Feed
by M. T. Anderson
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In a future where most people have computer implants in their heads to control their environment, a boy meets an unusual girl who is in serious trouble.Tags
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first line: "We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck."
This is a disturbing dystopian novel for young adults. Anderson's future is one in which nearly everyone gets computer implants in their brains, allowing for Internet "feeds." Mentally, they instant-message their friends, look up words or facts, receive barrages of advertisements, and visit trippy web sites (a just-as-taboo equivalent to doing drugs). While everyone with the "feed" has access to the same education/information, there are still professionals -- business executives, politicians, doctors -- but they all talk pretty much like surfer dudes. (Imagine President Palin. Or Doctor Dubya. Shudder-some, I know.) The planet has been so ravaged show more that people live in manufactured environments, suffer from open sores and hair loss, and...yeah, you get the point. show less
This is a disturbing dystopian novel for young adults. Anderson's future is one in which nearly everyone gets computer implants in their brains, allowing for Internet "feeds." Mentally, they instant-message their friends, look up words or facts, receive barrages of advertisements, and visit trippy web sites (a just-as-taboo equivalent to doing drugs). While everyone with the "feed" has access to the same education/information, there are still professionals -- business executives, politicians, doctors -- but they all talk pretty much like surfer dudes. (Imagine President Palin. Or Doctor Dubya. Shudder-some, I know.) The planet has been so ravaged show more that people live in manufactured environments, suffer from open sores and hair loss, and...yeah, you get the point. show less
I honestly don't know if I liked this book, but I did experience it very intensely. I think any writer that can write in this style is immensely talented- to be able to reveal a world through the voice of a character who is almost completely oblivious to it. Feed made me feel very claustrophobic and somewhat panicky, like watching a horror movie where you're shouting at the character on the screen to wake up. I'm assuming that that was what Anderson was aiming for; as the reader we can see that the vapidity and boredom of the characters is really a lack of free will and independent thought that's keeping them from doing anything to prevent the hell their world is becoming.
I really admire the book and the writing. I think it's incredibly show more clever and prescient, as it seems to become more and more relevant as time passes. I did love the author's note at the end where Anderson said that he hung out at malls for a long time to develop the slang and pick up phrases like "the truffle is undervalued." I think it's a great book, and I would definitely recommend it to most young adults, but I'm also not sure I ever want to read it again. show less
I really admire the book and the writing. I think it's incredibly show more clever and prescient, as it seems to become more and more relevant as time passes. I did love the author's note at the end where Anderson said that he hung out at malls for a long time to develop the slang and pick up phrases like "the truffle is undervalued." I think it's a great book, and I would definitely recommend it to most young adults, but I'm also not sure I ever want to read it again. show less
A bleak vision of the future where the children of the rich cavort in nightclubs on the moon while high on designer drugs and broadcasting their brains directly onto a combination of internet, television, and radio called the Feed. Each of them has a chip in their brain that lets them access all human knowledge at all times. They can also chat directly with their friends inside their heads as well as share experiences directly. All this media overload is great when the world is literally dying and everyone is beset by strange lesions caused by some unknown and unexamined manufacturing byproduct.
During spring break on the moon, our protagonist meets a girl who is different. Her name is violent and she's wearing clothes made of actual show more cloth. She's been homeschooled and her parents are weird technology-averse people essentially raised on a compound. They saved all year to send their daughter to the moon for spring break. Unfortunately, they are all caught it some sort of terror attack that temporarily disables their Feed chip.
While convalescing in the hospital, the protagonist and Violet bond. They begin dating and Violet has all sorts of strange interests and hobbies. She keeps encouraging the protagonist to think more deeply about their world. Unfortunately, Violet is having a hard time recovering from the attack. She's suffering long-term affects and it seems like her chip has been fatally damaged. Now she's slowly losing control of her body and her mind. She has dreams of really living before she dies but the protagonist is too freaked out by it all and ends up breaking up with her. Of course, this doesn't help and so he has to watch her die slowly knowing that he's made her suffering worse.
A grim but compelling book that reminds me of A Clockwork Orange with the way new slang is seamlessly incorporated throughout. Dark but funny and beautiful. show less
During spring break on the moon, our protagonist meets a girl who is different. Her name is violent and she's wearing clothes made of actual show more cloth. She's been homeschooled and her parents are weird technology-averse people essentially raised on a compound. They saved all year to send their daughter to the moon for spring break. Unfortunately, they are all caught it some sort of terror attack that temporarily disables their Feed chip.
