The Child Buyer

John Hersey, The Child Buyer, NY, Bantam, 1960, ISBN 978-0-394-75698-1 (read online)

I read a remarkable piece of speculative fiction last week.  Although written in 1960 (before I was reading, or even born) and now out of print, I'm nevertheless surprised to never have heard of it before:  The Child Buyer by Pulitzer Prize-winning American writer and journalist John Hersey. Sharp stuff.

An excerpt:

BARRY RUDD: Mr Clearly kept referring to gifted students as the 'monster quotient' and kept talking about me as a 'deviate.'

SENATOR MANSFIELD: I noticed that was Miss Henley's favorite word, too, sonny. I don't blame you for bridling at that.

SENATOR SKYPACK: You got a better word for it, Mr Chairman?

BARRY RUDD: "While they were talking about their busybody old tests, I was having one of my regressive reveries--thinking that all my knowledge was innate; I'd been born with it. I'm often amnesic as to the source of my information, and I've just felt that I've 'Always known.' 'I just knew it.' When I used to believe in God I long had the image of facts and stories having been written in pencil on a sort of reel of microfilm made out of skin in my head by Him before I was born. I thought of God as being able to talk big and write very small.

SENATOR SKYPACK: Top off the rest of it, he's a blasphemer.

BARRY RUDD: I didn't intend any disrespect of your views, Senator.

(pp. 145-146, from 1964 Bantam Classic edition)

Although the entire story unfolds in the format of Senate Hearings, every character comes across strongly with an individual voice and agenda. The result is a poignant commentary on just about everything: education, politics, psychology, group dynamics, child-rearing, loyalty, patriotism, self-image.... What I found most alarming was that the basic premise--the very title--never proves an issue; no one questions that there might be a "Child Buyer" at all!  But the story isn't about the whether a company might legally purchase a ten year old boy, rather can the representative find the price of each very different townsperson so that the sale that Barry Rudd, a profoundly gifted child, might be arranged? 

Wry, haunting, funny, heartbreaking, timeless. This is dark commentary, as pertinent today as ever. In addition to the sad question of the gifted child's relationship with the larger society (outcast, curiosity, dependent, burden, commodity?), it further begs a deep and terrifying human question:  What is the price of our convictions?

Kurt Vonnegut: Dystopia toward a Better World

Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward. -Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Today is Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.'s birthday (November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007).

We're big fans of his writing at our house. His dark wit was born not only of frustration and humor but also, I think (as with good speculative fiction in general), with a view toward having the reader revisit uncomfortable issues and take a closer look. Reframe. Look again and work harder. And ultimately make things better in the "real" world.

If you aren't familiar with Vonnegut's writing--or wonder what it might have to do with gifted kids--check out his dystopian take on intellectual elitism in the short story "Harrison Bergeron".

THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.   -from "Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

It's a scary world if the law is that everyone must be the same, even worse when Diana Moon-Glampers enforces it. Certainly some GT kids relate to the frustration that the story's brings to the fore. Although set in a nasty fictional place, Vonnegut's story also offers a venue to explore truths about identity and expectations.

Worth a read and a discussion. And thinking about how to apply truths from fiction to make the world we live in better.