Now I know that we have already read the book and that we aren’t really going to be talking about the “Odds Against Tomorrow” novel but I just have a question that was never answered, nor brought up within the novel, and it’s the title of this blog post: What happened to Seattle after the earthquake?
We know with big cities such as New York and Los Angeles, that if they get hit with a major natural disaster then the downtown areas will get fixed and cleaned almost immediately. Since those cities make a lot of money. New York City and LA are both top television markets and for the entertainment industry, they need those cities to be okay because the most money is to be made there.
But what about the case of Seattle? I mean Seattle is still a very big city, population and land mass, so how would the rebuilding project go if Seattle were hit but some sort of natural disaster (for the sake of consistency, let’s just say an earthquake)? How quickly would the government respond to help Seattle? Seattle is one of the biggest cities on the west coast and definitely the biggest north of California. I only ask this question because the book mentions how badly Seattle was hit from the earthquake, even having the ones who watched the disaster strike naming them “Generation Seattle” but they never once mention how Seattle was at the time of the story was taken place.
This also makes me wonder about the city of Portland and if they were hit by some sort of disaster, the what would happen to that city? I know in terms of population, Portland is probably the smallest of the big west coast cities, but has one of the highest population growths among those cities. I read this article over the summer saying that Portland has a ridiculously high growing number of college graduates in the city and Portland is starting to become, somewhat of a destination spot for college grads because it has sort of the same feel as San Francisco and/or Seattle without the cost of living.
So, if Portland got hit with an earthquake, how many people outside of the Pacific Northwest would truly care? Assuming that more people outside of LA and/or NYC would care if those cities got hit with a natural disaster. Because it seemed like no one really cared to help Seattle rebuild after their earthquake because the novel never mentions a rebuild.
I also wonder why the author chose Seattle. Out of all the cities to be affected by an earthquake, he chose Seattle. In the near future, if a city were to be affected by an earthquake or a tsunami or whatever the case may be, does the government just say “oh well” even if close to half-a-million Americans call that city home? The story just made me wonder that point that no one seemed to mention.
Great question! I have often wondered the same thing; why does Rich begin the novel with a massive earthquake that destroys Seattle but never really mentions it again in the narrative? The opening destruction certainly sets a dark, apocalyptic tone to the novel. Perhaps one interpretation is that Rich never mentions Seattle again in the narrative as a sort of satirical commentary on how our culture’s short attention span. That is, oftentimes the media seems to pay attention to a disaster only while it’s happening or right afterwards but then soon loses interest and moves on to the next disaster. Do you think Rich’s novel is guilty of the same short attention span or is offering a critique of it? Perhaps this is something you could delve further into with your own work of cli-fi.
Another interpretation might be that Rich, as New Yorker, just has a bit of east coast bias. A humorous stereotype about New Yorkers is that they really only think of what happens in Manhattan, and everything on the other side of the Hudson river is really just a vague conglomeration. Here’s a funny take on that as a New Yorker magazine cover: http://www.adambaumgoldgallery.com/steinberg/posters/view_of_new_york.jpg
I was wondering about the long term progress of Seattle as well, and was disappointed when there was never any further detail about it. I think that currently living in the Pacific Northwest made that portion of the book potentially more intriguing than if I had read it at home in southern California. I thought about my friends who are from Seattle and how that would have affected so many Seattle-born Oregon students.