While convalescing in the hospital, the protagonist and Violet bond. They begin dating and Violet has all sorts of strange interests and hobbies. She keeps encouraging the protagonist to think more deeply about their world. Unfortunately, Violet is having a hard time recovering from the attack. She's suffering long-term affects and it seems like her chip has been fatally damaged. Now she's slowly losing control of her body and her mind. She has dreams of really living before she dies but the protagonist is too freaked out by it all and ends up breaking up with her. Of course, this doesn't help and so he has to watch her die slowly knowing that he's made her suffering worse.
A grim but compelling book that reminds me of A Clockwork Orange with the way new slang is seamlessly incorporated throughout. Dark but funny and beautiful. show less
So happy I re-read this and annotated it. I've always loved this book, but I find the dependence on technology and specifically a social media connection even more haunting and relevant now than I did as a teen. I love my phone and a few apps, but I can't imagine being constantly inundated with noise and images and endless fucking advertisements every second of every day.
I also found myself growing more and more angry with the main character the further I got into the book. This is not your typical teen relationship. Both characters have instances where I want to smack them, but I was legitimately furious with Titus by the end of the book. I can't remember feeling that way as a younger reader - maybe I saw something redeeming in him show more then? It's gone now.
Anyway, I love this book. I annotated with a friend so the copy goes back to her, but I definitely want to pick up a spare and annotate my own as well. Maybe by the time I do that, my thoughts on Titus will have changed again! show less
I also found myself growing more and more angry with the main character the further I got into the book. This is not your typical teen relationship. Both characters have instances where I want to smack them, but I was legitimately furious with Titus by the end of the book. I can't remember feeling that way as a younger reader - maybe I saw something redeeming in him show more then? It's gone now.
Anyway, I love this book. I annotated with a friend so the copy goes back to her, but I definitely want to pick up a spare and annotate my own as well. Maybe by the time I do that, my thoughts on Titus will have changed again! show less
'Feed' was born from the the era of internet and social networking and tied closer to our modern capitalist world where corporation thrive in this consumer utopia. Set in a world which carry the undefined line between utopia/dystopia as Huxley's Brave New World, Feed was driven by the two star-crossed love whose life were entangled in the prophetic mess of what it would be in a world where it was an advertising utopia without the shackles of human ethics and social responsibility.
I couldn't deny that this book carry similar prerogative to what Suzanne Collins did with The Hunger Games where she uses Reality TV mania that center around moral decay and human desensitization. Curiously enough this book is published almost eleven years show more ago, earlier than Collin's work but are still relevant today and curiously prophetic in the same way as some older scifi literature did to this day.
The story centered around the character Titus and his fateful meeting with the curious beautiful smart girl, Violet, on the moon and the events following their meetings which soon drew these two away from each other. Despite romance being one of the focus of the story, the book largely play up on the possibility of what will happen if instead of physical computers, we were embedded by brain computer implant which send feeds from by just thinking.
Imagine writing this reviews by using the mind. Checking up on other reviews. Chatting and PM-ing without even speaking. Listening to the music without earphones or watching viral videos right in front of the eye or tweeting without lifting a finger. Not to mention how some of this can be achieved by using Google glass.
It is also a world where everyone was driven by consumerism. How your own taste shape how limitless advertising can be. How you are still being bombarded by sale offers, fashion advices, musical recommendation and urges to follow the trend to look cool. (Again, another notable search engine came into mind) This is a utopia for students where School was bought by corporations and trademarked and the only thing they teach to you was how to get good jobs and how to get good bargains. Why can't they when they have feeds to give the informations just by seeking it.
However, this have its own direct consequences too. How language and communication differs and everyone including the adults speaking like their own version of 'Nadsat'. How the service industry are driven to sell you products and despite how awful something can be the customer service can expertly manipulate you into the betterment of the company. How those who have in power can use and dispose you as they like, merely because your usefulness as a direct consumer are diminished. Why not? Most of these privileged folks are genetically altered in one way or another. Even some of the characters themselves use excessive body modifications to stay within the cool circle.
