Everything for Everyone

I technically “finished” this because I skimmed the rest, but I more or less gave up after the Staten Island chapter. And ‘gave up' feels like it does me a disservice, because I should be framing it as, “died after a long struggle.” I wanted to put it down after the first chapter. I stuck with it as long as I could.

I am preconfigured to dislike it. I find anarchist theory and ideas to be woefully stupid, and I don't even know how to phrase that more respectfully. I simply do not think they are in line with reality. Not in a “you're saying no before thinking about it,” way. Part of it is that I believe a State can be a force for good, maybe in the same way that anarchists think that the Stateless can be. I'm not sure. I know there are a lot more examples in history of the State being a force for good than an anarchist “State” being a force for anything (to be fair, more examples of a State as evil, too). Anyway, I find the whole thought really dumb and bizarre, not to mention a woeful waste of time when so much could be done to improve the real world.

This is a work of fiction, so I'll review it like that. The writing is abysmal. An interview format can be interesting, though I think it is almost always an insanely lazy way to write because it lets the authors get away with such little detail and the infrastructure that makes a good story. You can do these things in an interview format, but these authors do not. They fail even to write decent interviews. No one in the world has ever or will ever speak like this. If an interviewer tried to interview like this, they the conversations would never get off the ground.

One of the authors is a professor at my alma mater. I frantically checked to ensure they DIDN'T teach in my program because I was appalled that someone professing human development would write such poor interviews. Surely, this is not how they engage when interviewing real people. I don't believe the people writing these have ever interviewed anyone. I hope not!

Struggling to put my personal beliefs about anarchy and its feasibility aside, considering the world described - there is no detail put into anything. The lack of detail drains conflict. There is no intention or opposition in the telling of this tale, and that means there is no drama. We are never held in suspense. We are never wondering what will happen next. If you set out to tell a story in an interview format, a certain amount of suspense is already lost because you are removed in time. So, you must keep us engaged somehow. They failed to engage me or try even to hold my interest.

In my book club, someone said something to the effect of, “it's in the aches, not the details.” I'm glad the book worked for them. That is not how books work for me. A good idea does not save a bad book, and let me be clear: I think this is an egregiously bad book. It lacks detail, it lacks consistency, it lacks interest in anything but the ideas the authors wanted to package up and proclaim as workable. They present no evidence for their assertions. They talk about a future 40-60 years from now in which everyone agrees with everything. They present no discussion of how the world achieved this peace, other than some passing glances at the great fun of remembering war and murder. Characters wave away any emotional conflict with “I've been to therapy.” Were it so easy.

I think these things MUST be engaged with if you're going to write a good book. If you want to write a vibes book, write a vibes book! But this isn't that - this is a work of worldly fan-fiction that tries to sell a political and economic ideology that does none of the work required to convince anyone. You can't give someone an idea and say, “figure it out!” That's a dumb thing to do!

This thing has already wasted too much of my time - safe to say I hated it!