Boats Against the Current
This is from an email that I get on a regular basis and I wanted to pass along this reviewers comments. This is only a part of his except this month, so email him if you would like more info.
Boats Against the Current
City of Ember By Jeannie DuPrau
The Long Emergency James Howard Kunstler
Review By John Fraim
On an afternoon in late spring of this year, I swiped a small paperback from my twelve-year-old son Matt's backpack. It was one of the books his class was reading at school. I started reading it that night after Matt had gone to bed and couldn't put it down.
The book was The City of Ember by first time author Jeanne DuPrau. It was about a future where humanity has retreated to live in underground cities. Later I read that it was inspired by the author's memories of growing up in the 50s when people worried about nuclear bombs and built bomb shelters in their backyards. The city of Ember is somewhat like a great underground bomb shelter that people have lived in for centuries.
As DuPrau writes:
"In the city of Ember, the sky was always dark. The only light came from great flood lamps mounted on the buildings and at the tops of poles in the middle of the larger squares. When the lights were on, they cast a yellowish glow over the streets; people walking by threw long shadows that shortened and then stretched out again."
There is a problem. For as long as anyone in Ember can remember, the great lights have kept the endless darkness at bay. But now the lights are beginning to flicker and supplies are dwindling. Ember is faced withthe possibility of total darkness and the end of all life in the city. Although ancestors had arranged for information on leaving Ember to be made available after the inhabitants have spent 200 years there, a corrupt mayor lost the information many years before the novel begins.
The salvation of the city of Ember ultimately rests in the hands of two twelve year old children: a boy named Doon and a girl named Lina. The characters are real and compelling. The plot full of twists and
mysteries. The book rich with description.
Like any truly great book, the world created within it refused to simply disappear with the turning of the last page. Doon and Lina would not go away. I thought about the book a lot. For me, one of the most amazing things about the book was the wonderful sense of place the story evoked. Although things weren't going very well, still there was a tremendous
sense of community in the city of Ember. It wasn't the community of our modern suburbs but rather the community of the small towns of America in the early part of our history.
Soon after reading The City of Ember I began exchanging emails with Jeanne. She lives with her cat and garden in Meno Park, California twenty miles south of San Francisco. In one email I wrote her about the magical sense of place she created in her book. She wrote back:
"I know that place is very important to me as a writer - I must be able to see and feel the place where the story happens, and the nature of the place is deeply connected to the nature of the story. I am often surprised by the lack of a sense of place in contemporary novels for young people, especially teenagers; so many of them seem to happen in a generic school, or a generic suburb, usually without weather."
This comment struck a chord with me. A few years ago our family left California and moved to Ohio. We moved because my wife and I were concerned about the educational future for our children. But we were also concerned that they would grow up in a place that had a real sense of community. It was a sense of community we didn't have in the suburb we lived in out in California.
We settled into an old suburb in Columbus, Ohio. Many of the people in the suburb grew up in it. They didn't spend a lot of time thinking about the future. Rather they thought a lot about the past and think about trying to keep the suburb like it was in the past.
Columbus is the nation's 15th largest city and ringed with a huge fifty mile river of concrete called the 270 outer belt. Like many other suburbs of Columbus, our suburb is contained within the outerbelt. When the outerbelt was first built a quarter century ago it contained large blocks of rich Ohio farmland within its oval shaped loop. Today, though, many suburbs have spread out far past the outerbelt into the Ohio countryside.
One hardly ever needs to go outside the outerbelt these days. Everything you could ever want is contained inside the outerbelt: a few rivers with bike paths, the nation's largest university, more chain restaurants that you ever thought possible, numerous Starbucks, organic groceries, bookstores, movie theaters.
In all there's a vague sense of protection from the outside world. It is almost like the 270 outerbelt is similar to a wall around some Medieval city, protecting our suburbs and others from the outside world, the future.
