The Roots of Dystopic Fiction - We, by Yevgeny Zamyatin

When reading Ursula Le Guin’s Words Are My Matter, I made a reading list from books she discussed or referenced.  That was years ago now, and I no longer remember exactly what Le Guin said about We that made me put it on my list, but I have no regrets about reading it!  I have no idea how I had never heard of this book as it appears to be the primary influence on Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World.  You can absolutely see the DNA of Zamyatin’s novel in those two dystopic works, from plot structures to characters and relationships.  Zamyatin provides us with the dystopian novel upon which a century of such works are built, and yet, I had never even heard of it, much less read it.

The book was written in 1920 and published first in 1925, not in Russia, Zamyatin’s home country, and not in Russian, the language he wrote it in, but in England and as an English translation, because the book could not get published in Soviet Russia.  I have the Penguin edition with a translation by Clarence Brown from 1993—and, man, do I love Brown’s translation.  I imagine the original writing in Russian must be just as beautiful and evocative, because this translation is scintillating. Here’s a sample of one of the many sentences that gave me pause: “Mortified, I handed him the paper. He read it, and I saw a smile slip out of his eyes, slide down his face, and, with a flick of its tail, take a seat on the right side of his mouth” (143). Right?!

The book takes the form of a collection of journal entries, originally designed to be one of the “treatises, epic poems, manifestoes, odes, or other compositions dealing with the beauty and grandeur of OneState” (1).  OneState is a dystopian city built of steel-like glass and surrounded by a glass wall that keeps the green wilds permanently separate from the city itself. There was a 200-year war between the city and the countryside, which the city won.  Everything within OneState operates on a strict schedule, with allotted hours to wake up, eat, exercise, work, have sex, and sleep, the whole population engaging in the exact same schedule.  There is not privacy, except when you are granted leave to lower your blinds during your permitted sex time.  Otherwise, the glass walls and furniture allow you to see all and be seen by all at any time.  All citizens have been assigned numbers instead of names, as individuality has been stamped out, each person being a mere organism of OneState, which is the true entity.  Our protagonist is D-503. D-503 is the head builder of the INTEGRAL, a glass spaceship that has been built to allow OneState to colonize space and spread its vision of orderly happiness. D-503 begins the novel as a true-believer in the glory and sophistication of OneState, and as you can already guess if you’ve engaged in any dystopic fiction, that will change over the course of the novel.

The first person perspective makes the novel surprisingly part of the epistolary tradition, as D-503 is always addressing an unknown reader, imagined to be on one of the as-yet-uncolonized planets, someone living in barbarity as D-503 understands it. It’s a great frame to allow the protagonist to explain culture and history to someone who knows nothing about it.  Zamyatin’s skill makes the character and the world come to life through this limited perspective, especially as D-503 goes through the changes caused by him becoming aware of his individuality, what he calls at one point, coming down with a “soul,” viewed as an illness.  As he writes, “So here I am, in step with everyone else, and yet separate from all of them. I’m still trembling all over from the recent excitement—like a bridge that one of the ancient iron trains has just rumbled over. I feel myself. But it’s only the eye with a lash in it, the swollen finger, the infected tooth that feels itself, is conscious of its own individual being. The healthy eye or finger or tooth doesn’t seem to exist. So it’s clear, isn’t it? Self-consciousness is just a disease” (110).  There are several passages that become downright confusing because it is unclear if our narrator is having a hallucination, unclear of how to find the words and mindset to describe what he is experiencing, or if it is exactly as he says.  Zamyatin does not shy away from that complication of the first-person narrative, but instead leans into it and allows it to be poetic and confusing, in hot contrast to the cool orderliness of D-503’s life at the beginning of the novel.

The book suffers only from the author’s racism and misogyny. While I was impressed that there were black characters at all in a novel started in 1917 Russia, let alone that one is the best fried of our protagonist, the portrayal is not one of love.  Similarly, D-503, and presumably Zamyatin himself, is fascinated with the roundness of women and their breasts, and while women presumably play an equal role in this society without individuality, there are few woman at all, and one of them is a soft, insipid, simpleton who marvels at the brilliance of her man.  All the women are love objects, important within the novel for their desire and desirability, or lack thereof.

