Earth Abides
by George R. Stewart
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Book Reviews of Earth Abides
Book Review: EARTH ABIDES by Geroge R. Stewart
Summary: 4 Stars
EARTH ABIDES is lauded as one of the most noteworthy post-apocalyptic novels ever written. It was originally published in 1949, and its author, George R. Stewart, was better known as a writer of nonfiction than fiction, but EARTH ABIDES is easily his most recognized work--it has been in print off and on for nearly fifty years.
Isherwood (Ish) Williams is a graduate student working on his thesis--"The Ecology of the Black Creek Area"--in the wilds of northern California when a virulent virus destroys humanity. When Ish returns to civilization he finds emptiness. There are no bodies littering the streets, no signs of struggle, nothing except the surreal stillness of empty towns, streets, businesses and homes. Everything is gone, and Ish doesn't understand what has happened until he reads the bleak, desperate headlines of the last issue of a newspaper in an abandoned magazine shop.
EARTH ABIDES is the story of how Isherwood Williams survives the death of humanity, and with it, modern civilization. He is man of intellect--he mourns the passing of knowledge--and he can visualize the future not as an abstract idea, but as it very well may be. Ish chronicles the remnants of humanity as they form themselves into small tribes. They live off what the "old ones" left. They open cans for food; they raid sporting goods stores for firearms and ammunition, and miraculously they survive and grow. Ish begins his journey as an observer, but he quickly finds himself a participant of this new world.
EARTH ABIDES is one of the most troublesome novels I have read. It is troublesome for two reasons. The first is the writing--style, narrative, and plotting--drove me batty. In a matter of pages it would cycle from being an immensely powerful and energetic story to a dull, over analytical and tiresome diatribe. One of the reasons for this wild and frequent swing was the frequent, every few pages, interruption of the narrative with an omniscient perspective spoiler: It was italicized and, in a very technical and academic style, told exactly what was going to happen in the next few pages. It interrupted the flow of the prose, and generally annoyed me.
Secondly, it was a very unflattering look at just how terrible it would be to survive the death of civilization. There is nothing romantic, or eerie, or wholesome, or evil, as in many other popular post-apocalyptic stories--but rather it showed the difficultly, the loneliness and down right miserable aspects of surviving past modern civilization. It read very realistic--the way it would be if our neighbors suddenly died and one or two of us were left holding the bag: suicides, drugs, alcohol and insanity all the flavor of the day.
This aspect of the novel was its strength--Mr. Stewart's visions of desperation were apt and vivid. One example of this is when Ish returns to an empty world, and drives through town after town honking his horn, and then waiting for the answering honk that never comes. Ish's loneliness and desperation is palpable and completely understood by the reader.
EARTH ABIDES was a roller coaster ride. I enjoyed it yes, but I also disliked it. It is a novel filled with ideas, but its impact is lessened with the over-evaluation of those ideas. If you enjoy a good post-apocalyptic novel EARTH ABIDES may be the answer, but tread warily, because some of its impact and importance has worn away with the passing years.
-Gravetapping
Book Review: A pillar of the genre
Summary: 5 Stars
Audible.com recently recorded what I think is the first ever audio version of George R. Stewart's classic novel, Earth Abides, so I decided to give it another read. I've read it before of course, but it's probably been almost 20 years since the last time, so I was excited to get into it again.
Written in 1949, Earth Abides, is probably the earliest "modern" example of a pandemic post-apocalyptic novel. It follows Isherwood Williams, known as just Ish, for a period of about 50 or 60 years, starting after The Great Disaster, an unknown plague that wipes out all but just a few pockets of survivors. We see The Tribe, as they call themselves, started from just seven survivors, as it develops into a group of over a hundred people in the hills of San Francisco.
There are hundreds of reviews of the book around the web, so I'll just stick with a few thoughts. It' definitely a good book (it won several awards and is credited by Stephen King as an inspiration for The Stand), and I really enjoyed it myself, but I can see how if you're not a super-fan of the post-apocalyptic genre, you might think it's a little slow in places. The first third or so feels like watching Tom Hanks in Cast Away; there's basically zero dialog as Ish travels around the country looking for other survivors. Even when a few of them gather to start a community, the writing style is mostly descriptive, without a lot of talk.
