Tilt by Emma Pattee

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

 

This book was our selection for this month for the Literary Lush Book Club. While ordinarily, I like discovering books I would not otherwise have read, I will say that I hated this book, for reasons this post will make clear. 

Tilt is a book about two things. First, the narrative story, which is that of a large earthquake near Portland, which strands the very pregnant protagonist in an IKEA, and her subsequent wanderings in the day after the event. The other thing, which is what I think the author really wanted the book to be about, was her ambivalence about pregnancy, motherhood, and the father of the child. 

 

Which, okay, I guess. If that were it, I would just have said, “this isn’t my kind of book,” and moved on. I have read a number of books like that, which didn’t do it for me, but for which I can just admit that, like, say, Brittany Spears, I just don’t find interesting. 

 

But this book wasn’t merely not my thing, it was genuinely problematic in a very real and a very moral way. It commits (in my opinion) the serious literary crime of portraying humans as acting in ways that humans do not in fact act. But more troublingly, the author chose to indulge in lazy stereotypes that, despite not actually saying it out loud, constitute racist and classist dog whistles. This then contributes to certain phobias and fantasies that middle class white people tend to have about minorities and impoverished people: that they are “animals” just waiting for a disaster to rip the veneer of civilization off, and then they will loot and steal and mug and do violence just for shits and giggles. 

 

Which is literally not what humans do - including poor people and people of color.

 

I find this particularly offensive because I have literally lived through a significant earthquake (the Whittier Narrows quake) while living in a primarily minority, working class neighborhood. So I have seen first hand how people respond. And it isn’t at all what this book portrays. 

 

But why listen to me? Maybe take the time to read Rebecca Solnit’s excellent and well researched book on disasters, A Paradise Built in Hell. 

 

The bottom line is that there are two competing phenomena during disasters:

 

Most humans pull together during disasters, creating mutual communities of aid. In fact, ordinary people tend to do better than organizations at rescuing people, feeding people, and otherwise getting stuff done. 

 

This is my experience as well. And it is well documented. But so also is the other one:

 

Along with this cooperation tends to come what Solnit calls “elite panic.” That is, those who benefit from the status quo feel threatened by their loss of power and privilege, and tend to do really horrible things. 

 

To quote Solnit here:

 

“[F]ear of social disorder; fear of poor, minorities, and immigrants; obsession with looting and property crime; willingness to resort to deadly force; and actions taken on the basis of rumor.”  

 

And that is exactly what this fucking book does: it blithers on and pushes the narrative of elite panic: the fear of social disorder, fear of the poor, fear of minorities, obsession with looting and property crime, a bizarrely violent scene that not only makes no sense but feels like a fantasy come to life. 

 

Now, to be clear, the author quite obviously tries to avoid looking racist and classist. Few characters are even described at all - we have no idea what anyone looks like. She creates “plausible deniability" by never saying the looters and the teenaged gang members are minorities or poor. 

 

Instead, she just lets the dog whistle work. Clearly nobody is envisioning white collar white people looting televisions. Clearly nobody is envisioning the teenagers as preppies. We all know what she is talking about because it is already culturally engrained. 

 

And, for those of us who have visited Portland (which is the whitest large city in the US for historical reasons) and can thus picture where the protagonist is wandering (there is a map in the book too if you need), it is obvious that she is walking through parts of the city that suffer from poverty and the lingering effects of segregation and redlining. No seriously, go check out the book’s map and compare it to the historical redlining map for Portland. 

 

This book is a master class on how to say “scary black people” without actually saying it. 

 

I personally believe that authors, editors, and publishers have moral duties to society and to the more vulnerable members of that society. 

 

The crux of this is to avoid doing harm. Whenever an author indulges in harmful stereotypes, it harms those who belong to those stereotyped groups. This is well known and generally understood. 

 

For example, if a writer were to openly write female characters as incompetent, unintelligent, and needing male supervision, it would be quickly flagged as inappropriate. Likewise, if open “lazy negro” tropes, or “slant-eyed orientals,” or “poor people are stupid” or other equally lazy and harmful social prejudices were to be used, I believe they would have been flagged and removed. 

 

The author gets away with it in this case because she avoids open identification of groups, and relies on stereotypes which have unfortunately become part of our cultural background. 

 

That doesn’t make this okay, in any way. In fact, it is more insidious, because it feeds prejudices that are not always acknowledged - or admitted. 

 

In this case, by feeding the stereotypes that poor people - particularly people of color - will go feral and loot during disasters, the author perpetuates our racist and classist botched responses to disasters, causing significant human suffering for the most vulnerable in our society.

