Acquire Consumed Author David Cronenberg Copy

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συγγραφική προσπάθεια του αγαπημένου Ντέιβιντ Κρόνενμπεργκ και κατ' εμέ θα έλεγα άκρως επιτυχημένη. Ένα βιβλίο πρόκληση για όλους τους φαν του Καναδού σκηνοθέτη και όχι μόνο.
Ό,τι ακριβώς προβλημάτιζε τον Κρόνενμπεργκ τόσα χρόνια και προσπαθούσε με τις ταινίες του να το μοιραστεί μαζί μας βρίσκεται μέσα σε αυτό το βιβλίο. Κατάχρηση τεχνολογίας, διαστροφή, θανατηφόρες αρρώστιες, ψυχικά νοσήματα, παραϊατρική, υπερκαταναλωτισμός και πάει λέγοντας.
Ο Νείθαν και η Ναόμι μπλέκουν σε μια περίεργη υπόθεση που ξεκινάει από μια δολοφονία στο Παρίσι και καταλήγει στην Βόρεια Κορέα του Κιμ Γιονγκ Ουν και σε μια θεωρία συνωμοσίας που κανείς δεν μπορεί να καταλάβει αν είναι πραγματικά αληθινή ή ακόμα μια "οφθαλμαπάτη" του διαδικτύου.

Φυσικά, όσοι έχουν παρακολουθήσει το έργο του Κρόνενμπεργκ θα είναι εξοικειωμένοι με την εμμονή του δημιουργού με το ανθρώπινο σώμα. Μέσα στις σελίδες λοιπόν, διαφαίνεται αυτή η εμμονή με έναν μοναδικό τρόπο. Εικόνες από ακρωτηριασμένα κορμιά, παραμορφωμένα γεννητικά όργανα, προσθετικά μέλη ξεπετάγονται και σφηνώνονται για τα καλά μέσα στο μυαλό μας. Απόδειξη πως ο συγγραφέας Κρόνενμπεργκ μπορεί να δημιουργήσει παρόμοιες εικόνες με αυτές του σκηνοθέτη Κρόνενμπεργκ.

Όσοι αγαπάτε τον σκηνοθέτη αξίζει να διαβάστε το βιβλίο, όσοι πάλι δεν τον γνωρίζετε είναι μια καλή ευκαιρία να καταδυθείτε στον γεμάτο, αποτρόπαιες εικόνες, συμβολισμούς, αλληγορίες και τρόμο, κόσμο του μεγάλου αυτού δημιουργού.
/He's one of my favourite filmmakers but unfortunately his attempt to write a novel here was a massive fail, in my opinion this was absolutely garbage.


The characters were unlikeable, it was just really boring and pretentious,

He should stick to filmmaking and I'm really looking forward to his next one, Crimes of the Future,

"Let me unbox you, . . "
Aristide Arosteguy

This is a novel best suited to two audiences: those looking for innovative horror, and people interested in visionary possibilities of new media.
It would also be good for fans of firsttime novelist sitelinkDavid Cronenberg's work in film, but I suspect they'd fall into the first two categories.


I fall into all three, being a lifelong Cronenberg fan since I first saw the mad genius of sitelinkVideodrome.


Consumed is, as one might expect from the author, a challenging and strange book, I can describe the plot like this: two journalists investigate a Parisian crime, wherein a husband killed and ate part of his wife.
The former couple were influential philosophers, Célestine and Aristide Arosteguy, and a cute parody of JeanPaul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.
They made waves with a theory of consumer society hence one meaning of the title, Naomi and Nathan are lovers and colleagues, fellow gadget hounds, but they usually live apart, and follow their joint inquiry along separate, parallel lines.


What follows is a picaresque or road trip, as the two N's travel the world: Paris, Japan, Canada,

Hungary, Cannes, Holland.
Cronenberg teasingly refuses to give us much local color, offering instead the thin, usually techmediated views of our protagonists, or sketches of the people they meet.


