NU Sense: COMMUNITY Issue 4
Reviews
Samantha Kurtzer
"Jester" (2012)
Taylor Seed, "A Student’s Review of the Common Book Project: M.T. Anderson’s Feed"
M.T. Anderson’s dystopic novel, Feed, critiques the decline of contemporary culture and its deleterious effect on language and grammar. “Text talk,” or the shortening of words and phrases, has crept into everyday speak to meet the ever-growing desire for immediate gratification. In Feed, this is shown through the eyes of Titus, a teenage boy living in a futuristic society, run by the world’s big corporations. Words such as “like,” “shit,” “huh,” and “dude” dominate Titus’ and his friends’ everyday language. This is only one of many language lapses present in Feed. M.T. Anderson imagines a future in which society as a whole has begun to collapse, but the people have lost the ability to understand and comprehend that they are in decline. As Anderson’s Feed suggests, when we lose our ability to communicate and use language properly, we ultimately lose ourselves.
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