Review: PTA’s Master-Piece & The Cult of Corporate America
“Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.”
George Orwell“The victim of mind manipulation does not know that he is a victim. To him the walls of his prison are invisible, and he believes himself to be free.”
Aldous Huxley“Thou shalt be free
The Tempest
As mountain winds: but then
exactly do
All points of my command.”I finally got round to watching The Master which I’d somehow missed and yes, it is a masterpiece. On the face of it, a WWII veteran with PTSD struggles with the transition to civvy street, drifting from job to job and succumbing to serious alcoholism, before being taken in by a manipulative cult leader who examines people’s past lives. (Loosely based on the infamous L. Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology.)
Review: Little Scratch by Rebecca Watson
Published earlier this month, Little Scratch by Rebecca Watson has been universally praised. In this debut novel we follow a day in the life of a young woman who works in a mundane office job. We’re in her head from the moment she wakes up, to the moment she drops off to sleep.
She’s extremely self-conscious, suffering ever-present anxiety and impulses to self-harm, troubled by a recent trauma. The memories often break through, but of course she hasn’t the time (or possibly the inclination) to fully process the experience. She is assaulted by constant distractions – email, WhatsApp, Twitter and colleagues making small talk, but those intrusive, traumatic thoughts are always there under the surface.