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A review by otterno11
Bloodbath Nation by Paul Auster
challenging
informative
reflective
fast-paced
3.25
In his slim book Bloodbath Nation, renowned novelist Paul Auster writes a blistering essay on gun control and the US obsession with firearms around a collection of stark images of the scenes of various American mass shootings courtesy of photographer Spencer Ostrander. These pictures, striking only in their normality, scenes of everyday American geography where tragedy occurred, serve as a disturbing reminder of Auster’s topic.
Wrestling with the ramifications of US gun culture, our fraught history of racism and genocide, and where our second amendment liberties clash with our desire for freedom from violence, Auster questions how we got here, discussing his family’s personal history with shootings, a history that so many citizens in our country share. While his arguments are strong and his prose affecting, I also feel that he doesn’t really break new ground here, either, and I’m not sure I learned anything new here. The Violence Project by academics Jillian Peterson and James Densley contains more concrete and informative thoughts on ending the epidemic of mass shootings in our society, I feel, but Bloodbath Nation serves as a persuasive editorial on the subject.
I discuss this and other recent books wrestling with the threat of gun violence and right wing terrorism at Harris' Tome Corner, Against Fascism Part Four: Stochastic Terrorism.
Wrestling with the ramifications of US gun culture, our fraught history of racism and genocide, and where our second amendment liberties clash with our desire for freedom from violence, Auster questions how we got here, discussing his family’s personal history with shootings, a history that so many citizens in our country share. While his arguments are strong and his prose affecting, I also feel that he doesn’t really break new ground here, either, and I’m not sure I learned anything new here. The Violence Project by academics Jillian Peterson and James Densley contains more concrete and informative thoughts on ending the epidemic of mass shootings in our society, I feel, but Bloodbath Nation serves as a persuasive editorial on the subject.
I discuss this and other recent books wrestling with the threat of gun violence and right wing terrorism at Harris' Tome Corner, Against Fascism Part Four: Stochastic Terrorism.