Notes and Thoughts on "Surveillance" by Jonathan Raban

About a week and a half ago I finished Raban's Surveillance and have been pecking away at a paper trying to sort of "splash about" in it. This paper is going slow, as there are many different angles one could explore in dealing with the book, though I'm pretty sure the author is better at reading newspapers and the New Yorker, listening to NPR and watching CNN than he is at actually writing. But I digress...


Here are some preliminary blurbs that may or may not find their way into the paper.

For the record, these "papers" will flow out much quicker from here on out.

I'm aware of the run-on sentences.

- As a novel it falls into a category with dozens of other books I’ve read that have fallen flat. His characters are two dimensional stereotypes—who represent different perspectives on the subjects of government control and surveillance, patriotism, “the American Dream” and our freedom— and who just happen to all share a life together. This is the entire premise for this book. With no plot, no clear story to take the reader to the end, the fiction-novel format and the characters seem to act as vessels for Raban’s own observations and perspectives. Each character is the extreme representation of his or her “place” in this country. The American-Loving Vanangs represents the freedom-loving, rational intellectual perspective, where a deep voice inside the well-educated patriot and reminds him “it could be worse.” On the other hand, Tad is your activist stereotype, to the extreme, where everyone is a suspect and everyone is out to get you. Charle’s Lee represents the person you weren’t even aware of that knows everything about you in the everyday world, and Lucy seems to be the voice of apparent “reason,” who tries to maintain a sort of life in spite of all the world’s changes. She is not entirely indifferent, but her attitude is one of the observer, perhaps outraged sometimes, perhaps not, but never really speaking on it and accepting that life goes on anyway. Alida fills the most important role: the innocent and impressionable population that could be swayed and brought to any side, making her invaluable in this war of “terror” between all others –the patriots, the suspicious, the indifferent, the people who watch you and the Government itself—that Raban illustrates. Though the book reads at a young-adult level and leaves much to be desired in the writing itself (Raban clearly isn’t a thirty-something year old women or an eleven year old girl,) the subject matter is fascinating and somewhat true, if not a little extreme.