‘No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies’, ‘Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism — you’re probably familiar with these famous (or infamous if you’re the CEO of Nike or Shell) titles. They were published in 1999 and 2007 respectively and reflected the growing societal anger about globalisation and unbridled capitalism.
The books (and the Canadian author, Naomi Klein, a respected social activist — reclaim the streets, climate change ) received a lot of attention, so much so, that I felt I only needed to read about the books, to get their points. The fat yellow spine of Shock Doctrine sat on my TBR (To Be Read) bookshelf for years. Blush.
[Maybe it’s also that being a bit contrary, I find that media hype can actually put me off reading a book. Does that happen to you?]
Anyway, I grew up last month and actually listened to Naomi Klein’s latest book, “Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World” (2023.) Wow! Despite her ferocious intelligence and prodigious research, her writing is accessible and she’s a very good narrator.
Both memoir and social critique, I thought this a fascinating and important book that helped me towards understanding how reality-deniers (see my rant about Steve Bannon) have gained influence and how political allegiances have become so scrambled. (e.g. formerly liberal-thinking wellness entrepreneurs becoming anti-vaxxers and aligning themselves with the likes of Bad Bannon and his new anti-vax best friend, the other Naomi.
I’m not going to name her fully, as the reason Doppelganger came into being was the confusion that arose on social media when the lunatic opinions of this far less intellectually rigorous Naomi were attributed to Professor Klein.
In Doppelganger, Klein writes that:
“... all of us who create or maintain a person or avatar online, create our own doppelgängers … virtual versions of ourselves that represent us to others… an avatar we perform ceaselessly in the digital ether as the price of admission in a rapacious Attention Economy.”
Congratulations to deep thinker and writer Naomi Klein for winning the inaugural Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction for this book.
Koba news
I am now three-quarters way through this serialisation of my second Koba book. Having the opportunity to relook at this text has been useful to me in all sorts of ways. This week, it’s allowed me to think more deeply about the two main characters, the brutally-separated lovers Koba and Mannie, as maturing individuals rather than as part of a young, romantic duo who will inevitably reunite. (They might not… I’m writing the final part of this trilogy and it’s taking unexpected turns.) I’ve discovered that Mannie is a pacifist and that Koba is aware of the limitations her wariness places upon her. So all is not rosy in red sand land.
If you’d like to read past the Paywall, please consider becoming a paid subscriber to this not-for-profit newsletter. ALL PROCEEDS from subscriptions and sales of these novels goes to the Ju|’hoansi Development Fund. Fund-raiser for San schools is my avatar, I guess.
Mannie, journeying towards a rendezvous with revolutionaries, begins to question his motivation.
Chapter 17
Mannie had been on the road for ten days. Over eight hundred miles by his account, and still twenty-five to go until his next stop. That would be Mariental, his last lift had told him. It was going to be a long day.
Already the tarmac shimmered in a heat haze, quivering its emptiness all the way to a watery-looking horizon line. No car had passed him since last evening. There was no sign of human habitation in any direction. The only sound was the whine of the wind and the hungry bleating of the sheep pressing their black faces through the wire fence.
‘I’m not your farmer,’ he shouted.
He’d been walking for hours. He’d sung every Bob Dylan song he could remember and had even resorted to some of Pa’s Trini Lopez favourites to keep himself putting one foot in front of the other: “Lemon Tree”; “I’m coming home, Cindy”– though he’d changed that to Koba, much to the consternation of the endless sheep, he decided, eyeing the disappointed droop of their ears. Part-way through “If I had a hammer”, he stopped. How come he’d never realised how radical the lyrics were?
‘“I’d hammer out a love between my brothers and my sisters,
All over this land.”
The Apartheid government wouldn’t like that,’ he thought, chuckling to himself. Jissus, maybe his pa was secretly subversive?
And what are you, hey, Manfred Marais? he asked himself as he trudged on. Was he really going to sneak across the border and illegally enter another country? And with two black friends who wanted to be armed terrorists?!
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Salt & Honey to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.