But one thing the outer belt couldn't protect Columbus and our suburb from this past summer was the incredible heat and rising gas prices. Both invaded the city in the early part of summer and never retreated. The prices shot up at the gas pumps and skies that turned from the bright blue of spring to a dirty white haze of humidity. Everyone talked about the weather and the rising gas prices. It was even hard for the old timers to remember a summer so hot in the city.
My work in marketing progressed to other projects. But it was still impossible to get Jeanne DuPrau's brilliant allegory about the future out of my mind. There was something approaching in the hot air like a great tropical storm. I found myself wondering in brief flashes if the city of Columbus might ever be brought down to its knees and become a type of "city of Ember" one day in the future. It was a stupid thing to wonder about. But still I couldn't help thinking about the vision of the
future in the children's book.
* * *
* * *
* * *
-----------------
John Fraim
John Fraim is President of The GreatHouse Company a marketing consulting firm and book publisher. He has a BA in History from UCLA and a JD from Loyola Law School (Los Angeles). Immediately after graduation from law school, the author was employed as Staff Analyst for Chevron USA in San Francisco.
He is the author of Battle of Symbols: Global Dynamics of Advertising, Entertainment and Media (Daimon Verlag, Zurich, 2003). His book Spirit Catcher: The Life and Art of John Coltrane won the 1997 Small Press Award for Best Biography. His most recent research is Media Nations: Global Dynamics of Media (2004).
His articles, reviews and criticism have appeared in a number of leading publications and online journals including Business 2.0, The Industry Standard, Ad Busters, The Journal of Marketing, First Monday, Spark OnLine, Media & Culture Journal, The Journal of Pyschohistory, Anthropology News and Psychological Perspectives.
He is also a leading authority on symbolism and the creator of www.symbolism.org, the Internet's most popular site for symbolism. His research and theories relate symbolism to media, entertainment, politics, marketing and popular culture. Currently, he is a consultant on symbolism for Imagine Entertainment in Los Angeles for their upcoming film The Da Vinci Code.
He can be contacted at jfraim@symbolism.org.
Boats Against the Current
City of Ember By Jeannie DuPrau
The Long Emergency James Howard Kunstler
Review By John Fraim
On an afternoon in late spring of this year, I swiped a small paperback from my twelve-year-old son Matt's backpack. It was one of the books his class was reading at school. I started reading it that night after Matt had gone to bed and couldn't put it down.
The book was The City of Ember by first time author Jeanne DuPrau. It was about a future where humanity has retreated to live in underground cities. Later I read that it was inspired by the author's memories of growing up in the 50s when people worried about nuclear bombs and built bomb shelters in their backyards. The city of Ember is somewhat like a great underground bomb shelter that people have lived in for centuries.
As DuPrau writes:
"In the city of Ember, the sky was always dark. The only light came from great flood lamps mounted on the buildings and at the tops of poles in the middle of the larger squares. When the lights were on, they cast a yellowish glow over the streets; people walking by threw long shadows that shortened and then stretched out again."
There is a problem. For as long as anyone in Ember can remember, the great lights have kept the endless darkness at bay. But now the lights are beginning to flicker and supplies are dwindling. Ember is faced withthe possibility of total darkness and the end of all life in the city. Although ancestors had arranged for information on leaving Ember to be made available after the inhabitants have spent 200 years there, a corrupt mayor lost the information many years before the novel begins.
The salvation of the city of Ember ultimately rests in the hands of two twelve year old children: a boy named Doon and a girl named Lina. The characters are real and compelling. The plot full of twists and
mysteries. The book rich with description.
Like any truly great book, the world created within it refused to simply disappear with the turning of the last page. Doon and Lina would not go away. I thought about the book a lot. For me, one of the most amazing things about the book was the wonderful sense of place the story evoked. Although things weren't going very well, still there was a tremendous
sense of community in the city of Ember. It wasn't the community of our modern suburbs but rather the community of the small towns of America in the early part of our history.
