Because of his intense interest in the Soviet space program, my son Matt has become interested in the Soviet Union — how it came to be, and how it fell. One of his Christmas gifts was Francis Spufford’s acclaimed novel about the Soviet era, Red Plenty. It is set in the 1950s and 1960s, a time, the critic Dwight Garner said in his rave review, “when Russians really thought their version of Communism would make them the richest and happiest and most unfettered people in the world.”
Matt is halfway through it now. I asked him a couple of nights ago what he was learning from it. He said, “All the characters know that they are caught up in a doomed project. They’re starting to realize that it can’t succeed, but they can’t stop it either.” He later explained their predicament as, “like they are sailing across a sea in a boat they have to keep patching with duct tape, and eventually it dawns on them that the boat is made of cardboard.” I thought that was a great simile.
And then what follows is an amazing quote about how technology has reshaped our basic assumptions about the universe and how to live.
Leadingchurch.com 