But the material that's covered is perfect for anyone who wonders about how civilization would fare after an apocalypse. Would the children born into the new world be curious about the old one? Would they care to learn to read or to carry on the knowledge of the "Old Ones"? Would they view the Old Ones as people like themselves, or would they look on them as gods who created all the indecipherable wonders they see around them?
Ish struggles with the answers to these kinds of questions as he tries to preserve and pass on enough knowledge to keep some semblance of civilization, if not simply his people, alive. They face actual dangers, such as wanderers bearing disease, but the greatest threat to the future of The Tribe is their apathy. The few from Before are comfortable enough in their current existence to not want to bother reclaiming the comforts of the old world, and those born after don't know enough about what they're missing to care either. So they live off the corpse of the old world, eating wild animals or out of cans for decades, not bothering to learn how to plant their own crops or keep their own farms.
So, if you're looking for a primer on how to keep a small community alive in an urban environment after the collapse of civilization, this isn't it. This is almost an anthropological study, seen as it's happening, of the recreation of society from scratch, and as it goes on, we're not sure if that society will turn out to be recognizable to those of us left behind or not.
So like I said before, if you're not a fan of the genre, or are looking for a more action-oriented story, this might not be for you. But for a true fan, Earth Abides is one of the "Big Ones", on most every list of the best post-apocalyptic novels ever written, so if you haven't read it yet, you really should.
Book Review: Cold War Vision of 'The End'
Summary: 4 Stars
I first read this novel over 20 years ago in a college history course. It's a story that has stayed with me, and I recently wanted to discover if the book was a good as I remembered it to be. Well, in one sense, it was: Stewart's style is still powerful, the plot timely, and the characters all too human in how they react to the end of the world as they've known it. What I also discovered was how dated this novel is, for some of the same reasons it's still a good story: 'Ish', the main character, is right out of the Cold War era, as he's chauvinistic, detatched, and more than a little pompous at times. The plot is all too familiar to our post-modern world (and King's 'The Stand' has some similarities): some kind of plague wipes out most of the world's population; Ish, bitten by a rattlesnake right before this happens, survives. The first part of the book really puts the reader into a world where Ish fears he is the last survivor. Even when he encounters others, he feels no connection to them. On his cross country trip, he sees no reason to stay with even the kind people he meets; instead, he returns to his parents' house, where he begins to plan for some kind of rebuilding of the former society. Eventually, he meets 'Em', a mixed race older woman, and they collect a small group of survivors who try to continue life as they knew it, children are born, and 'The Tribe' grows. Inserted in the narrative is Stewart's description of the title: as mankind and his works diminish, animals, native plants, nature itself transform and overtake 'civilization'..."Men come and go, but earth abides" (345). At times, Stewart and Ish overdo it with the dramtic language. Ish is not always the most sympathetic character, pompous and seeing himself superior to most of The Tribe. The Tribe doesn't seem to really have the energy to truly rebuild -- or even build anew -- another existence; the incident when the water system breaks down is the best example: even Ish realizes that the survivors and their children don't have either the desire or the knowledge to fix the problem and continue to enjoy indoor plumbing. Even the digging of latrines is never really finished, as no one seems to care when the work gets too hard. One does feel for Ish when he finally realizes that no one cares about the old education; The Tribe essentially regresses to hunting and small farming, but also seems happier than the 'modern' man ever was. Stewart had a good idea of modern man's virtues and foibles, and also provides a thought-provoking study which makes the reader ask "what would I do in this same situation?" You can also see, historically, where this novel fits into the US Cold War fears of complete annihilation of our 'great' way of life, and the land of plenty that the US was in this era: how do the survivors eat? They plunder the cans in the supermarkets for decades. The Tribe simply forages off of what's left behind, and at no time does it seem that the leftovers will ever end. It's an interesting comment on the world Stewart knew, and a compliment to the abundance in the US in the late 1940s, when the novel was first written.Book Review: Dated but thought-provoking look at the collapse of civilization
Summary: 4 Stars
"...and the government of the United States of America is herewith suspended, except in the District of Columbia, as of the emergency..."
