Book review: Stephen Fry, "Making History"
Dec. 5th, 2005 12:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
riontelAnother day, another Stephen Fry. Last one for now, I am afraid, though I desperately hope he is busily typing up a new novel right this minute. "The Ode Less Travelled" that just came out doesn't count, it being a guide to writing poetry, of all things. Its practical value to me would fall right behind a guide to writing music. I can't tell two notes apart and I can't rhyme two words to save my life. Might buy it regardless just to see what he has to say on the subject, but it's just not the same, you know.
"Making History" I bought without reading any reviews or even checking out the blurb just on account of it being Fry's since he hasn't disappointed me ones so far, and that includes reading his autobiography, not my habitual type of reading by a long stretch. Imagine my surprise then when I discovered he wrote a sci-fi novel. An alternative history sci-fi at that. Could it get any more perfect? And unlike Akunin, who deliberately set out to create a series of books in different genres, Fry probably didn't have any such goal in mind. That's probably why his attempt at sci-fi was vastly more successful than Akunin's. There was no feeling of ideas getting forced our of author's mind against their will and ending up stillborn or stale as a result. On the contrary, "Making History" was as clever and witty as all of Fry's previous novels. It had some surprising depths and an interesting take on the role of person in history that, as an added bonus, happened to agree with my opinion, and, as usual, very nice characterizations and dialogs. It wasn't as exuberantly wicked as "The Liar" but I loved it nonetheless, swallowed it whole and am looking forward to rereading it one day soon.
If there is a word to describe our age, it must be Security, or to put it another way, Insecurity. From the neurotic insecurity of Freud, by way of the insecurities of the Kaiser, the Fuhrer, Eisenhower and Stalin, right up to the terrors of the citizens of the modern world -
The enemy. They will break into your car, burgle your house, molest your children, consign you to hellfire, murder you for drug money, force you to face Mecca, infect your blood, outlaw your sexual preferences, erode your pension, pollute your beaches, censor your thoughts, steal your ideas, poison your air, threaten your values, use foul language on your television, destroy your security. Keep them away! Lock them out! Hide them from sight! Bury them!
"Making History" I bought without reading any reviews or even checking out the blurb just on account of it being Fry's since he hasn't disappointed me ones so far, and that includes reading his autobiography, not my habitual type of reading by a long stretch. Imagine my surprise then when I discovered he wrote a sci-fi novel. An alternative history sci-fi at that. Could it get any more perfect? And unlike Akunin, who deliberately set out to create a series of books in different genres, Fry probably didn't have any such goal in mind. That's probably why his attempt at sci-fi was vastly more successful than Akunin's. There was no feeling of ideas getting forced our of author's mind against their will and ending up stillborn or stale as a result. On the contrary, "Making History" was as clever and witty as all of Fry's previous novels. It had some surprising depths and an interesting take on the role of person in history that, as an added bonus, happened to agree with my opinion, and, as usual, very nice characterizations and dialogs. It wasn't as exuberantly wicked as "The Liar" but I loved it nonetheless, swallowed it whole and am looking forward to rereading it one day soon.
If there is a word to describe our age, it must be Security, or to put it another way, Insecurity. From the neurotic insecurity of Freud, by way of the insecurities of the Kaiser, the Fuhrer, Eisenhower and Stalin, right up to the terrors of the citizens of the modern world -
THEY ARE OUT THERE!
The enemy. They will break into your car, burgle your house, molest your children, consign you to hellfire, murder you for drug money, force you to face Mecca, infect your blood, outlaw your sexual preferences, erode your pension, pollute your beaches, censor your thoughts, steal your ideas, poison your air, threaten your values, use foul language on your television, destroy your security. Keep them away! Lock them out! Hide them from sight! Bury them!