Again, this book is surprisingly deep as you go on through after you tolerate the character's speech pattern. Soon I was engrossed by the character development as well as the world building. Initially, I do think Violet is a classic garden variety 'Manic Pixie Dream Girl' in the beginning. How could it not be, its narrated by a boy who found himself falling for a very 'weird' intelligent girl. Luckily for me, the dream girl evolved to become your average girl who struggle to fit in the world that the main character lives in. Then things began to get even more interesting.
I was quite surprised that the author included something that was called "Filet Mignon Farm". I have spent a year being a neighbour to the next door stem cell department and I seriously noted the grim application stem cells can become if commercialized. Not to mention how its prone to get contaminated but considering the application of stem cells for human consumption is getting even more realized now than ever, the novel does give an insight about what will happen if intense commercialization was in favor over the well-being of the planet earth to feed the human culture and keep everyone in a state of leisure and secluded from becoming a functioning being. Its like being subdued and in shackles even when the rest are dying.
If everyone write literary YA fiction like M.T. Anderson does, I would gobble up the genre and puking out endorsements. It was rare for this to happen to me but the book is riddled with depth that made it a worthy award winning book as it is.
However, I don't really think the book is a suitable read for those who are easily emotionally invested by the harsh criticism that the author drew as his inspiration. Why wouldn't one be? We're all addicted to internet by now. Our social circles are more likely to have noses to smartphone screens than they are with each other. How communication differs now with our technology. The whole point of the satire rung significant to this social networking era.
As far as speculative fiction goes, this version of future are more realistic than Brave New World itself. Read it and weep. show less
I couldn't deny that this book carry similar prerogative to what Suzanne Collins did with The Hunger Games where she uses Reality TV mania that center around moral decay and human desensitization. Curiously enough this book is published almost eleven years show more ago, earlier than Collin's work but are still relevant today and curiously prophetic in the same way as some older scifi literature did to this day.
The story centered around the character Titus and his fateful meeting with the curious beautiful smart girl, Violet, on the moon and the events following their meetings which soon drew these two away from each other. Despite romance being one of the focus of the story, the book largely play up on the possibility of what will happen if instead of physical computers, we were embedded by brain computer implant which send feeds from by just thinking.
Imagine writing this reviews by using the mind. Checking up on other reviews. Chatting and PM-ing without even speaking. Listening to the music without earphones or watching viral videos right in front of the eye or tweeting without lifting a finger. Not to mention how some of this can be achieved by using Google glass.
It is also a world where everyone was driven by consumerism. How your own taste shape how limitless advertising can be. How you are still being bombarded by sale offers, fashion advices, musical recommendation and urges to follow the trend to look cool. (Again, another notable search engine came into mind) This is a utopia for students where School was bought by corporations and trademarked and the only thing they teach to you was how to get good jobs and how to get good bargains. Why can't they when they have feeds to give the informations just by seeking it.
However, this have its own direct consequences too. How language and communication differs and everyone including the adults speaking like their own version of 'Nadsat'. How the service industry are driven to sell you products and despite how awful something can be the customer service can expertly manipulate you into the betterment of the company. How those who have in power can use and dispose you as they like, merely because your usefulness as a direct consumer are diminished. Why not? Most of these privileged folks are genetically altered in one way or another. Even some of the characters themselves use excessive body modifications to stay within the cool circle.
Again, this book is surprisingly deep as you go on through after you tolerate the character's speech pattern. Soon I was engrossed by the character development as well as the world building. Initially, I do think Violet is a classic garden variety 'Manic Pixie Dream Girl' in the beginning. How could it not be, its narrated by a boy who found himself falling for a very 'weird' intelligent girl. Luckily for me, the dream girl evolved to become your average girl who struggle to fit in the world that the main character lives in. Then things began to get even more interesting.
I was quite surprised that the author included something that was called "Filet Mignon Farm". I have spent a year being a neighbour to the next door stem cell department and I seriously noted the grim application stem cells can become if commercialized. Not to mention how its prone to get contaminated but considering the application of stem cells for human consumption is getting even more realized now than ever, the novel does give an insight about what will happen if intense commercialization was in favor over the well-being of the planet earth to feed the human culture and keep everyone in a state of leisure and secluded from becoming a functioning being. Its like being subdued and in shackles even when the rest are dying.
If everyone write literary YA fiction like M.T. Anderson does, I would gobble up the genre and puking out endorsements. It was rare for this to happen to me but the book is riddled with depth that made it a worthy award winning book as it is.