So much for the plot's initial action, But I'd also need to tell you more about the Consumed's style, Consumed adores its surfaces and fetishes, It lovingly describes clothing, technologies, record covers oh yes, body parts, and interior decorating exactly as far as major characters obsess over them.
Technology looms large this is very much a novel about modern digital devices and how we intimately use them,

Consumed is also about pushing against discussing awkward or awful topics, mostly in a horrific way, Without spoilering too much, I can mention offhandedly cannibalism, murder, autocannibalism, apotemnophilia, acrotomophilia, deformed body parts, sexually transmitted diseases, cancerous body parts, and medical fetishism.
Which brings us back to Cronenberg's tone, He doesn't revel in these topics, but comes to them thoughtfully, from a character's mind, almost and sometimes literally clinically,

Back to the plot, and now I must hide some words, because after aboutof the book Naomi meets Aristide Arosteguy, and the first plot halts while we dive into this character and his backstories.
This sets up the final third of the book, a surprise plot involving Célestine Arosteguy, one of her old lovers, the North Korean film scene, insects as fetish and metaphor and political plot, hacking hearing aids by signals coded in old LPs !, and an arcane conspiracy.
This could easily have become a standalone story, North Korea looms large, ultimately, although that's one country we don't visit, and Rom a character whose viewpoint we never obtain.
We end in uncertainty, many plot threads left hanging in the air, Things look bad for shanghai'd Naomi and for Nathan, about to receive an unpleasant visit, There are hints of an ideology or even prophetic faith arising around the perhaps dead Arosteguys,

In a sense Consumed is an update of Videodrome, a deep dive into our current media obsessions and how they warp and delight ourselves.
"Naomi was in the screen" is how it begins, In a sense this is about limitation, especially by the end, Yet Cronenberg isn't simply a technoskeptic, at least not in the text he's too fond of devices and their powers, He sees their depths, and shares them with us through his wellinformed, perverse vision,

It's also a horror novel by any stretch of the term, There's body horror, dread, suspense, and even a touch of something deeper by the end,

It is also funny, although not everyone laughs with me, There are running gags, like many characters' obsession with landing a New Yorker story, or in Naomi and Nathan's banter, or nearly everything the bad Hungarian surgeon says.


I'd recommend this to the audiences mentioned above,

NB: I didn't read Consumed, but listened to it as audiobook, William Hurt does a terrific job overall, handling a wide range of accents, He seems especially at home with Aristide Arosteguy's voice, Early on Hurt inserts odd, nonShatnerian pauses into sentences that disconcert, but this ceases by the middle of the book, It's a pleasure to listen to, David Cronenberg is a film director who needs no introduction, and Consumed is his first novel, It's a difficult book to write about Consumed is an esoteric, cinematic thriller, full of references to and observations about many different topics, its setting switching constantly between the countries and continents of the world.


It's hard to not see Consumed as a book written by a film director the novel is very cinematic in scope, sweeping across great cities of the world as it follows two journalists on a quest to discover the true nature of Aristide Arosteguy, a philosopher suspected of murdering and eating his wife.
But as the novel moves forward, Arosteguy moves into the background and Consumed becomes the stage for the author's many interests the relationship between philosophy, technology and sex being just a small part of them.
Much of the book borders on voyeurism both characters are photojournalists, and the process of taking photographs is almost fetishized as the world of Consumed at times seems to be almost a dark reflection seen through a lens, and something even Cronenberg wouldn't be allowed to capture on film.


Still, for all its many interesting threads from Marxist philosophy, East/West differences, NIkon cameras and even North Korea Consumed is largely disorganized and without a clear path to connect all threads.
Its plot moves swiftly but chaotically, asking many questions but answering very few, I think it's a novel with potential for a small but dedicated cult following comprised of those willing to devote enough time to untangle all that Cronenberg has put in it but it has left me disappointed and feeling numb.
Fans of Cronenberg's films will find many of his signature traits on display in his debut novel: a fetishistic obsession with technology every electronic device mentioned in the novel is given its full model name and a rundown of its capabilities, a fascination with insects, a coldly dispassionate demeanor, and plenty of psychosexual kink.
Unfortunately, where a dispassionate demeanor can set the tone of a film perfectly, it doesn't work as well in a novel, making it very difficult to engage with the characters.
It is to Cronenberg's credit that the characters remain interesting even from a distance, but while the cannibalistic murdermystery at the heart of the novel is compelling, when your story is this twisty and opaque you really need to nail the ending.
Alas, in my opinion Cronenberg doesn't, The novel ends too abruptly, which left this reader wondering what was happening, Perhaps that was Cronenberg's intent, but as intriguing as the plot's labyrinthine turns were, I was hoping for at least a moment of revelation to bring it all together.
Still, I'm giving this one four because it held my undivided attention all the way through and even a lesser Cronenberg project is still something worth experiencing.
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