With those ominous words begins a classic tale of the end of human civilization. "Ish" (a graduate student whose given name is Isherwood Williams) is the barely tolerable protagonist who survives a rattlesnake bite (and possibly some strange infection) only to leave the forest and find a world of ghost towns. As Ish discovers, while he was in seclusion, engaged in fieldwork for his thesis, a virulent plague broke out worldwide and eliminated virtually every other human being from the face of the earth. Instead of descending into a drunken madness like one of the few survivors he meets, Ish roadtrips across the country looking for a vestige of the learned civilization he remembers. Alas, his quest comes up empty-handed, for, as he discovers, not many people have survived the plague, and those who did are (understandably) not too interested in higher education or high culture, preferring instead to focus on subsistence and maintaining their sanity. Along the way he picks up a loyal friend in the form of a dog, and finally returns to the Bay Area of California, where he meets a group of survivors and sets out to re-establish some kind of human community. In the second half of the novel, we follow the growth of this community and are faced with Ish's growing apprehension about humanity's future. Much to his chagrin, the aspects of civilization he prizes so much--music and art appreciation, reading and literature, mathematics and philosophy, etc.--seem to have no place in this new world where humans are once again a part of the natural order and not her proud conquerors.
While the novel itself is quite a good read, filled with interesting speculative insights into human life after the collapse of modern civilization, Ish provides an aggravating example of the 1940s American white male ivory tower academic (his character's qualities definitely date the novel). When he encounters black survivors in the South, he muses about the possibilities of exploiting them and establishing his own little fiefdom. He continually considers his cohorts in the new community as his intellectual inferiors, even as they manage to carve out a new life in the face of this overwhelming calamity while he reads his books. That he spends more time worrying about the restoration of high civilization than about the very real issues of day-to-day survival that they face was also incredibly infuriating. Ish is at his most distasteful when he contemplates his son Joey, a boy whose sole worth seems to be the fact that he is bright and can read. Somehow, though, in spite of all his character flaws, Isherwood Williams ' arrogance and detachment are finally overcome by his circumstances, and he has, if not a complete change of heart, then at least an acceptance of the reality that "men go and come, but earth abides."
Book Review: Immerses the reader in a unique world
Summary: 4 Stars
I swear it seems that all the reviewers of this book seem desperate to convince people that they've been able to read for a really long time.
"I first read this book back in Vietnam..."
"I first read this book about thirty years ago..."
"When I first read this book, I was only twelve years old, and..."
Great, we get it, you're old, and you can read.
Ahhh... Anyway, despite my grumbling, I do agree with the essential point that these reviewers made--that this is a book that pulls you in, that surrounds you with a "world entire," that creates a place that you inhabit completely from page 1 to page 317 (in the edition I have, anyway), that creates a world that you'll find hard to forget.
The book, "Earth Abides," tells the story of a man who emerges from a long period of solitude to discover that more than 99% of the planet's humans have been killed by a powerful virus, the man himself having likely survived only because of having been bitten by a snake around the same time.
The book's descriptions of the abandoned world are awesome, enlivening and atmospheric, and for some of us no doubt a secret dream come true. It gets even cooler whent the man decides to take a road trip across the newly desolate America--from California to New York City. That's the book's first section, and was probably my favorite part of the book, but the book remains interesting and engaging throughout. The man meets a woman, they have children, they meet others, they form a community, and then--this seemed a bit hard for me to swallow--they basically let all of civilization go, and three generations later they're basically a tribe of primitives who are happy and functional, but who can't read, can't use any of the technologies created by mankind, and believe the sun revolves around the Earth. Yeah, that happened kind of quick....
Set your disbelief aside though, and read this. It's well-written, nicely paced, and enjoyable, and the depictions of the man when he's really old seem totally accurate in their depiction of the sort of fuzzy and uncertain warmth of old age, though I'd need to have this book's other reviewers confirm that to be absolutely sure.
One of my only complaints about the book would be the 1940s mentality that saturates the main character's logic: at one point he says in a sort of wistful tone that maybe one day they might be able to care about such things as race again, he contemplates making himself king of two frightened black people that he meets, and he laments that the his community's lack of law has made it impossible for them to require that an insane girl be "put out of her misery." At first these comments were kind of amusing in a kitschy way, but then they really started piling up, and didn't make his character more endearing to me.
Overall though, this was a great book, and like almost everyone else who's read it, I'm sure I'll be thinking about it for years.