Note: My read but “waiting to be reviewed pile” is growing. Short rumination/tangents/impressions are a way to get through the stack before my memory and will fades. My website partially serves as a record of what I have read and a memory apparatus for future projects. Stay tuned for more detailed and analytical reviews.

1. A Mask for the General, Lisa Goldstein (1987)

3/5 (Average)

One of many attempts to dispel fascist gloom novels I’ve been drawn to recently, Lisa Goldstein’s A Mask for a General: A Novel (1987) imagines a deliberate retreat into the “primitive” as a way to resist. The story follows Mary, a young naive teenager desperate to strike out on her own, and her encounter with Lisa, a master mask maker. In this future, in the wreckage of the University of California, Berkeley campus (the parallel to the historical role of the university in the 60s is deliberate), various “Tribes” attempt to escape the grip of The General by wearing masks and taking on new personas detached from the present. Apparently after a series of disasters, Japan has far surpassed the United States as a technological power. Considering how the world viewed Japan in the 80s, this is not a ridiculous assumption. The General controls media and has dismantled every semblance of democratic government. Mary gets drawn into a larger, rather bizarre, attempt to influence The General that might tear down the state.

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