The Candy House Discussion Questions
7. What do you assume the novel is attempting to say about parenting by way of the elusive nature of Miranda Kline? 8. Within the ebook a billboard reads, “Never trust a sweet house! ” How does this billboard connect with the theme of the novel? Why do you think it’s best to never belief a sweet house? 9. Egan writes, “Not each story must be told.” How do you assume this assertion pertains to fashionable society and our relationships with tech and social media? 10. Who is Bennie Salazar in “A Go to From the Goon Squad” versus Bennie Salazar in “The Sweet House”? 12. Roxy is disgusted by experiencing her journey to London by way of her father’s eyes. Or Stephanie? Or Dolly? 11. What do you suppose The Candy House – https://phuket.thaibounty.com/2022/06/21/located-in-the-andaman-sea-south-of-phuket-island/ – is saying about the character of nostalgia? What do you suppose the ebook is making an attempt to say about the character of perspective? Jennifer Egan is the author of six previous books of fiction: Manhattan Beach, winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction; A Visit from the Goon Squad, which received the Pulitzer Prize and the Nationwide Ebook Critics Circle Award; The Keep; the story assortment Emerald Metropolis; Take a look at Me, a National Book Award Finalist; and The Invisible Circus. What do you assume it means for these characters to have the ability to learn someone else’s mind and reminiscences? Her work has appeared in The new Yorker, Harper’s Journal, Granta, McSweeney’s, and The new York Times Journal.
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Egan introduces these characters in an astonishing array of narrative kinds-from omniscient to first person plural to a duet of voices, an epistolary chapter and a chapter of tweets. 1. Why do you think Bix Bouton disguises himself as a graduate college students? Do you think there’s a deeper cause for him desirous to grow to be a distinct person (apart from not being acknowledged as a tech mogul)? Joining Karah Preiss and guest host Betty Cayouette (of Betty’s E-book Record) as part of the Belletrist Book Club, author Jennifer Egan takes a deep dive into The Candy Home, covering subjects reminiscent of know-how, the collective consciousness, disgrace, and social media, and taking The Sweet House to a whole new stage. Are we dwelling in some version of it proper now? 2. What do you think the “Self-Surveillance Era” is because it pertains to The Candy House? Why or why not? 3. If it had been out there in today’s world, do you suppose individuals would select to add their recollections to the Mandala Cube?
Bix Bouton’s firm, Mandala, is so successful that he’s “one of those tech demi-gods with whom we’re all on a first name basis.” Bix is 40, with 4 kids, restless, determined for a new thought, when he stumbles right into a conversation group, principally Columbia professors, one among whom is experimenting with downloading or “externalizing” memory. It’s 2010. Inside a decade, Bix’s new technology, “Own Your Unconscious”-which permits you entry to every reminiscence you’ve ever had, and to share each reminiscence in alternate for entry to the reminiscences of others-has seduced multitudes. Jennifer Egan’s newest novel, The Candy Home, spins out the results of Personal Your Unconscious by way of the lives of multiple characters whose paths intersect over a number of a long time. Intellectually dazzling, The Sweet Home is also extraordinarily shifting, a testomony to the tenacity and transcendence of human longing for actual connection, love, family, privateness and redemption. In the world of Egan’s spectacular imagination, there are “counters” who monitor and exploit needs and there are “eluders,” those who perceive the value of taking a chunk of the Sweet House.
Why or why not? 4. Within the Sweet House, Drew says, “how can I erase consciousness that has permeated each minute of my life because the occasion itself? ”. How did you see trauma dealt with in the fictionalized world of The Sweet Home? Is trauma one thing to be extracted and executed away with, or ought to or not it’s dealt with in a different way? 5. In the chapter Rhyme Scheme, why do you assume M is reduced to several data points, and how does this relate to the theme of the e book? How are we nonetheless ourselves if we externalize our trauma? Why do you suppose, as a counter would say, that “possessing data, in itself, is neither useful or predictive? 6. What is the Mondrian in this novel, and do you assume the group is modeled after any actual life group or movement? In case you have been speaking to a Mondrian member, what do you assume could be their cause for going in opposition to the grain?
They could make accurate predictions because they’ve a TON of information, most of which we’ve (ironically) freely willed to them, in exchange for the benefits of their products — usually freed from cost and extremely practical, like Gmail (or Google docs, on which I’m composing this piece right now). Zuboff’s book is fundamentally an attempt at warning, not unlike the story of Hansel and Gretel. It’s additionally an homage to free will, with a desire to salvage what’s left of it in a world that desires to automate us (e.g. Hmm, in the event that they assume I should purchase diapers, maybe it’s time I had a baby…). It’s a prophylactic effort to coach in regards to the psychic harms that the tech industry is inflicting. As excessive as it sounds, Zuboff is genuinely involved about our capability to think for ourselves. “Surveillance capitalism,” she writes, “unilaterally claims human expertise as free uncooked materials for translation into behavioral information.” This type of knowledge has given delivery to a “new species of power” that companies can exert: instrumentarianism.
