Red Pill
Ratings8
Average rating3.6
15
Ratings8
Average rating3.6
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR A bold new novel about searching for order in a world that frames madness as truth from the widely acclaimed author of White Tears After receiving a prestigious writing fellowship in Germany, the narrator of Red Pill arrives in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee and struggles to accomplish anything at all. Instead of working on the book he has proposed to write, he takes long walks and binge-watches Blue Lives, a violent cop show that becomes weirdly compelling in its bleak, Darwinian view of life. He soon begins to wonder if his writing has any value at all. Wannsee is full of ghosts: Across the lake, the narrator can see the villa where the Nazis planned the Final Solution, and in his walks he passes the grave of the Romantic writer Heinrich von Kleist, who killed himself after deciding that “no happiness was possible here on earth.” At a party, he meets the charismatic Anton, creator of Blue Lives, and the narrator begins to believe that the two of them are engaged in a cosmic battle. Anton is “red-pilling” his viewers—turning them toward an ugly, alt-rightish worldview, he thinks, as he starts to wonder if he is losing his mind.
Reviews with the most likes.
RED PILL by Hari Kunzru is a wild, divisive ride, and I'm still trying to figure out if I liked this book or not
Man on the brink of the abyss, Wanderer above the Sea of Fog - Yet instead of being overwhelmed and awestruck by the beauty and cruel vastness of nature, our protagonist is overwhelmed, immobilized and slowly rendered mad by the terror and darkness that seems to be invading the world around him. It's a feeling we all have been experiencing to same capacity during the last couple of years.
This was a wild ride, starting out on a writers retreat with musings about writing and creation, then slowly transforming into a dream-like paranoia about surveillance and 18th century German romanticism, and finally ending on very topical issues of media-manipulation and radicalization.
‘Anton' was a regular Mephisto is this tale, and I'd be very curious if he (and his TV show) was based on anyone in particular.
It almost lost me in the middle there (too dark, too hopeless, too obtuse. an obstinate main character who seemed to rebuff my every attempt at empathy), but the last few paragraphs are worth the price of admission imho. Anyone who was Too Online in Nov 2016 can see themselves reflected here.
I got about 33% through, or about 100 pages in. I feel the subject matter the book touches on could have been approached better. The whole thing with him running off to Berlin for a book he wasn't even gonna try to work in frustrated me and felt unnecessary. if it was focused on just his experience with the TV show and being with his family as he sees this rise of radicalization take place I would have been more absorbed, but everything about the first half just made me not care for him or any of the story.
