May

26

Book ‘Em: Future Crazy.

Posted by Christopher Waldrop

May 26, 2008 |

 Marge Piercy’s Woman On The Edge Of Time is an eerily quixotic story, contrasting a dark present with a potentially beautiful, although threatened, future. What does it say about our culture when a crazy person might be the sanest one among us? Throughout the novel we’re confronted with the question: is Connie Ramos crazy, or are her visions of a future utopia, a paradise being fought for by idealistic, well-meaning people who seem like anything but the products of a deranged mind, real? Has she really become unstuck in time? Unlike Vonnegut’s anti-hero Billy Pilgrim, Ramos’s world isn’t subjected to the horrors of war, but is equally disordered; she is equally powerless. Her tragedy is, in fact, more poignant because it’s a shared tragedy but, unlike war, it’s easily ignored. Even in talking about the book Piercy is ambiguous about whether the visions of the future are real or hallucinations, though. The irony is that, while Ramos is powerless in the present, the future into which she escapes is not one in which she’s powerful. Instead she is an individual, and she is, at times, as powerless there as she is in the present. Reviewer Michelle Erica Green calls Woman On The Edge Of Time “an angry text”, and yet the anger is countered by sadness that its hero is not able to control her present destiny, and may be just as powerless in a future where everyone would be better off.


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