However, I don't really think the book is a suitable read for those who are easily emotionally invested by the harsh criticism that the author drew as his inspiration. Why wouldn't one be? We're all addicted to internet by now. Our social circles are more likely to have noses to smartphone screens than they are with each other. How communication differs now with our technology. The whole point of the satire rung significant to this social networking era.
As far as speculative fiction goes, this version of future are more realistic than Brave New World itself. Read it and weep. show less
This was a re-read, in preparation for leading a group discussion at school. Of course, it's an utterly brilliant book, and more hilarious than I remembered. It was also exactly as depressing as I remembered; I put off the re-read a long time for that reason. It precisely pushes my buttons about advertising, consumption, the American bubble, and generally fiddling while Rome burns. Twelve years after it came out, we're that much closer to the world of the book; it's impressively and demoralizingly prescient. If you need me in the next few days, I'll be rocking back and forth in my house, ordering pants on the internet to dull the pain of existence.
"You need the noise of your friends, in space." (page 4)
Titus is your average teen slacker looking to party with his affluent slacker friends over spring break...up on the moon. And maybe even, like, meet someone, you know? Enter Violet, an unusual girl who cares about the world beyond the interactive shopping malls and the Internet embedded in everyone’s brains. Between space and cyberspace, can Titus rise above his hyperconsumeristic decadence to forge a meaningful relationship with her?
My VOYA ratings: 5Q (“Hard to imagine it being better written”) and 3P (“Will appeal with pushing”). With a genius for satire, Anderson immerses the reader in a total dystopian experience through the illiterate slang and sentence fragments of show more the adolescent narrator and his peers (and even his doctor, good heavens), and through snippets of the feed itself at the end of chapters. I cannot imagine the language and style and plot of the novel being any better, yet that same language and style and plot will certainly grate some nerves and turn off some readers. Young adults who are wowed by this wickedly funny satire, however, will be poised to discover subversive classics such as CATCH-22, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, and SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE. And they will be challenged to take a hard look at themselves in their own world from any number of angles: media consumption, materialism, environmental degradation, corporate culture, U.S. foreign policy, language and critical thinking, public education, masculinity, etc.
My initial reaction to the clever technological dystopia of FEED was along the lines of “LOL M.T. Anderson read a bit too much Nicholas Carr [famous article in THE ATLANTIC, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” and THE SHALLOWS: WHAT THE INTERNET IS DOING TO OUR BRAINS] before gifting this brilliant satire to the world.” Then I checked the publication date, and holy cannoli, FEED came out in 2002! So it could very well be the other way around.
Ultimately FEED will go down as one of my all-time favorites because it is parked squarely at the intersection of hilarious and disturbing, to paraphrase a NEW YORK TIMES review (http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/17/books/children-s-books-in-brief-794139.html). Anderson withholds a happy ending for the protagonist and his world, much as he did in THIRSTY (an approach which reminds me a little of the way Joss Whedon kills off characters in his shows). He seems to situate his stories at the cusp of an apocalypse. He seems interested in what leads to ruination. And there are no sequels. It’s maddening, and I love it.
But after nearly 200 pages of audibly snorting at punchlines (I won't spoil any of them for you) and reading choice passages aloud to whoever was in the vicinity, what clinched it for me were items 11 and 12 on Violet’s “definitive list of things I want to do” (page 184):
"11. I want to say we’re from Fort Wayne. And have the proprietor frown, and know we’re lying, but still nod.
12. I would like to actually be from Fort Wayne. Or from a small town outside of it. We won’t have the feed, and we’ll go to 'movies' on dates. We’ll kiss in the upcar. And then, when I’m in my twenties, I’ll go east to the big city, to find my first job."
This reader from a small town outside of Fort Wayne nearly choked as Anderson’s words made full impact on a sensitive part of the brain that is directly connected to the soul. How on earth did he know? show less
Titus is your average teen slacker looking to party with his affluent slacker friends over spring break...up on the moon. And maybe even, like, meet someone, you know? Enter Violet, an unusual girl who cares about the world beyond the interactive shopping malls and the Internet embedded in everyone’s brains. Between space and cyberspace, can Titus rise above his hyperconsumeristic decadence to forge a meaningful relationship with her?
