okay, fuck it, today max reviews Eugene Onegin, and in a really inflammatory way at that. did anyone of my followers read it? no idea. will it be comprehensible to someone who didn’t? dunno. maybe not this time.
Onegin is a novel in verse that reads like a postmodernist text despite being written in, y’know, first half of the XIX century. there is some stuff that happens in it textually, which we will discuss below, but many will say that its main point is metatextual. it comments on classicism and romanticism, on pervasive usage of French in Russian literature of the time, and on a bunch of other stuff that was partially lost on me because it is very contextual to Pushkin’s social circle. I’ve been told that metatextual stuff is what makes it work, which — maybe? but I’m of the opinion that even — especially — if you’re trying to tell a metatextual story, you don’t get to ignore the text. the work of a postmodernist is twice as hard: you need to tell a good story on both levels.
I had a feeling while reading, which I don’t think a lot of people share, that Onegin is a story that actively does not want you to read it. its narrative is really erratic: it jumps from point to point, goes on long-winded sidetracks, and kinda refuses to let you engage with anything being told. did you become invested in the character and his story? good, now forget about the character, for the next couple pages we will talk about Pushkin’s appreciation for women’s feet. the tone is very playful, but it makes for a miserable reading experience, at least for me. maybe I just lack whimsy. (“but max, it makes a metatextual point! writing a book this way was scandalous, Pushkin is fighting against canons here!” — when you’re fighting against canons and the result is that your text is barely readable, the only message you get across is that the canons were right).
but, like, whatever. I’m a postmodernism enjoyer, I’ve read a bunch of barely readable stuff in my life. let’s talk about the text. textually, Onegin is a very dark story, although I’m not sure Pushkin would characterize it as one. for me, the story says that the world will fucking eat you.
there’re three primary characters in the text: Onegin, Lenski and Tattiana. at the end of the story, every one of them is broken in some way: Lenski is dead (duh), Onegin is heartbroken, without any friends or loved ones, without any prospects, rejected for the final time by Tattiana, and Tattiana suffers the most cruel fate of them all. throughout the text, Pushkin speaks with contempt about the world of high society, especially highlighted in Tattiana’s dream. when Tattiana is depressed after Onegin killed Lenski, she is basically forced into loveless marriage with some random general. when she is first introduced into the high society, it’s shown as empty and meaningless. then there’s an huge gap in time, and then she’s shown fully a part of this world, one highly esteemed in it. dead, broken, or consumed by the empty glimmer of society — the world will fucking eat you. you can’t remain a person. you’re doomed. Tattiana even highlights this in her speech to Onegin: “I was younger then, and better, if I judge aright”. under the exterior of playful language, Eugene Onegin is a dark, hopeless text.
it was pointed out to me that we with Pushkin might have some philosophical differences which might partially explain why my understanding of the text is darker than might have been intended: in another text, he writes: “there is no happiness on earth, but there’s peace and there’s freedom” (here the world “peace” is to be taken as “calm”, not as an antonym for war). if you judge Tattiana’s fate by that metric — well, she’s certainly peaceful, and she’s relatively free by the standards of the time. could you ask for more?
well, I could. I think Eugene Onegin is a dark and somewhat cruel text, I think its metatext doesn’t excuse its erraticness or pacing issues, and I don’t like it. I didn’t like it when I first had to read it for school, and now I read it again and am able to dislike it properly, while articulating my reasons.
Look having played this game after getting out of an especially vicious break up actually helped me a lot in an odd way. Sure a dating sim can be an easy way to distract oneself but it became a bit more than that I guess? It’s easy to remember and figure out, not too demanding but not like piss easy either
Idk the characters felt memorable, even the more disgusting ones (Looking at you eric, skeezy faux fancy sack of shit), and like all in all a pretty good game. Wish it were longer honestly, felt a bit short but that’s not even a rather large gripe if a gripe at all.
It had its funny moments definitely, it got a lot of my insecurities right on the head (fear of change and fear of intimacy) and in a strange way provided some catharsis? I won’t say it solved my issues, thats something i have to do on my own, but i walked away from the game feeling like it’d helped in some way
Might sound silly to say all of that about a dating sim of all things to some people but like this is a number one game to me. I know to some that might sound confusing but what makes a number one game to me isn’t graphics or some grand overarching story that makes game of thrones look like a children’s book but rather an experience that spoke to me emotionally.
