Home · Book Reports · 2018 · The Simulacra

designates my notes. / designates important.

Thoughts

Technical

The vocabulary seemed monotonous and the prose short. I felt no connection to any of the characters, though they were well constructed, seemed to have no soul.

Each chapter is generally split into two unrelated parts. While I have no disagreement from a technical standpoint, the fact that there was no delineating mark, the text simply continued, made for a jarring transition. It made you think you missed a paragraph; a simple line would have sufficed. Was this done for some effect? If so, I didn’t get it.

Technically, unimpressed.

Creative

Too much Hitler, Jews, Hitler, Jews! I can’t get away… The time travel almost felt like an excuse to shoe horn Nazis in and fill any plot gaps with “he knows because, time travel!”

That said, the time travel is never really explored, it is simply there. Again, felt like a crutch for the plot.

It follows several circles of characters, most of which never interact with other circles. The stories feel intertwined, they feel like they are all leading to some explosive conclusion, but it never got there. The end, while it did come out of left field, was anti-climactic. I finished thinking “that’s it?”

It was all hat and no cattle. Even then, it was a worn out hat. It felt like the characters are simply going about their business. In fact, most of them were literally going about their business.

While there was a lot of stereotypical science fiction, psy, flying cars, migrate to mars, the robots, the papoola, none of these were really developed. It was all regulated to the background, understated, left to the imagination, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but, for example, the jalopy lots, they are supposed to be… big, and they can fly. The jalopies themselves? More than mysterious, non-existent.

The story itself starts nowhere special and ends, somewhere else, but that somewhere else didn’t feel like it was coming, nor did it hit me as a surprise. It wasn’t neatly packaged, leading you to a conclusion, nor was it noir enough to keep you guessing, it just… was. Not that a story has to be either of those, but I personally couldn’t identify with any of the characters, I didn’t care what they were doing, and I found no closure, or even a feeling of “I wonder what happens next?” at the end.

Creatively, unimpressed.

Table of Contents

• One
• Two
• Three
• Four
• Five
• Six
• Seven
• Eight
• Nine
• Ten
• Eleven
• Twelve
• Thirteen
• Fourteen
• Fifteen

• Pdf page numbers.

· One

page 6:

• The powerful German cartel had sold the world on the notion of drug-therapy for mental illness; there was a fortune to be made, there. And by corollary, psychoanalysts were quacks, on a par with orgone box and health food healers. It was not like the old days, the previous century, when psychoanalysts had had stature. Dr. Superb sighed.

· Two

page 15:

• When did the position of First Lady begin to assume stature greater than that of President? the text inquired. In other words, when did our society become matriarchal,

· Three

page 19:

• It was a shock, because this particular marriage had endured for six entire months and he had become thoroughly used to seeing her in the mornings. She knew just how he liked his eggs (cooked with a small amount of mild Munster cheese). Damn the new permissive divorce legislation that old President Kalbfleisch had ushered in!

page 20:

• Days of Barbarism—that was the sweet-talk for the Nazi Period of the middle part of the previous century, now gone nearly a century but still vividly, if distortedly, recalled.

• So der Alte had taken to the airwaves to denounce the Sons of Job, the latest nut organization of a quasi-religious nature flapping about in the streets, proclaiming a purification of national ethnic life, etc. or whatever it was theyproclaimed. In other words, stiff legislation to bar persons from public life who were odd

· Four

page 31:

• Molly said. And returned to reading her book. It was, Nat saw, a banned text by the twentieth century sociologist C. Wright Mills.

page 32:

• she was an exceptionally harsh and aggressive, almost masculine woman

page 33:

• In his own individual car he felt as if he were participating in a black-magic ritual—as if he, and the other commuters, had put their lives into the hands of a force better left undiscussed. Actually it was a simple homeostatic beam which justified its position by making ceaseless references to all other vehicles and the guide-walls of the road itself

page 35:

• I think that von Lessinger was right in his final summation: no one should go near the Third Reich. When you deal with psychotics you’re drawn in; you become mentally ill yourself.”

• Stark said quietly, “There are six million Jewish lives to be saved, Mrs. Thibodeaux.

page 37:

• As a matter of fact, there is some possibility that Hitler deliberately led his people to defeat.

· Five

page 47:

“I mean, how are you going to work an event like that into your Weltanschauung? It’s just too damn dreadful. It unhinges you. And the worst part is that it’s so dreadful it’s almost funny.”

· Six

page 52:

• I’m as mentally ill as it’s humanly possible to be! It’s incredible that I can communicate with you at all. It’s a credit to my ego-strength that I’m not at this point totally autistic

· Seven

· Eight

page 74:

• “One papoola here and there, and that planet wide instrument of persuasion that Nicole has made out of TV—there you have the real danger, Ian. The papoola is crude; you know you’re being worked on. Not so when you listen to Nicole. The pressure is so subtle and so complete—”

· Nine

page 90:

• It must be terrific to be an artist, Stone thought with bitterness. You’re exempt from all the rules and responsibilities; you can do just as you like.

· Ten

page 101:

• “Remember, the objective in the war for the Nazis was the extermination of World Jewry; it was not merely a byproduct.”

· Eleven

· Twelve

page 138:

• couldn’t just eradicate a portion of the memory-cells of their brains and then let them go. Why wouldn’t that do?” Slezak glanced at Janet Raimer, then shrugged. “If you want it that way.” “Yes,” Nicole said. “I’d prefer that. It would make my job easier. Take them to the Medical Center at Bethesda and after that release them

page 141:

• “Mama’s psychologists did a good job of working you over,” the elderly man panted. “That Bethesda—it must be quite a place.”

· Thirteen

page 147:

• Somehow this man is getting the upper hand over me. Constantly. He’s a master psychologist… or is it that, by his definition, he’s a master political strategist?

· Fourteen

page 163:

• To stay in power she would have to rule a nation of the mentally ill.

· Fifteen