Book notes | Red Pill
The Fourth Friday Book Club met on Friday, April 23, to discuss the Red Pill by Hari Kunzru.
The choice of title itself, Red Pill, is the opening challenge.
Originally, the phrase Red Pill was understood in popular culture to signify a free-thinking attitude, an awakening from a conventional life—for example, as portrayed in the 1999 film The Matrix.
More recently, according to the Atlantic (April 13, 2021), taking the Red Pill was adopted by some far-right political subcultures to mean that a person “had been radicalized in some ways.” It has come to represent the acceptance of conspiracy theories, of startling delusions and, from that, an acceptance of violent action in the defense of white supremacy and alt-right subcultures.
Inventive and thought-provoking
Now for a short summary of the novel Red Pill, itself. The unnamed narrator is awarded a fellowship and relocates to the Berlin suburb Wannsee. Wannsee is full of ghosts, there is the villa where the Nazis planned the Final Solution; also in Wannsee is the grave of a Romantic writer who shot himself and a companion.
There is a somewhat confusing digression to the far left, to the Stasi of East Germany, with the author suggesting that it is as violent and oppressive as fascism.
Our narrator binge watches television, an extremely violent police drama. There is a meeting with the program’s writer; the writer declares he now “lives rent free” inside the narrator’s brain. And so, it appears that is how the narrator is affected.
Paris, the Scottish Islands, and back to New York City, there is plenty to deal with: delusions, mystical rhetoric, and spirituality contained in far-right rhetoric.
The Red Pill concludes in New York on election night November 8, 2016. The narrator sees in the Trump election all the hard-right memes of the past year, manifest now into the real world.
For the Fourth Friday Book Club, Red Pill was inventive and thought-provoking. Our discussion ranged over layers of meaning and interpretation.
—Dorothy Marden. Fourth Friday Book Club co-chair
Book Club II to meet April 23
Fri, Apr 23 2021, 2pm
The (Fourth Friday) UMRA Book Club II will meet at 2 p.m. Central Time on Friday, April 23, via Zoom to discuss Red Pill by Hari Kunzru. New members are welcome!
A bold novel about searching for order in a world that frames madness as truth, Red Pill is an allegory about how well-meaning liberals have been blindsided by bigots with substantial platforms.
The Red Pill narrator relocates to the Berlin suburb of Wannsee after receiving a prestigious fellowship. Wannsee is a place full of ghosts, including the villa where the Nazis planned the Final Solution and the grave of the Romantic writer Heinrich von Kleist, who committed suicide in despair that “… no happiness is possible on earth ….”
After watching a violent cop show, the narrator fears that he is a party to a cosmic Darwinian battle that exposes him to an ugly, violent, alt-right world view.
An interesting side note: Among the noteworthy events is the date in November 2016 when friends gathered to celebrate the U.S. presidential election outcome, and Trump is declared the winner.
Hari Kunzru is not a familiar name for most U.S. readers, despite the fact that his books have been translated into 21 languages. His short stories and journalism have appeared in numerous publications, including The New Yorker, The Guardian, and The New York Review of Books, and Red Pill was cited among “Notable Books of 2020” by The New York Times.
Zoom information will be emailed with reminders in advance of the April meeting. Please contact Dorothy Marden at [email protected] or Margaret Catambay at [email protected] for more information or to be added to the mailing list.
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