Jonathan Parks-Ramage knows well that we\u2019re living in anxious times, and that the future looks less than rosy. That\u2019s apparent in the latest novel from the author, \u201cIt\u2019s Not the End of the World,\u201d out now from Bloomsbury. The book is set in a Los Angeles 20 years in the future \u2014 and things aren\u2019t going well.<\/p>\n
In the novel, the city is plagued by\u00a0disaster, destruction and death. The U.S. government is in the hands of authoritarians, and right-wing militias are terrorizing the country. Still, none of this is enough to stop the wealthy Mason Daunt and his partner, Yunho Kim, from holding an opulent baby shower, which becomes doomed very quickly. The action then shifts to Montana, where Yunho flees and joins a commune of Americans dedicated to resistance.<\/p>\n
SEE ALSO<\/strong>:\u00a0Like books? Get our free Book Pages newsletter about bestsellers, authors and more<\/a><\/p>\n The publication of Parks-Ramage\u2019s book came just months after the Eaton and <\/a>Palisades wildfires<\/a>, but Parks-Ramage says that there were people who\u2019d read the book prior to publication who found it prophetic.<\/p>\n \u201cSo many people already had advance copies they had just started reading,\u201d he recalls. \u201cThey would say, \u2018How did you predict all these things?\u2019 And it doesn\u2019t feel good. I\u2019m also not surprised, but I feel like the answers are right there for all of us if we look, and I hope that\u2019s what the book can also do: help people look at our present.\u201d<\/p>\n Parks-Ramage talked about his book via Zoom from his home in Los Angeles. This conversation has been condensed and edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n Q: What was the origin of this book?<\/b><\/p>\n It was my own dread. For me, novels are always a way to wrestle with my own anxieties, my own demons, my own fears. That\u2019s why my novels end up being so dark, I guess. It was back in 2020 that I first had the kernel of the idea, at the very start of the pandemic, and my partner and I were locked in our tiny apartment. It was feeling so claustrophobic. Then there was a fire in L.A. that broke out, not close enough to our apartment that we were in danger, but there was so much smoke in the air that you couldn\u2019t go outside. My only source of sanity during that period was going for walks around my block, and all of a sudden, my one source of sanity was now gone. That\u2019s when I had the idea for this mysterious smoke that envelops L.A., and examining all the different ways we are and are not culpable for the various things which are leading to the destruction of our planet.<\/p>\n Q: What was it like coming up with this dystopian, near-future version of the U.S.?<\/b><\/p>\n I feel like the best way to deal with anxiety is to confront the thing that you are anxious about, versus trying to push it away. When you push it away, your anxiety only increases. So setting it in a very grounded near future that feels plausible in terms of politics and climate, that was a way for me to confront the fact that this is a world I could actually be living in. This is a grounded dystopia. I could actually be living in 2044, and what does that mean for me? It involved a lot of research and a lot of looking both into our present but also our past to see various systems of oppression. In the book, there\u2019s the House Anti-American Speech Committee, which is reminiscent of [Sen. Joseph] McCarthy.<\/p>\n There are just many ways in which I also researched our past and how it informs our present and then projected that into the future. It was satisfying in that respect, and also gave me some solace to know that though it seems like we\u2019re living in the end times, and there are certain unique dark aspects of our current era, it has felt to other groups of people that I don\u2019t belong to like the end of the world at various points in US history, and that isn\u2019t actually that unique. There are histories of resistance and communities, queer communities, communities of color, disabled communities of groups, people who have dealt with versions of the oppression we\u2019re seeing now throughout history. So I drew some solace and also strength from that.<\/p>\n Q: The prologue of the book is shockingly violent; it grabs you and doesn\u2019t let go. Did you always know you wanted to open the book with something like that?<\/b><\/p>\n Yes. It wasn\u2019t the first scene I wrote in the book, but once I kind of figured out the general concept, I did go back and build a prologue, which I hope sets the stage. For me, I love using elements of genre. There are so many elements of genre that are mashed up in this, but there are so many elements that are also subverted. I always like playing with genre and queering genre, and then no one knows where to put my book because it\u2019s many things: ultimately, I guess, literary fiction, but it utilizes different elements of genre, and also subverts all of those tropes. So having that prologue, I did want something to grab the reader right away and make them go, \u201cWhat the [hell]?\u201d<\/p>\n Q: The book is also darkly funny in a lot of places.<\/b><\/p>\n Humor is my way to cope with any sort of trauma or disturbing thing. It\u2019s just such an essential part of how I see the world. And the satire for me was also a way to skewer a certain social milieu, in addition to having a book that felt very propulsive and violent. I wanted to have it feel satirical, but satirical in a way that didn\u2019t let anyone off the hook.\u00a0<\/p>\n Q: What kind of solutions do you want to offer readers of the book?<\/b><\/p>\n The lesson is when the state takes away our protections, we must protect each other. It is about finding ways to connect with people in your local community, finding ways to protect people in your life, reaching out to new people who need protection. Increasingly, as the government not only abandons us, but also oppresses us, I think that the key is other people and community. There\u2019s a character who is an anarchist, and anarchism becomes a thread through the whole book. I think a lot of people have a misconception of anarchism. There\u2019s this idea that, \u201cOh, it\u2019s just like, no rules and rock on, man, blow everything up.\u201d<\/p>\n There was a huge tradition of anarchy. It\u2019s a political movement that aims to destroy hierarchy in terms of the state, but replace it with laterally organized communities that operate with direct democracy. Everyone in these communities has an equal say in how they\u2019re run and equal say in advocating for what they need. I did a lot of research into anarchy, and I did find it ultimately very inspiring for the reason that it is a way to care for each other through mutual aid, even when you live in an oppressive state, to form little communities, little groups of people that operate outside of the state and say, \u201cHow can we care for each other despite what\u2019s going on? How can we come together?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jonathan Parks-Ramage knows well that we\u2019re living in anxious times, and that the future looks less than rosy.…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":137810,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1022,1582,276,2961,224,5337,1072],"class_list":{"0":"post-137809","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-la","12":"tag-los-angeles","13":"tag-losangeles","14":"tag-things-to-do"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115011988031650382","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137809\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}