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A review by jdintr
Red Pill by Hari Kunzru
4.0
Upon finishing Red Pill, the first thing I did was ask Google, "What is an ideologue?"
The answer: "an adherent of an ideology, especially one who is uncompromising and dogmatic."
That's what the Red Pill is, then, isn't it? It is capital-i Idea. Dogma in all of its iterations. If the modern world is a browser with 100 tabs open, an infinite array of choices at all time, from 'what should I wear?' to 'what kind of food should I eat/cook?' What the modern world lacks--a sense of direction, myths to interweave random events--ideologues seek to create. Thus, the titular 'Red Pill' of Kunzru's book is the decision a modern person makes to constrain himself inside the tenets of dogma--seldom more than seven--that provide paradigm for a world that is utterly insane.
There was a time when most members of Western Civilization were ideologues: when people murdered and died for the "true faith," when small groups of sickly, inbred wastlings declared themselves 'kings' or 'nobility' and ruled over the healthy and the good. Eventually, protestant ideologues got sick of murdering catholic ideologues, they all got sick of Kings (but only after Nationalism had taken its pound of flesh), and we ended up where we are today, where "ideologues" see themselves as an enlightened minotiry, not the oppressive majority as they were as recently as the Cold War.
The nameless protagonist of Hari Kunzru's novel begins the book as a non-ideologue. He seems unable to care about anything going so far as to leave a wife--herself employeed as a human rights lawyer--and preschool-aged daughter behind in Brooklyn to take a fellowship with the Deuter Institute in Berlin (first clue: deutlich means 'clearly' or 'distinctly' in German). He just wants room to think and work on his next novel, but the staff at DI, located just outside the city on the Wannsee, have other ideas. He is mean to work collaboratively with other scholars: share a workspace, show up for meals, engage as the modern age would have us do in one if its innumerable unwritten rules. Our writer won't stand for that. One of the scholars is a buffoon. And it seems like the DI is keeping track of his time in the workshop.
This is where I really began to struggle with the plot. I am a father of 3, and it was hard enough for me to tear myself away from my kids for two weeks when my youngest was 12. I have been on international fellowships, and I had no problem conforming to the expectations, considering the travel, lodging or education I was given.
But the nameless scholar holes up in his room, eating takeout, musing on a German writer's suicide, and binge-watching a police procedural whose bad-cop antihero regularly quotes nihilistic philosophers as he is musing on his most recent accidental shooting of a bad guy.
The reader follows the writer down the rabbit hole into madness. The DI is surveiling its scholars, he believes. An extended interview with the maid--a target of the East German Stasi in her youth--augments those fears. Things are more than they seem, and Big Brother is watching.
His first trip into Berlin after two months at DI: he meets a refugee father and daughter outside a swanky party, while inside he meets the Steve Bannonesque showrunner of the police procedural he has been binging. Big Dumb Showrunner Man (BDSM) has a Big Dumb Idea: something about violence as atonement, as a high form of worship. It's an idea that sounds terrible, but it Just. Might. Work. And this idea--and a couple more appearances by BDSM--push the writer over the edge.
Kunzru has several different ideas in his sights, and I could never review all of them in just one review. The violence and post-apocalyptic obsession of recent decades are a definite focus, as well as 20th-century ideologies like Naziism and Communism. America's recent four-year experiment, in which it turned over the Executive Branch to ideologues, is also a clear inspiration.
Altogether, this is a challenging--at times confusing--book that is worth the read.
The answer: "an adherent of an ideology, especially one who is uncompromising and dogmatic."
That's what the Red Pill is, then, isn't it? It is capital-i Idea. Dogma in all of its iterations. If the modern world is a browser with 100 tabs open, an infinite array of choices at all time, from 'what should I wear?' to 'what kind of food should I eat/cook?' What the modern world lacks--a sense of direction, myths to interweave random events--ideologues seek to create. Thus, the titular 'Red Pill' of Kunzru's book is the decision a modern person makes to constrain himself inside the tenets of dogma--seldom more than seven--that provide paradigm for a world that is utterly insane.
There was a time when most members of Western Civilization were ideologues: when people murdered and died for the "true faith," when small groups of sickly, inbred wastlings declared themselves 'kings' or 'nobility' and ruled over the healthy and the good. Eventually, protestant ideologues got sick of murdering catholic ideologues, they all got sick of Kings (but only after Nationalism had taken its pound of flesh), and we ended up where we are today, where "ideologues" see themselves as an enlightened minotiry, not the oppressive majority as they were as recently as the Cold War.
The nameless protagonist of Hari Kunzru's novel begins the book as a non-ideologue. He seems unable to care about anything going so far as to leave a wife--herself employeed as a human rights lawyer--and preschool-aged daughter behind in Brooklyn to take a fellowship with the Deuter Institute in Berlin (first clue: deutlich means 'clearly' or 'distinctly' in German). He just wants room to think and work on his next novel, but the staff at DI, located just outside the city on the Wannsee, have other ideas. He is mean to work collaboratively with other scholars: share a workspace, show up for meals, engage as the modern age would have us do in one if its innumerable unwritten rules. Our writer won't stand for that. One of the scholars is a buffoon. And it seems like the DI is keeping track of his time in the workshop.
This is where I really began to struggle with the plot. I am a father of 3, and it was hard enough for me to tear myself away from my kids for two weeks when my youngest was 12. I have been on international fellowships, and I had no problem conforming to the expectations, considering the travel, lodging or education I was given.
But the nameless scholar holes up in his room, eating takeout, musing on a German writer's suicide, and binge-watching a police procedural whose bad-cop antihero regularly quotes nihilistic philosophers as he is musing on his most recent accidental shooting of a bad guy.
The reader follows the writer down the rabbit hole into madness. The DI is surveiling its scholars, he believes. An extended interview with the maid--a target of the East German Stasi in her youth--augments those fears. Things are more than they seem, and Big Brother is watching.
His first trip into Berlin after two months at DI: he meets a refugee father and daughter outside a swanky party, while inside he meets the Steve Bannonesque showrunner of the police procedural he has been binging. Big Dumb Showrunner Man (BDSM) has a Big Dumb Idea: something about violence as atonement, as a high form of worship. It's an idea that sounds terrible, but it Just. Might. Work. And this idea--and a couple more appearances by BDSM--push the writer over the edge.
Kunzru has several different ideas in his sights, and I could never review all of them in just one review. The violence and post-apocalyptic obsession of recent decades are a definite focus, as well as 20th-century ideologies like Naziism and Communism. America's recent four-year experiment, in which it turned over the Executive Branch to ideologues, is also a clear inspiration.
Altogether, this is a challenging--at times confusing--book that is worth the read.