Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

This is an unusual novel.  It has a story arc, it has characters, it has character development.  It just doesn't have continuous stretches of prose.   The entire story is told in either dialog, or in quotations from real or invented historical accounts of Abraham Lincoln's life. It reads a bit like a play, as pointed out by another bookclub member, and apparently there is also an audio book version, which probably works particularly well for this book.  

There was an interesting split in the reactions to the book at our meeting:  the four Canadians liked the book well-enough, or were indifferent to it.  The two Americans thought it was a masterpiece.  Our retired medievalist had a great insight about the split:  the American Civil War is one of the defining events of American history, and a defining part of the American experience.  So a novel about Abraham Lincoln has far more resonance for Americans than it does for the rest of us.

What did I think?  I thought the novel was very well executed.  The characters were well-drawn, as were their tragedies and obsessions. Saunders was very skilled at drawing a story together from fragments -- by a quarter of the way through, I was immersed in the Bardo and Lincoln's life. And I'm embarrassed to admit that it didn't occur to me until after I was finished the novel that some of the 'historical' accounts had been invented for narrative purposes.  In other words, they were convincing.

However, not being an American, I found the novel a bit unsatisfying.  After I finished, I wasn't sure why the author had written it.  What was George Saunders trying to say?  I'll have to accept that his goal was to comment on the Civil War and its place in the American psyche, because the book didn't speak to me.

The Leopard by Guiseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

I found this a challenging book to read.  Not because it was unconventionally written, or had disturbing subject matter, or because it was poorly written.  Rather the contrary, actually.

It is the story of a Sicilian nobleman and his family, as they traverse a few crucial days and weeks of their lives in the 1860s and beyond.  It is a beautifully written and psychologically astute elegy for a lost way of life,  in a society and in a landscape that seemed like it could never change.

My problem with the book? Mostly that I am fundamentally not that interested in elegies to aristocracy.  Unlike the author, the actual last Prince of Lampedusa, I come from solid peasant stock on both sides of my family, and tend to look forward rather than back.

The End of Protest by Micah White

I didn't attend the Women's March that was held directly after Trump's inauguration.  I couldn't see the point.  Trump had just taken power, and there was no way that his plans would be changed by even a very large demonstration by those who hadn't voted for him.  He had won despite their hatred, so why should he care?   There was also no chance that public opinion would be changed.  The people who hated Trump would continue to hate Trump.  Those who supported him wouldn't change their opinion by seeing others mock him or publicly loathe him yet again.

Yet hundreds of thousands of people around the planet gathered to wear pussy hats, chant, and march together.  Was it a mistake?  Why did they gather?  What is protest for, anyway?

The End of Protest tries to answer the last question.  What is protest for?  What can protest accomplish?  And most crucially, what should protest look like?

The End of Protest is not the book I was expecting it to be.  Somehow, I thought that it was going to be a philosophical book making the argument that activists should be moving their energy from protest to electoral politics.  After all, there is certainly an argument to be made that in a democracy, protesting against decisions you don't like isn't as practical as participating in elections so that you can take power and be the one making the decisions yourself.

This isn't that book.  Instead The End of Protest examines the philosophy and history of protest, and then goes on to develop a theory of revolution that includes practical guidelines for protest intended to inspire activists to effective action.

White doesn't spend much time discussing his goals (which are along the lines of 'overthrowing captitalism'), instead choosing to focus on how to structure protest to achieve that goal.

 It's kind of a modern Rules for Radicals or Resource Manual for a Living Revolution:  in other words, on some level it's a kind of a handbook. Although unlike those books, White's instructions are not formulaic.  His thesis is that the authoritarian forces of power have a great ability to develop and widely and quickly share strategies to nullify (especially) radical and effective protest.   So activists have to constantly innovate rather than clone successful protest strategies from the past.

White's message is meant to be encouraging to radicals, by showing them a pathway to success.  But even White struggles -- one of the 4 quadrants of activists and protest that he outlines basically comes down to "and then a miracle happens".  That is, forces outside of rational control (gods, coincidences,  call it what you will) need to intervene in order for revolution to succeed.

Perhaps I'm too old and cynical for this book.  As White discusses the ways that authority uses the internet to influence and control social movements, the path forward for broadly effective revolutionary activism seems very narrow indeed.  Which is perhaps as well -- when you look at the movements that inspire him, like the Arab Spring, you have to wonder whether they were net positive developments, given the outcome in places like Egypt and Syria.