My VOYA ratings: 5Q (“Hard to imagine it being better written”) and 3P (“Will appeal with pushing”). With a genius for satire, Anderson immerses the reader in a total dystopian experience through the illiterate slang and sentence fragments of show more the adolescent narrator and his peers (and even his doctor, good heavens), and through snippets of the feed itself at the end of chapters. I cannot imagine the language and style and plot of the novel being any better, yet that same language and style and plot will certainly grate some nerves and turn off some readers. Young adults who are wowed by this wickedly funny satire, however, will be poised to discover subversive classics such as CATCH-22, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, and SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE. And they will be challenged to take a hard look at themselves in their own world from any number of angles: media consumption, materialism, environmental degradation, corporate culture, U.S. foreign policy, language and critical thinking, public education, masculinity, etc.
My initial reaction to the clever technological dystopia of FEED was along the lines of “LOL M.T. Anderson read a bit too much Nicholas Carr [famous article in THE ATLANTIC, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” and THE SHALLOWS: WHAT THE INTERNET IS DOING TO OUR BRAINS] before gifting this brilliant satire to the world.” Then I checked the publication date, and holy cannoli, FEED came out in 2002! So it could very well be the other way around.
Ultimately FEED will go down as one of my all-time favorites because it is parked squarely at the intersection of hilarious and disturbing, to paraphrase a NEW YORK TIMES review (http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/17/books/children-s-books-in-brief-794139.html). Anderson withholds a happy ending for the protagonist and his world, much as he did in THIRSTY (an approach which reminds me a little of the way Joss Whedon kills off characters in his shows). He seems to situate his stories at the cusp of an apocalypse. He seems interested in what leads to ruination. And there are no sequels. It’s maddening, and I love it.
But after nearly 200 pages of audibly snorting at punchlines (I won't spoil any of them for you) and reading choice passages aloud to whoever was in the vicinity, what clinched it for me were items 11 and 12 on Violet’s “definitive list of things I want to do” (page 184):
"11. I want to say we’re from Fort Wayne. And have the proprietor frown, and know we’re lying, but still nod.
12. I would like to actually be from Fort Wayne. Or from a small town outside of it. We won’t have the feed, and we’ll go to 'movies' on dates. We’ll kiss in the upcar. And then, when I’m in my twenties, I’ll go east to the big city, to find my first job."
This reader from a small town outside of Fort Wayne nearly choked as Anderson’s words made full impact on a sensitive part of the brain that is directly connected to the soul. How on earth did he know? show less
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ThingScore 100
Subversive, vigorously conceived, painfully situated at the juncture where funny crosses into tragic, ''Feed'' demonstrates that young-adult novels are alive and well and able to deliver a jolt. The fact that it is a finalist for the National Book Award is in itself a good sign.
added by stephmo
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Author Information
37+ Works 16,925 Members
Some Editions
Awards and Honors
Awards
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Notable Lists
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Has as a student's study guide
Common Knowledge
- Original title
- Feed
- Original publication date
- 2002
- People/Characters
- Titus; Violet; Pro Bono (William Williams); Marty; Nsia; Link (show all 12); Dr. Trefusis; Calista; Pomp; Quendy; Slant; Loga
- Important places
- Earth; Gwynn's Island, Virginia, USA (fictional); The Moon; Boston, Massachusetts, USA; space; Creville Heights, USA (fictional)
- Epigraph
- “O dear white children casual as birds,
Playing among the ruined languages,
So small beside their large confusing words,
So gay against the greater silences
Of dreadful things you did …”
<... (show all)br>—from “Anthem for St. Cecilia’s Day,”
W. H. Auden - Dedication
- To all those who resist the feed-M.T.A
- First words
- We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck.
- Quotations
- "Everything we've grown up with the stories on the feed, the games, all of that it's all streamlining our personalities so we're easier to sell to."
You know, I think death is shallower now. It used to be a hole you fell into and kept falling. Now it's just a blank.
But we have entered a new age. We are a new people. It is now the age of oneiric culture, the culture of dreams. - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Everything must go.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)And so I light out for the unknown regions. - Publisher's editor
- Liz Bicknell; Kara LaReau
- Original language
- English
Classifications
- Genres
- Teen, Fiction and Literature, Science Fiction, Young Adult
- DDC/MDS
- 813.54 — Literature & rhetoric American literature in English American fiction in English 1900-1999 1945-1999
- LCC
- PZ7 .A54395 .F — Language and Literature Fiction and juvenile belles lettres Fiction and juvenile belles lettres Juvenile belles lettres
- BISAC
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