A POSITIVE REVIEW OF JUICE (2024) BY TIM WINTON
I had come across Tim Winton some time ago when I quoted his reason for writing as
Half the time I write to find out what I think.
I cannot remember how I came across this singular quote, but I used the line for a poem making fun of Bob Dylan for winning the Nobel Prize in Literature, as below (first verse only):
LOL, NO SIREE BOB, LITERATURE IT AIN’T
Half the time I write to find out what I think.
Nice quote
Stumbled across on the day
Bob Dylan got the Nobel Prize
What a terrible joke
Not that Tim Winton should have won either
But at least he’s an Australian writer I don’t know
So what do I think about it all?
I don’t know
https://wolfgangsperlich.blogspot.com/2016/10/lol-no-siree-bob-literature-it-aint.html
So now I have to apologise to Tim Winton for making assumptions, for now having read his book Juice, I would definitely recommend him for that famous prize that was so diminished by Bob Dylan, getting it handed to him for reasons unknown (I quite like Bob Dylan as a musician but cannot find any reason to put him on a pedestal for being a writer). Prior to reading Juice by Winton, I heard an interview on Radio NZ where he elaborated on his novel and the time it took him to write it (I will come back to this interview later).
After having read the last line and flipping back to the dedication on the first page, I can commiserate:
To those who, from the beginning,
Saw blood in the machine
Tasted death in the air
And cried enough.
Maybe way back Charlie Chaplin might have seen ‘blood in the machine’ in his Modern Times, but ‘tasting death in the air’ is a slightly more recent phenomenon what with Hitler gassing the Jews and Union Carbide’s Bhopal Disaster. While some people then cried enough, it was in the context of localized genocide that could be buried in the annals of history. Then came The End of History (and the Last Man) by Fukuyama, a bizarre treatise on proclaiming US-style libertarian democracy as the pinnacle of all human achievement that could not be improved upon – hence the end of history. Poor bugger must have his eyes closed to the point of right-wing ideological blindness, a condition that Tim Winton takes great exception to, especially as it coincides with the type of corporate gangsterism that has brought us to the brink of the climate catastrophe. Tim does not mince his words by naming the ‘evil bastards’:
EXXON (p.375)
and
Aramco, Sunoco, Conoco, Rio-Rio, Chevron
Sinopeco, Shell, Peabod, BP
Woodside, Santos, Petrobas
Koch
Fuckers! Fuckers! Fuckers!
(abbreviated from p.350)
These are some well-known names and given Winton’s central theme of having to execute the corporate baddies and their bloodlines in order for the good citizens to survive, this is courageous stuff: naming and sentence of death for polluting the air to taste of death. The protagonist in the novel spends much of his life on dangerous missions to obliterate these ‘objects’ that have dug themselves into underground palaces that work with advanced technologies to the point of having developed robotic slaves (Winton calls them simulacrums or ‘sims’ for short (possibly a clever take at the sim cards we use today to operate our smart phones and iPads). This may sound far-fetched, but as a dire warning it may well point in the right direction what with AI and chips already implanted in the brain.
While in general, I follow Chomsky’s dictum that ‘everything is possible, but many things are unlikely’ when evaluating the work of writers, here I suspend the critique of what is ‘unlikely’ as a shortcoming in fiction. Sure, the whole idea of a secret ‘Service’ – as a genuine service for the benefit of all good citizens of the world – that does military-style operations to get rid of the gangsters and corporate clans, all sounds too good to be true (as they say) – and as it turns out in the end of the novel, the Service in the end does not succeed and we’re back to square one of corporate dominion. But as a warning this is truly outstanding. Even Winton’s possible endgame of the ‘sims’ taking over from doomed mankind – corporate bloodlines included – seems not too far-fetched, what with contemporary warnings that AI robots will outsmart their operators. Personally, I don’t think so but the spectre of a primitive, weaponized AI – as in the Ukraine and Gaza/Middle-East drone wars – points to a dreadful future that in unison with the climate catastrophe will accelerate the war of the worlds, unless, of course, we all cry ‘enough’.