Like what remains of edith finch was my number 1 for example, the masterful storytelling and the vivid imagination of edith made the world feel alive. the reason this game is a number one imo is that it just made me the slightest bit happier of being single yet feeling in control when it came to a relationship, it’s not the best game anyone will ever play but its a solid ass game to me
Synopsis: It's been eighteen months since the Raxter School for Girls was put under quarantine. Since the Tox hit and pulled Hetty's life out from under her.
It started slow. First the teachers died one by one. Then it began to infect the students, turning their bodies strange and foreign. Now, cut off from the rest of the world and left to fend for themselves on their island home, the girls don't dare wander outside the school's fence, where the Tox has made the woods wild and dangerous. They wait for the cure they were promised as the Tox seeps into everything.
But when Byatt goes missing, Hetty will do anything to find her, even if it means breaking quarantine and braving the horrors that lie beyond the fence. And when she does, Hetty learns that there's more to their story, to their life at Raxter, than she could have ever thought true.
Review: ! possible spoilers !
I honestly thought I would enjoy this much more than I did.
First of all, I didn't enjoy the writing style - I found it choppy, disjointed and perhaps even a bit dry. Perhaps it was supposed to offer a stream of consciousness kind of feel, but this wasn't it, chief. It was hard to understand the characters' thought process which made it hard to connect with them. They did some questionable things and I'm not sure why. Following that, I don't think first-person POV was the right choice. It left too many things unexplored and too many questions unanswered.
Although it wasn't a major part of the story, I didn't enjoy the romance. Maybe it was because I couldn't fully connect to the characters, but I honestly didn't see any reason for them to fancy each other. Perhaps a more in-depth take on their relationship would have offered an explanation. Since we didn't get that - I think the romance was unnecessary and in no way contributed to the plot.
I wished we got more information about the Tox, the involvement of the CDC and the Navy, the testing for a cure, etc - you know, the more medical side. Also the irises. I don't know if the information was there and it just went over my head, but I really wanted to know more about what they have to do with the plot. I also wanted to know more about Mona and what happened to her, as well as get to know more about the rest of the girls. They were all given names, and yet they came with very little personality.
What I did like were Byatt and her chapters. I found her a very interesting character and, again, I only wish we had gotten to know more about her. Her chapters were the only place where I enjoyed the disjointed writing. Her time in the hospital, and her interactions with Paretta and Teddy, are definitely my favourite thing about the story.
A lot of people seem to be disappointed by the ending. While I have nothing against an open ending, I feel like in this case there were too many things left unresolved. You can wrap things up nicely AND still have an open ending.
Overall, this simply wasn't what I expected. Nothing much actually happens and there is no resolution. There was too much telling and not enough showing. There was very little, if any, character development. I think Third-person POV would have definitely helped develop the story more and explore more interesting aspects of it.
disclaimer: as opposed to what I usually post, this is a review of a non-fiction book describing real-world atrocities and propaganda. this is a serious and very much political post. my review is not really graphic (as opposed to the source material), but still — beware. I’m also now aware that Chomsky was apparently besties with Epstein (although this still perplexes me: you’d think his ideology would prevent him from defending an elite fixer) and holds a variety of other problematic views. I do think that in this case it’s possible to separate the text from the author, but if you don’t — feel free to skip this post, or block me, or burn me in effigy. I don’t mind.
this is meant to be readable, however, to someone who did not read the book.
let’s do a little exercise in judging a book by its cover. here’s a photo of my copy:
notice something interesting? why is Herman the first author listed, but Chomsky is the one highlighted in red? that is because Herman wrote most of the book, but (allow me a bit of speculation here), Chomsky’s name is much more recognizable. this is a funny thing to do for a book about propaganda. hold that thought.
I think to properly review this book I need to give a bit of personal context. I grew up in a post-Soviet state, in a family of Soviet intelligentsia. my parents’ understanding of US was coming primarily from Radio Liberty, the only real alternative being Soviet propaganda. so, growing up, I internalized the view of US as a land of democracy and freedom — most certainly freedom of speech and press.
when I became older, I learned about US imperialism, the Vietnam war, and some of the awful things US did. I don’t think I’ve properly internalized it, however.
when October 2023 happened (I’m sorry for wording it in a vague way, I’m just trying to avoid summoning political bots), the behaviour of US media quickly started looking bizzare. not only the phrasing and framing were very much biased (we all know the kids/minors thing), but it consistently failed to report the most basic facts of the situation that were known by pretty much everyone and confirmed by major international organizations like Amnesty International or the UN. I knew about the book by this point, but I did not make the connection then.
