Paperbacks, Pints and the Post-Apocalypse

On Thursday the 23rd of May, the first edition of Paperback Pints, our new book club, took place. In the upstairs room of the Prince Regent in Marylebone, surrounded by faux-vintage furnishings, paperbacks, and generous helpings of alcohol, our slightly sozzled group discussed the new novel by Booker Prize winner George Saunders, Vigil. In this ambiance of general excess and consumption, Vigil presented a challenging discussion.

Perhaps now is not the time for joking. We must get serious, get our hands dirty, stop the idle chatter. This book truly challenges and unsettles, as much through its difficult prose as its subject matter. In the face of climate collapse, discussion can often feel pointless. Literature can feel pointless. Everything can. Why get out of bed at all?

So best not to think about it. Or better: best to start thinking about it, and really think about it. Vigil made us all really think about it.

K.J. Boone the oil tycoon lies on his deathbed, refusing to accept any responsibility for the unfolding climate apocalypse, which we glimpse in fragments as other ghosts come to visit Boone. The ghost of Jill Blaine, who believes herself to be ‘elevated’ and on a mission from God to comfort the dying, has been sent to comfort Boone as he moves into the afterlife.

We spent a good part of the evening discussing which of the novel’s voices is most to be trusted. Over pints of Guinness and oversized gin-tonics, we spoke about the fact that Jill’s fragmented personality made reliability difficult. She asserts her ‘elevated’ status, and yet it’s a performance she only maintains infrequently. In a reading by Sophie Magalhães, we got to hear each of these voices bounce off one another, with their unique dictions.

The questions the novels ask are perhaps the most important questions we can ask today, faced as we are with an impending climate apocalypse. Does Boone deserve comfort, redemption, and absolution? Is he singlehandedly responsible, or are we all equally complicit? What constitutes a moral action when its consequences are so widespread? Are we just as guilty for driving cars, as Boone is for supplying the oil needed for us to drive cars?

Did that frog have any idea how much motor fuel it took? For the U.S. to have one normal year, like we just now had? One hundred and fifty billion gallons.

To be sure, these themes are not unheard of. Father John Misty’s lyrics come to mind:

The sticky central question of the novel is who should be held responsible for climate change. On the one hand, K.J. Boone and his daughter believe “in positive values and taking responsibility for oneself”, while Jill Blaine, or “the elevated part” of her, has come to believe in a hard determinism, in which all people are equally guilty and absolved.

My charge had been born him. But had never chosen to be born him. That had just happened to him. Then life had happened to that him, exerting upon it certain deleterious effects […] It had all unscrolled just as it must. It did not seem strange to me, but inevitable.

It is with this ideology that Jill comforts the dying, absolving them of responsibility, removing agency from their lives.

I most enjoyed talking about the way that the novel directly confronts the reader with two equally convincing, and yet irreconcilable, ideas of human agency. Among groups, we discussed the bubbles most people find themselves in, entrenched in familiar perspectives until the ‘other side’ becomes a pure evil. The left-wing systemic perspective, based in a deterministic view of human action, faced off against the right-wing individualist and voluntarist view of human agency. 

In Jill, many saw the descendants of Marxist critique who position the subject within the socio-economic structures of their time, and declare that for change to be made, it is the structures that must change. Personal agency is bracketed (or denied) while trying to understand the origins of social phenomena.

On the other hand, Boone and his family follow the Ayn Rand strain of neoliberalism, declaring that people are only limited by their actions, their free will. If you work hard, do well in school, make good decisions you too can be just like Boone. If you drop out, enter a life of crime, well you get what’s coming to you.

Neither comes out of Vigil cleanly, and neither Jill nor Boone is able to actually practice what they preach: Boone, while taking credit for all of his success, totally denies his responsibility for any harm he may have caused along the way. Jill, denying free will and believing that all actions are inevitable, continues to act and judge freely, rather than falling into a nihilistic inactivity. Each character has their cake and eats it.

While the book club was a chance to look directly at these arguments and question them, to break down barriers in thought, above all Vigil was a difficult reminder that there may not be time for these discussions to go on much longer.

Saunders declares that it’s not for the artist to solve the problem, but to formulate it correctly. I would go so far as to say the same of the humble book club. Paperback Pints offers a space in which we can keep talking and thinking about these difficult issues, without having to do it alone. The many anxieties we face don’t have to be the reason for inactivity. They can be the basis for community, for action, and who knows: maybe a damn good book club.