On the back of my edition, Le Guin is quoted as calling this novel “the best single work of science fiction yet written.” I don’t agree with that, but it is certainly a fascinating one, and a beautifully written and thoughtful one.  It is well worth the reading.

Timothy Egan's A Fever in the Heartland

Timothy Egan’s A Fever in the Heartland was recommended to us at a luncheon, where we gathered to celebrate the wedding of some dear friends. It was the summer of 2024 and we had been studying American and European fascism and authoritarianism for several months. We were seated with like-minded people, and the topic naturally came up. I try to act on recommendations, and the premise of Egan’s historical recounting sounded perfectly in line with our studies. We are ourselves Hoosiers, so hearing about the Ku Klux Klan’s presence in Indiana in the 1920s was pertinent to every aspect. I was not prepared for how well-written, how gripping, or how traumatic the tale would be.

This is the story of how the Klan rose to power in America in the 1910s and 1920s on the back of anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic, anti-black, white supremacist sentiment. By 1925, the Klan was everywhere and dominating state politics in many states, but especially in Indiana.  In fact, the man responsible to making the Klan’s presence in the North so extensive had become the most powerful man in Indiana and his eyes were set on the presidency of the whole nation.  It was not a pipe dream for him, either. With the Klan’s embedded power within Congress, this was a real possibility. That man was D.C. Stephenson, or at least that’s the name he adopted when he drifted into Indiana several years before.  Stephenson was vicious, crude, a bully, a racist, and a misogynist.  He had many times brutally abused women in his life, including his wives, but as the powerful often do, he escaped any kind of reckoning, keeping his victim’s silent through fear and power over the law enforcement. But when he brutalized one young woman in 1925, she and her family, along with an unbought prosecutor, took the remarkable steps to demand justice.  The trial changed the entire course of the Klan’s influence.  That’s the story that Egan artfully unfolds. 

As a book of history, A Fever in the Heartland is first rate.  It’s an easy read that is full of surprises (for me) and direct, powerful, recounting of the state of America.  Egan covers the history of the clan in deft strokes, doing an amazing job of bringing the times to life with sensitivity but without euphemisms.  Even as we spend time in the lives of Klan members, Egan always has the moral clarity to call their actions what they are—hateful, anti-democratic, self-interested, and repugnant.  I appreciated his balancing of an unimpassioned presentation of the facts as he knew them with the equally unimpassioned moral position of the horrors spurring the organization.  I walked away from the book with what felt like a full understanding of the times.  It is the kind of book that pulls you through even as you want to stop to ingest all the details so that you can recall them later.

If you listened to Rachel Maddow’s two seasons of Ultra, this book will be of especial interest to you.  The two narratives (along with others available to us in this age of podcasts and peoples’ histories) work together to build an understanding for how much of the 20^th century has been a struggle between the forces of authoritarian white supremacy and the those fighting for genuine democracy and equality.  This is the history I was never taught, as the American education system is too interested in the tale of American exceptionalism. The rotten fruits of the Trump administration were planted centuries ago, and the land has been tilled with fervor for more than 100 years.  This is a book that every Hoosier should read to understand the present moment, even though the events took place almost 100 years ago to the day.

The only thing I found dissatisfying about the book was the brief coverage of the Klan’s undoing that followed the trial that let to D.C. Stephenson’s incarceration and fall from power.  I realize that there are a lot of factors that play into something like a nationwide organizations crumbling, but I wanted more than the relief of knowing that the group was diminished.  It crumbles so quickly in the retelling that there is little to take away from it.  I would gladly read another 200 pages about all the bits and pieces that went into the Klan’s members shedding their robes and wearing their racism in other ways.  That was not the scope of this book, and I can’t blame Egan for not writing those additional 200 pages, but still I found myself disappointed in the denouement.

The book will be staying on my shelf because I will want to have this bit of history available to me to read again and from which to gather still more wisdom.