Book Review: “The Body Snatchers” by Jack Finney
The 1955 novel dramatizes how to spot, oppose and defeat irrationalism
Do I have your attention? Do you often start to nod off while you drive, read or watch a movie? Are you letting yourself get seeded for sameness? This last, pressing question, posed by author Jack Finney in his classic 1955 novel The Body Snatchers, reaches into your mind and doesn’t let go.
The short novel, popularly known as pulp science fiction, is a bare, philosophically astute story depicting the danger of conformity, collectivism, Communism and, really, having faith—belief without evidence—particularly in the status quo. It gauges, stirs and tests whether you consistently, actively focus your ability to choose to be alive.
In Graham Sleight’s April 2010 introduction, he argues: “What’s most terrifying about the alien infestation [in the novel] is how it somehow corrupts...[the fictional California town of Santa Mira].” Divorced medical doctor protagonist Miles Bennell and a divorced former girlfriend named Becky become “the few who have to fight off a mob of the many.” But it’s as if this mid-20th century tale’s written to provoke you—presumably scrolling, multitasking, overextending—into waking up from the modern slumber of the sludge of technology glut, fake news and the death cult of Wokeness.