Which brings me to the radio interview mentioned above; the Radio NZ reporter interviewing Tim Winton about his book doesn’t get the point of the ‘Service’ performing its role of a United Nations-style law enforcement organisation that enacts sentence -of-death upon the people who, as Winton puts it, have a default setting of savage cruelty against humanity. The female interviewer thinks of the Service as a macho vigilante group, so Winton’s telling reply is that most of the operators in the Service are actually women, and at the end of the interview comparing them to the many contemporary climate activists who ‘put their bodies on the line’, calling them true patriots. Unspoken are names like Greta Thunberg or Gaie Delap, a 78-year-old retired teacher from Bristol, who was sentenced to 20 months’ imprisonment for her part in a Just Stop Oil protest in 2022. Sad but not surprising that this Radio NZ reporter doesn’t get it, being beholden to the establishment diktat that climate change is not a crisis, and certainly not a catastrophe caused by ‘big oil’.
Hence, regardless of the many ‘unlikely’ scenarios played out in the novel, the ultimate message is right on the spot: we are on a knife edge about human habitation on this planet (that Musk will take us to Mars to escape is of course another stupid fantasy to distract us from his neo-fascist enterprise). Winton says that he is still hopeful we will turn the corner, giving us some advice on how good citizens can organise in local socialist ‘associations’ that take care of their members, according to his frequently quoted Marxian maxim of ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs‘. Is Winton a Marxist? In a hard-hitting article for the Guardian (2024/sep/30), Winton also frequently quotes Franz Fanon but disavows ‘violence’ as a means of fighting for justice, which seems at odds with Winton’s fictional use of it. I suppose it would be unwise to openly advocate for violence in a liberal media outlet like the Guardian, lest it be referred to the ‘terrorist police’ in Australia. Being a sort of pacifist myself I nevertheless understand the Maoist saying that power lies in the barrel of a gun.
Which brings me to the conundrum of ‘power’. When Winton’s protagonist is training to be an operator in the service, his instructor told him to ‘feel knowledge as power in every limb and sinew’ (p.120). Personally, I feel that ‘power’ in all its incarnations is the very crux of the problem, i.e. what a socialist revolution needs to achieve is the abolition of all power. But how can one ‘fight’ power without power? Passive resistance? Maybe, maybe not. Organise? As an anarchist I mistrust any organisation with more than five members.
Maybe Winton could have spun the yarn a bit farther by allowing the clever sims to align themselves with the remaining human patriots, and thus prepare the path for socialism as the ultimate end of history: utopia. Winton has an interesting take on this scenario when he stands the biblical Adam and Eve story on its head, i.e. that the tree of knowledge guarantees easy living in paradise as long as silly Eve doesn’t eat the apple. So, getting kicked out of paradise – but having tasted knowledge - leads to some people to become perverted because they ‘know’ that paradise and easy living once was and maybe still is a possibility. And so, while the gates to paradise remain closed, they embark on
… bastadry. Lies. Empires. Slavery. That was not inevitable. And it won’t happen again. Why?
Us?
Yes, Volunteer. Because we won’t let it. (p.357).
In other words, knowledge is a tool for either good or evil. The good guys must prevail over the bad guys – somehow but don’t ask me how. It’s not a question of knowledge. Not even for the escaped simulacra who merely insist on ‘honourable treatment’ for being ‘free souls’ – whatever that means. AI, go and figure!
Another very laudable aspect of the novel is the use of ‘choof’, ostensibly marihuana, grown together with the vegetables and smoked by all and sundry, mainly as a way to soften the long summers underground. While the context is not exactly one of fun and games to be had, the very idea of even medicinal marihuana being widely used must be shocking to the current establishment, which, while having given up the war on drugs, is still opposed to it (e.g. the legalize Cannabis referendum in NZ was defeated in 2020 by establishment fear mongering). The Radio NZ reporter didn’t even dare to mention it. So, good on you my Ozzie mate and comrade to give ‘choof’ bit of a lift – your use of Ozzie vernacular sometimes evades me, but it is good fun to read it, if not to hear it (what in my book vernacular is for).
If there is any criticism to be made, I would question his overly long narrative stretches describing in great detail the protagonist’s missions, reminding me of the adventure genre popularized in Germany by Karl May who wrote volume after volume about Old Shatterhand (Karl May himself) and Winnetou, the noble Indian, and together they bravely overcome any and every adversity the Wild West can throw at them. Targeted mainly as an adolescent readership (I read all the volumes as a kid) I do wonder if Winton, who also writes children’s books (or so I read on his CV), does get carried away a bit in his Juice novel, what with ‘intel’ and ‘tools’ applied in the battlefields, including the arduous journeys to get there and back. At times it sounds like an army training manual.
In conclusion, however, I can only heap praise on Juice, carrying a message absolutely necessary for our times, namely, to avert the looming climate catastrophe by any action necessary, as exemplified by the likes of Just Stop Oil. Good on you, comrade Tim!
