Deep Down Dark

Literally, old news. But, oh, such a story. What a story. Sometimes I marvel at the insane experiences some humans have had. The 127 hours guy. The Titanic people - especially those still hanging on when the boat went right-side-up in the water. Delhi in 1857. Lest I sound ghoulish, I'm thinking of Hamlet's quote: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,/Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Shit can just get really crazy! Ya know!

Anyway, these 33 men certainly had a really crazy adventure, and thank goodness, it has a happy ending. Or sort of? The genius of the book (which I wouldn't necessarily call genius, but instead really-quite-nice) is how it begins as a story of survivalism, religious fervor, and the extremities of human experience, and then morphs into a kinda tragic look at the Great Big Social Machine, lubricated by a 24-hour news cycle. That is, the latter half, after the men have been discovered starving and barely alive in the mine, the mythical-adventure quality evaporates, people become normal people again, and it's kinda about sleazy journalism and platforms and celebrity and reality TV and the absurdity of it all and so on.

So much did it become about the about-the-story (meta!) that the book eventually spins out from the fourth wall, concluding with - well - itself! And the movie deal. Which will star Antonio Banderas and Lou Diamond Phillips. Yeesh!

In other news, weeping frequency on this book was a solid 25%.