Dead Reckoning

The Darkening Landscape of Contemporary World Literature.

- Elizabeth Fifer

Dystopia, a dominant presence in contemporary literature, knows no cultural or geographic boundaries. Its dismal assessment of human potential reflects a growing loss of confidence in our global future.

Dystopia is a defining characteristic of contemporary world fiction. Revolution has given way to devolution. The reduction of the body and the spirit, material scarcity, erasure of memory, and challenges to individual and group identity increasingly displace the older narratives of struggle and success. Eroded hope in the power of individuals to influence vast global forces—changing climate, fraying alliances, migrating populations, rapidly advancing technologies—though not new in itself, has become increasingly dominant.

In Vasily Grossman’s Zhizn’ i sud’ba (1980; Eng. Life and Fate, 1985), a narrative of the battle of Stalingrad, when the generals look through their binoculars, all they see are toy soldiers fighting, the outcome as much a matter of luck as theory. To an old guard at the Stalingrad Power Station who refuses to leave his post, “the mounds of earth, heaps of twisted metal, damp acrid smoke, and the yellow reptilian flames of slowly burning insulators” represent what remains of his life. Grossman’s panorama of the clash of armies gives way to a microscopically detailed description of a German industrial turbine that combines the slaughterhouse with garbage incineration. Humanity’s organic matter flows down conveyor belts from the crematoria. After dentists have removed any precious metals, it is transformed by heat into phosphate fertilizer, lime, cinders, ammonia, sulphur gas, and carbonic acid. Everything will be used.