"World War Z" by Max Brooks

As a bit of a break from proper literature in between the first and second books of the Raj Quartet I decided to pick up World War Z by Max Brooks, for some light reading. I was pretty disappointed - the prose is, of course, bad, but I don't necessarily mind that. The book is written as a series of interviews with different participants in the war, and each of them is a one-dimensional cardboard cutout; it is extremely uninteresting, although it picks up a little at the end.



What really struck me about the book, though, was how parochial it was. In spite of taking place in many places all over the world, featuring characters of many different nationalities, the book suffers a great degree of ignorant caricature (the Chinese are devious schemers; the Russians are cruel, ignorant fanatics; the French are self-obsessed and poor soldiers; the Israelis are brutal but ultimately enlightened and effective). There's also what struck me as an odd dose of Orientalism - the chapter on Japan is an embarrassingly romanticized "noble savage" kind of story about a blind Zen master-cum-swordsman who views the liberation of Japan from the Zombies as his spiritual duty. The parochialism even extends to his descriptions of the US: you can tell Brooks is from California and hardly ever leaves there by the simple fact that he consistently refers to highways in the book as "the I-40", "the I-80", etc.

But, bizarrely, the book is a kind of ode to American ruggedness, individualism and self-sufficiency of a sort that makes you think Brooks is the kind of person who takes Ayn Rand a trifle too seriously. Each of the most successful characters are the ones who break away from the team, do their own thing, don't follow the rules, look out for no. 1. Brooks also sets up this parade of straw men to blame the crisis on - ignorant politicians, incompetent generals, the celebrity-obsessed media - all of it clichéd, all of it boring.

There's also this (to me, very Randian notion) that the brutal elimination of those unfit to survive is an act of the highest nobility - the centerpiece of the anti-Zombie strategy in the book is a plan whereby the weak or unlucky are placed strategically in concentration camps to act as Zombie bait, buying time for those fittest to survive to escape to the mountains, where they can be sealed off and rebuild. This plan is, of course, developed by the kind of cold, rationalistic, emotionless (and brutal - always brutal) scientist that Rand herself so admired. There is an appalling passage in which Brooks has Nelson Mandela cast the effectively deciding vote in favor of implementing the plan, saying it is mankind's only hope. This is, of course, meant to be noble. (Mandela is not mentioned by name, but it is strongly implied.) And finally there's a notion that democracy is weak and ineffectual, and those countries that survived best were those whose rigid dictatorships allowed for the least room for namby-pamby, bleeding-heart sympathy for those who could not (and should not) be saved. (The exception of course is America - which survives largely on the pluck, ingenuity and effectiveness of its fighting men and women.)

After reading this, I got drunk watching the movie Zombieland with a friend. That was much better.