Ch. 1: Warnings

[oblivion]

Oblivion, is there no such thing as reading for fun in your family? haha

To misquote Agent K in MIB; "Germans have no sense of hmour of which I am aware, m'am"

My book is due to arrive tomorrow, and will actually be delivered by a Zombie (aka our postman).

[johnson1010]

What do you all think so far?

Anything you liked, anything you would have changed if it were your work?

[geo]

I'm two chapters in. I'm reminded a bit of Law and Order where the police go around interviewing potential witnesses/suspects to a crime, only in this case, the “crime” was a zombie pandemic. Our roving narrator is going all over the world, interviewing subjects, many of them who held positions of power before the worldwide crash. During the outset of the outbreak, many folks paid money to get out of infected areas, a scenario that reminds me of the exodus of Jews out of Germany in the years leading up to World War II.

One of the subjects worked for a drug company and sold Phalanx which was supposed to be a vaccine against African rabies, but which was known to have no efficacy at all. Even the FDA was promoting Phalanx in the early days of the outbreak because it helped to calm people. So Brooks, the author, takes a cynical view of politics in general, imagining a scenario of catastrophic outbreak and how ineffectual the government's response would be. He also describes the general apathy we have towards impending disasters. People will generally try to downplay the seriousness of things they don’t really understand, be it global warming, avian flu or zombie apocalypse. And by the time we’re ready to take action it's far too late. Brooks seems to be particularly cynical about our politicians, how they are concerned only with their own re-elections. I see parallels with the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina, slow to act and with a bureaucratic indifference to human suffering.

This book is pretty interesting, but it’s hard for me to get into it as I would a work of fiction that revolves around a central character. I’m actually reminded a lot of Cormac McCarthy’s THE ROAD, which I usually describe as a zombie novel without zombies. Only that novel does revolve around central characters, and the reader cares about what happens to these characters—a father and son—which makes that book so much more compelling.

It's interesting (perhaps) that there are no female interviewees until the end of chapter two. Why did Brooks leave out the female perspective until this point?

[giselle]

This book is pretty interesting, but it’s hard for me to get into it as I would a work of fiction that revolves around a central character. I’m actually reminded a lot of Cormac McCarthy’s THE ROAD, which I usually describe as a zombie novel without zombies. Only that novel does revolve around central characters, and the reader cares about what happens to these characters—a father and son—which makes that book so much more compelling.

It's interesting (perhaps) that there are no female interviewees until the end of chapter two. Why did Brooks leave out the female perspective until this point?

I'm with you geo, this book reminds me of The Road as well, although I've only read chapter 1. I'm getting a post-modern feel about WW Z, guess its the structure and perspective. And as Heledd said above, I also would not normally pick up a book of this type, just not into apocalypses that much, but this about zombies and I happen to believe in zombies .. I mean, why not? there is one well recognized almost-zombie parallel - the last steps of the condemned ... "dead man walking".

[johnson1010]

He does jump around a lot in telling the story, but i suppose that is the price you pay for this format. One guy in Egypt really shouldn't have been around to see what also happened in china and chicago.

He does come back to a few characters several times and that helps to connect the reader i think. Unfortunately, i would read a few pages into one of these return visits before i realized it was the same character from earlier in the book describing what happened to them later in the chronology.

His treatment of government action is a bit cynical, but i can see where he gets it. I don't think you could crystalize it any better than the nonsense of airport "security". The illusion of safety is far more important than the actual production of a safe environment.

[geo]

Goes to show, you couldn't possibly predict a cultural phenomenon, I mean no way, no how. Zombies suddenly becoming omnipresent in the culture? The "why" is so hard to puzzle out; you've made a good stab, but maybe the answer is simply that people are weird creatures.

I'm a little edgy about the upcoming Lincoln zombie movie. Our youth already know so little about history. So we'll supply them with some "information" they might not have the ability to filter. Brilliant.

Responding to an earlier post . . .

I laughed when I saw the trailer for this movie. What's next. George Washington: President by Day, Werewolf by Night? That said, I was surprised to see that the author of the "NPR: You Must Read This" essay about Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way ComesI had written the book which the movie is based on.

We're all looking for the next hybrid genre, but I'm not sure Historical-Supernatural will be it. Although Dan Simmons, who is a very talented writer, seems to be taking a stab at it with many of his recent novels, based on historical events.

I will say one of the most amazing genre-twisters imagined was the Kung Fu television series in the 1970s. The main character practices Taoist-style meditation and is highly trained in martial arts. So he's first and foremost a philosophical man who is by nature an extreme pacifist. But due to very unusual circumstances. Caine is forced to kill someone and becomes an outlaw in his native China. Placing this character in America's old west was a stroke of pure genius. You have a man who truly lives and breathes Faulkner's concept of the "human heart in conflict with itself." I'm not sure the series aged well, but I have always been drawn to that show.

[geo]

. . . His treatment of government action is a bit cynical, but i can see where he gets it. I don't think you could crystalize it any better than the nonsense of airport "security". The illusion of safety is far more important than the actual production of a safe environment.

Yes, let's take off our shoes before we fly. So much safer now.

[oblivion]

One thing I've noticed is how important it always is to find the "appropriate" names for attrocities and horror, Where they be called "uprisings", "The Troubles", WWII, The Great War, The Holocaust, World War Z or whatever. Brooks spends quite a nice paragraph on this in his introduction.....exactly what should this be called and why. Naming something seems to take a least some of the terror out of things. Familiarity helps to cope.

[JennO]

The format of this book is very similar to the format of an Infectious Disease Management class that I took last year. Each week we were presented with a new portion of a case study that held clues to the etiology of the outbreak. Of course for my class it was not the living dead, it was just a fairly simple e-coli outbreak, but the type of narrative was similar.

The number of characters presented throughout the chapters and the presentation of the book as a series of interviews is more reflective of an actual outbreak study and helps to make the book feel more real, and less of the typical campy zombie tale.

[Robert Tulip]

Brooks, the author, takes a cynical view of politics in general, imagining a scenario of catastrophic outbreak and how ineffectual the government's response would be. He also describes the general apathy we have towards impending disasters. People will generally try to downplay the seriousness of things they don’t really understand, be it global warming, avian flu or zombie apocalypse. And by the time we’re ready to take action it's far too late. Brooks seems to be particularly cynical about our politicians, how they are concerned only with their own re-elections. I see parallels with the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina, slow to act and with a bureaucratic indifference to human suffering.

Geo, I think your comment here explains the core theme of the book. Ineffectual apathy towards impending disaster is a central issue in world politics, and Brooks uses it later to raise searching questions about the capacity of democracy to respond to existential threats. If people habitually lie and conceal an infectious fatal disease, out of a misguided sense of compassion, how can political leaders respond in a way that will be in line with collective best interests?

You mention the global warming parallel which Brooks raises in this chapter. I suspect he intends this as an important subtext, with the idea that people can go into denial about something that will be catastrophic, and that our social instincts are not adequate to providing rational response to global problems.