seems undoutedly sinister at the beginning of the book, by the end the reader is wondering if maybe he's not such a bad guy.  Does he have a larger plan for the world in mind?

In Freedom Sobol's motives are revealed.  Because the world has already been taken over by corrupt megacorporations who have bought government influence, Sobol's program is actually trying to do a good deed and win the world back for common humanity.  Unfortunately, the daemon does not shy away from violence, but uses it to his advantage, creating gruesome bloodbaths in a number of places. (According to my sources, this is a play on video game violence.)  In fact, the ending of Daemon was so ridiculously violent that I almost didn't read Freedom.  Well, I thought about not reading it, but you know how inquiring minds are.  They have to know and I had to know what Matt Sobol's grand plan actually was.

Some of Suarez's best writing is in the sections in which he fictionalizes technology.  A lot of the action actually occurs in a video game-like setting.  Sobol creates an alternate web called the "dark net" which has its own economy and is governed by the daemon's logic and by popular vote.  A character in the game (meaning any member of the dark net) can click on another character's icon and get all sorts of personal data, as well as a matrix of their connections to other characters.  Imagine someone being able to click on your head and having access to anything you've done on a computer ever -- and your email contacts and Facebook friends list. This easy access to information as well as the fact that almost everything is vidoe taped creates a kind of transparency that is weird, but interesting to imagine.

At times Suaraz's writing degenerates into the didactic.  I don't like it when a fiction writer tries to teach a lesson.  Of course, all good fiction writers do this, but the lesson should be so suble that the reader is unaware of being taught.  Suarez is at his worst when writing about farmers and their victimization by a megacorporation that is taking over their farmland, patenting seeds, planting only one crop and basically running them out of business.  One of the characters (a farmer's daughter) has to convince her father to join the dark net to fight this company. She teaches us about Monsanto's (not the name Suarez uses in the book) escapades in the Midwest in a thinly veiled lecture on the evils of industrial farming.  

By far the creepiest thing about this book is how true it is.  Reading it during the Gulf Oil Disaster, I was already wondering why BP seemed to be in charge of the clean up rather than the regulatory agencies of the government.  Then the stories of sex and drug parties for MMS employees came out.   And now the $10 million tax write off for BP.  And what about Ken Salazar's relationships to the oil industry? What about all those government subsidies to the oil industry ( depreciation tax write offs) and the hold that industry seems to have on congress?  Is does seem that people who speak up against them have paid a price.  The haunting question Freedom asks is this:  How true is Suarez's fiction?

Here is the first in a six-part interview with Suarez on "What the Tech?" in which he talks about the technology behind his fiction, how he wrote the book and marketed it.  Interestingly, he self-published the book before it was picked up by a mainstream publisher.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Jonathan Safran Foer says he lived in the brain of Oskar Schell for two and a half years to write this book.  Oskar Schell is the quirky, nine-year-old protagonist of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Foer's second novel.  Foer interweaves stories of personal trauma, family history and international tragedy to acheive insight into love, loss and the search for meaning.  One of the first post 9/11 novels published, the book has been widely acclaimed.

No one writes characters quite like Foer does.  Where most writers stop, Foer pushes a little further, delving deeper into the psyche of his subjects, adding details and description, thoughts and feelings that breathe life into his pages.  Oskar, for instance, is a precocious child, raised by progressive parents on the Upper East Side of New York City.  He  is mulitlingual, a pacifist,  a vegan and an amateur astrophysicist. Oskar is also lost in a sea of grief at his father's death. It is through Foer's portrayal of Oskar's remarkable intelligence that his pain becomes palpable for the reader.  Oskar's intense and questioning mind needs answers.  When he finds a key in his father's closet, his story takes on the dimensions of a quest as he searches to find the lock the key opens. And like most quests, it does't lead Oskar where he thinks it will.


Oskar's story is interwoven through parallel narratives with those of his grandparents, survivors of Nazi occupied Dresden.  Each narrative has a distinct style and vocabulary and each character has a personal story to tell.  The stories are tied together by a shared history and the impact of a single, horrible event on the course of a human life.


Foer also uses "postmodern" technique to take the book beyond the conventional format of a novel.  He includes photographs, handwritten notes, codes and script written over script to convey his messages. 

This is the first of three books I will read by Jonathan Safran Foer.  Next I'm reading Eating Animals which is a nonfiction book he wrote after he and his wife had a baby.  He wanted to know more about how to feed his child.  In it he explores not only the way our food is produced, but the culture of eating and our various attachments to food.  After that I'm reading Everything is Illuminated, which is supposed to be hilariously funny, but in a dark way.  I've already seen the movei and it was excellent. I love his writing and look forward to reading more of his work.