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A review by pascalthehoff
Red Plenty by Francis Spufford
2.0
The entire premise of Red Plenty is that it's neither a novel nor a non-fiction book about Soviet history. This in-between approach, as interesting as it may be, makes the book feel imbalanced between long awkward narrative passages and (fewer) absolutely on-fire theoretical and historical parts.
After the sheer density of the theoretical/historical bits, it's a big ask to endure the slow, long-winded, often stilted prose. I want to learn more about Marxist theory in the context of 1950s Soviet real politics; not listen to a person who gets way too much into detail about what they do at work. The narrative chapters feel just as cold and calculated as the theoretical chapters. While that tonality fits the theoretical "half" of the book (if it only were a 50/50 balance), it makes the in-the-moment chapters feel too lifeless to get really engaged in them.
The are great moments every once in a while. Like a Black cultural ambassador in the US being baited into fervently defending the capitalist, racist system that hates and exploits him. The whole us(a) vs. them was so ingrained that nobody was willing to acknowledge the advantages of the other system – sometimes leading to absurd argumentations. A thing that prevails until today with poor people, for example, defending the free market and "personal responsibility" as god-given values.
Thematically, Red Plenty does a great job of conveying how the ideological cold war between capitalism and communism was more of a cultural war than an actual competition where the better system was allowed to prevail fair and square.
There are also some really poetic bits about the meaning of the Marxist idea, like the sentiment of a "consciously arranged society" being the "biggest endeavor in the history of civilization" while in capitalism "humans become more dead and objects more lively". Those parts that expand on these concepts are really great. But overall, Red Plenty can't really hold a candle to neither the great novels nor the great non-fiction books about its subject.
After the sheer density of the theoretical/historical bits, it's a big ask to endure the slow, long-winded, often stilted prose. I want to learn more about Marxist theory in the context of 1950s Soviet real politics; not listen to a person who gets way too much into detail about what they do at work. The narrative chapters feel just as cold and calculated as the theoretical chapters. While that tonality fits the theoretical "half" of the book (if it only were a 50/50 balance), it makes the in-the-moment chapters feel too lifeless to get really engaged in them.
The are great moments every once in a while. Like a Black cultural ambassador in the US being baited into fervently defending the capitalist, racist system that hates and exploits him. The whole us(a) vs. them was so ingrained that nobody was willing to acknowledge the advantages of the other system – sometimes leading to absurd argumentations. A thing that prevails until today with poor people, for example, defending the free market and "personal responsibility" as god-given values.
Thematically, Red Plenty does a great job of conveying how the ideological cold war between capitalism and communism was more of a cultural war than an actual competition where the better system was allowed to prevail fair and square.
There are also some really poetic bits about the meaning of the Marxist idea, like the sentiment of a "consciously arranged society" being the "biggest endeavor in the history of civilization" while in capitalism "humans become more dead and objects more lively". Those parts that expand on these concepts are really great. But overall, Red Plenty can't really hold a candle to neither the great novels nor the great non-fiction books about its subject.