The song of earth; by Hugh Ni. Review on The Song Of Earth - Hugh Nissenson

HUGH NISSENSONS:)! ,admirer of solitude ,constant companion with sorrow,is some thing of a genius.Albeit he is not commercially successful ,the books are compulsively readable ,and are brilliantly conceived. One of his latest publication is THE SONG OF THE EARTH:-!,a novel about the first genetically programmed artist,published by Alonquin books.

The hero is John Firth Baker,born in 2037,a Rimbaud-like figure and “arsogenic metamorph”,a term of author’s own devising to designate a test tube baby who has been genitically programmed to an artist.John’s mother ,Janette ,a stage mother from hell,is artificially inseminated with the genes of an artist in an illegal procedure by a mad scientist ,Frederick…,who has a batty theory that the mothers of great artists must always be depressed .so Jeanette stops taking her antidepressants and eventually commit ssuicide after her son grows to her for making an experiment on him. The book is a kind of mad parody of joyce’s Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man,written in the form of e mail messages ,diary entries and informations downloaded from websites,interpersed with the fictional artist’s drawings ,which were done by Nissenson. In this novel ,according to my view the author envisions the future as an environmental disaster of burning temperatures,dust storms and droughts. In this world ,Human existence is determined largely by genetic manipulation .There are insurance caps on rejuvenation therapy .A child abuser is punished by being genetically programmed to become a “manic baby naturer”. In the final analysis Baker’s tragedy is not that he is genetically programmed but that it his mother doesn’t love hin enough.She just considered him as all stage mothers do, as a means of fulfilling her dream of being an artist. So definitely there is an implicit doom hanging over his attempt to create creativity .It is hubristic,and is a warning to be careful.