I decided to read it on accident, when I stumbled into someone on the internet noting something like: “for the Chomskyites out there, technological progress makes manufacturing consent easier just like it makes easier manufacturing everything else”. something clicked. is Chomsky (I did not about Herman at this point) going to explain why this bizzare behaviour happens?
it turns out, the answer is “yes and no”. the book starts by proposing what authors call “the propaganda model”. it is a series of possible explanations for reporting that is biased towards elite interests, mostly (as is proper for a Marxist book) framing it in economic terms. it provides some evidence for these explanations, and in general I find these points reasonable. this section takes up approximately 10% of the book, and the concept later appears mostly in phrases like “this outcome is predicted by the propaganda model”.
the rest of the book is filled with case studies. authors dissect media coverage of various US imperial projects and one bizzare case where they apparently tried to frame USSR for an assassination attempt on the Pope. the first cases they consider concern countries of Central America, and they get incredibly graphic in their descriptions of violence. the rest of the book is much less graphic, although a lot of it still describes horrible war crimes.
the book is well-sourced and I verified some of the claims independently. in general, I find it easy to agree that they faithfully described the events. it is a bit harder to judge with their descriptions of media reaction: they’re prone to writing something like “nobody reported this fact” and then in a footnote “except this one time, which is just an exception”. they do offer some quantitative analysis, though, and overall I think that while specific details might be arguable, it is hard to argue that the effect they are describing does not exist.
it was also very sobering to read some of the quotes, because a lot of them are brazen in a way I did not expect major western media to be. here’s a quote from NBC reporting on Vietnam war: “The whole village had turned on the Americans, so the whole village was being destroyed”. this is, quite directly, admitting a war crime. the US media, it turns out, was quite open in admitting it killed civilians — but they framed it as a just thing. this is, frankly, bizzare. even dictatorial regimes are usually trying to convince the public that they’re only killing combatants. is it just a sign of the times? I guess I’ll need to find some Soviet press from the period to be sure.
I find really interesting one effect they describe in the Vietnam war section. they note repeatedly that in regards to a lot of events, mainstream media position was much more hardline than the position of the State Department. can we take a moment to appreciate that this is really weird?
I live in a country that has real, actual government censorship. just this week top managers of a major publisher were arrested under extremism criminal charges for supposedly having some ties to another, smaller publisher, which published some queer literature back when this was still possible. in my experience of censorship, trying to be holier than the Pope is very much not encouraged. you’re supposed to express sentiments that align closely to the general line of the party — going too far off in either direction makes you a dangerous activist that is better suppressed. why would media, so tightly controlled by various economic means, stray so far?
unless, of course, it is not the State Department that determines the general line of the party. authors dance around this conclusion, but I don’t think they state it directly: in a society that’s so thoroughly captialist as the US, it’s not the state that controls the narrative, it’s the capital. this hints at interesting things should their interests disagree. of course, the system is built to ensure that it mostly doesn’t happen.
so what is Manufacturing Consent about? it’s not about the propaganda model — authors don’t seem very interested in trying to discern the internal workings of this mechanism. textually, we could say that it is about US imperialism — most of the text is retelling of various historical events — but I don’t think it would be fair either. I think the primary message of the text is something like this: “there’s no crime so horrible that mainstream media would abandon their propaganda cause. there’s no lie so brazen that they wouldn’t tell it, if it serves a purpose. the concept of free media is dead, and it brings down with it a possibility of meaningful democracy. we need to build our own media, not beholden to the capital; we need to educate ourselves and our peers — or we lose”. the book is a political message, and its goal is to change how people find and consume information. the propaganda model is a tool towards that end.
I think it was a very useful book for me to read — both because it educated me on some aspects of US imperialism, and because it confirmed that the effect we’re seing now is not novel. the book was written in 1988 and concerns the events that happened more than half a century ago. it was enlightening to compare reporting of today with news of days long gone. it turns out — it was always like this.
I want to end this on a message of hope. the internet changed the economic constraints of journalism. Manufacturing Consent starts with observation that prices of publishing are rising — well, today they’re lower than ever. I think these changing material conditions can change how we perceive the world through press.
I was meaning to end the post there, but this is stupid, of course. the bright future doesn’t happen unless we make it. donate to independent media if you’re able. send them your stories if something important happens. diversify your information sources. the material conditions allow for a possibility of change — but we still need to fight for it to happen.