Soon after reading The City of Ember I began exchanging emails with Jeanne. She lives with her cat and garden in Meno Park, California twenty miles south of San Francisco. In one email I wrote her about the magical sense of place she created in her book. She wrote back:
"I know that place is very important to me as a writer - I must be able to see and feel the place where the story happens, and the nature of the place is deeply connected to the nature of the story. I am often surprised by the lack of a sense of place in contemporary novels for young people, especially teenagers; so many of them seem to happen in a generic school, or a generic suburb, usually without weather."
This comment struck a chord with me. A few years ago our family left California and moved to Ohio. We moved because my wife and I were concerned about the educational future for our children. But we were also concerned that they would grow up in a place that had a real sense of community. It was a sense of community we didn't have in the suburb we lived in out in California.
We settled into an old suburb in Columbus, Ohio. Many of the people in the suburb grew up in it. They didn't spend a lot of time thinking about the future. Rather they thought a lot about the past and think about trying to keep the suburb like it was in the past.
Columbus is the nation's 15th largest city and ringed with a huge fifty mile river of concrete called the 270 outer belt. Like many other suburbs of Columbus, our suburb is contained within the outerbelt. When the outerbelt was first built a quarter century ago it contained large blocks of rich Ohio farmland within its oval shaped loop. Today, though, many suburbs have spread out far past the outerbelt into the Ohio countryside.
One hardly ever needs to go outside the outerbelt these days. Everything you could ever want is contained inside the outerbelt: a few rivers with bike paths, the nation's largest university, more chain restaurants that you ever thought possible, numerous Starbucks, organic groceries, bookstores, movie theaters.
In all there's a vague sense of protection from the outside world. It is almost like the 270 outerbelt is similar to a wall around some Medieval city, protecting our suburbs and others from the outside world, the future.
But one thing the outer belt couldn't protect Columbus and our suburb from this past summer was the incredible heat and rising gas prices. Both invaded the city in the early part of summer and never retreated. The prices shot up at the gas pumps and skies that turned from the bright blue of spring to a dirty white haze of humidity. Everyone talked about the weather and the rising gas prices. It was even hard for the old timers to remember a summer so hot in the city.
My work in marketing progressed to other projects. But it was still impossible to get Jeanne DuPrau's brilliant allegory about the future out of my mind. There was something approaching in the hot air like a great tropical storm. I found myself wondering in brief flashes if the city of Columbus might ever be brought down to its knees and become a type of "city of Ember" one day in the future. It was a stupid thing to wonder about. But still I couldn't help thinking about the vision of the
future in the children's book.
* * *
* * *
* * *
-----------------
John Fraim
John Fraim is President of The GreatHouse Company a marketing consulting firm and book publisher. He has a BA in History from UCLA and a JD from Loyola Law School (Los Angeles). Immediately after graduation from law school, the author was employed as Staff Analyst for Chevron USA in San Francisco.
He is the author of Battle of Symbols: Global Dynamics of Advertising, Entertainment and Media (Daimon Verlag, Zurich, 2003). His book Spirit Catcher: The Life and Art of John Coltrane won the 1997 Small Press Award for Best Biography. His most recent research is Media Nations: Global Dynamics of Media (2004).
His articles, reviews and criticism have appeared in a number of leading publications and online journals including Business 2.0, The Industry Standard, Ad Busters, The Journal of Marketing, First Monday, Spark OnLine, Media & Culture Journal, The Journal of Pyschohistory, Anthropology News and Psychological Perspectives.
He is also a leading authority on symbolism and the creator of www.symbolism.org, the Internet's most popular site for symbolism. His research and theories relate symbolism to media, entertainment, politics, marketing and popular culture. Currently, he is a consultant on symbolism for Imagine Entertainment in Los Angeles for their upcoming film The Da Vinci Code.
He can be contacted at jfraim@symbolism.org.
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