ladybusiness | Entries tagged with author: emily st. john mandel

Survival is insufficient.

“All I’m saying,” Dieter said, twelve hours out of St. Deborah by the Water, “is that quote on the lead caravan would be way more profound if we hadn’t lifted it from Star Trek.”

Kirsten Raymonde, the heroine of Emily St. John Mandel's novel Station Eleven, lives in a dystopian version of Toronto. Twenty years after a violent flu virus has ravaged the world, killing huge numbers and rendering society technologically poor, Kirsten works as a professional actress. She tours with a band of musicians and actors called The Travelling Symphony who perform Shakespearean plays and classical music as they pass through the small towns that constitute post-epidemic society. The motto of the symphony, 'Survival is insufficient', a Star Trek quote from the old world, informs their company's choice to keep going even if sometimes 'it seemed a difficult and dangerous way to survive and hardly worth it'. Their motto is so important to Kirsten that she has it tattooed on her arm.

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I first heard of Station Eleven via Ana's recap of a book event she went to, where the subject of the the importance of art after dramatic and catastrophic events were discussed in the context of the novel. This book has a lot to say about art, popular culture, and the stories that will persist after a worldwide disaster, and I thought the discussion Ana summarized was excellent. I decided to pick the book up to see if the contents held up to the ideas Ana shared in her post.

cover of Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

cover of Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Station Eleven tells the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity. (source)

I've heard this book called a optimistic version of The Road, which means very little to me since I didn't read The Road. I do agree with the charge of optimism post-reading. Maybe if you've read The Road that's a good indicator of enjoyment, but if you haven't, well, there's a movie version and Viggo Mortensen looks dirty and worried in all the pictures and clips I've seen, which may help clarify the subject matter at hand. Or maybe you only like dirty Viggo Mortensen, in which case, godspeed to your streaming service of choice, my friend. ( Read more... )

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Entries tagged with author: emily st. john mandel

'Survival is Insufficient': The Dystopian Worlds of Station Eleven & The Ship

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

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