 

So, for me, this book isn’t merely bad literature, but it is bad morality, and as such, I do not recommend bothering with this book. 

 

That said, let me get into things a bit more. 

 

Even without the dog whistles, I have a lot of issues with the book. As I noted, very few people in this book behave in a recognizably human manner. Honestly, the poor IKEA worker, the young woman, is the one person that made sense to me. My wife noted that in real life, she could well have been Black. It turns out eventually that she isn’t, but a retail job, young child, etc., well…at minimum, she is the kind of low income, working class person that would plausibly be helpful in a disaster.

 

Here is the thing: normal humans act in predictable ways in a disaster like this. 

 

We first check to see if we are intact, or at least intact enough. We get ourselves free of encumbrances, stop bleeding if we can. After we take care of ourselves, we work to help others around us, make sure others are okay and help them if not. If we are home, we start with others in the household, then check our neighbors.

 

The IKEA worker does exactly that. 

 

We would typically next check things we were taught, like looking for gas leaks or other unsafe conditions, help rescue those around us if needed.

 

Once the triage is complete, and only then, would we move location. And, if we move, it would be typically to go home. 

 

In fact, as someone who lives in earthquake country, most of us have had this discussion. If safe, go home and meet there. If not, then plant your butt and wait where you are. In no case should one wander around. 

 

The protagonist (and probably by extension, the author) are the kinds of people that us rational and prepared sorts would have to force to behave rationally and not hurt themselves. Seriously. Gah. 

 

Again, here the IKEA worker is the lone normal person. She solves the immediate issues around her, then goes to get her kid. 

 

Here, though, we have yet another unrealistic scene. By this time, several hours after the quake, we have people wandering around. In real life, there would have been a rescue of any possible survivors. To the extent possible and necessary, that building would have been pulled apart brick by brick to get at any survivors. No need for one woman - the sole rational human in the book - to do a solo rescue. 

 

In contrast to a rational, normal person, the protagonist first goes to her husband’s place of work. Why? Surely he would have gone home, not stayed there. 

 

My guess is that she did so because the plot required that the protagonist find out her husband lied to her, so we needed a scene. That’s bad writing. No plot should require the characters to act irrationally. 

 

And then, after that, she goes wandering off again. Presumably, if her husband were alive (and he probably isn’t), he would go home. So she should have just gone home. (Again, who raised the author? Did her parents not have a disaster plan at all?)

 

But no, we have a 9 months pregnant woman wandering all over the city. 

 

And that then leads to the weird ending, with a feral birth scene, and god only knows what all the author intended to convey. I mean, I am trying to imagine any pregnant woman I have known who would decide - while in labor - to abandon the shelter of an intact house, which probably has food and supplies of some sort that could be of use - and ends up giving birth in a park instead. 

 

It was this scene, I think, that convinced me that the whole book was really about the protagonist’s ambivalence about pregnancy, motherhood, and her partner, and all the rest was just scenery for that inner drama. 

 

Which, not my thing. And it certainly didn’t require promoting all that elite panic along the way. 

 

Oh, and I have to also mention one more bizarre and unrealistic thing before I forget:

 

Within hours of the earthquake, the military is on scene. Now, there is a military base nearby, so yeah, maybe they go out there with the cops and first responders. 

 

But somehow, they have parked two tanks blocking a bridge. 

 

What the fuck? 

 

Why would they bring tanks out? There is no invasion to stop, and presumably they don’t intend to just open fire on their own civilians. 

 

There are two actually plausible scenarios. 

 

The bad one is that the military did what it did after Katrina, and go out with weapons to “stop the looting” because scary black people, etc. But not with tanks! They are expensive to run, and don’t do well on already damaged roads. Instead, they would be in their regular vehicles for transporting people. 

 

The better case, though, is that the military is actually pretty damn good at the logistics of getting food and water to people. And in Portland, it is entirely likely that that is what would have happened. 

 

Likewise, I am not ready to throw the Portland police department under the bus here, and assume that they would be unwilling to help with the rescues along with the fire department - which definitely would be working on helping.

 

But even if there was the desire, how the hell do you teleport a couple of tanks? The roads are damaged, and regular vehicles are having issues - in practice, this would mean roads blocked by immobile vehicles, which is actually a nightmare for tanks. They just aren’t good at urban warfare, let alone urban rescue. 

 

Seriously, what editor let that scene stay in? This is bad writing and bad editing. 

 

So what would an actually realistic book have looked like? 

 

Well, maybe we could have learned about the rescue efforts at the IKEA. We also know the protagonist’s arm was hurt - but that seems to go away in the second half of the book? In any case, that would have been part of the triage - is she okay? 

 

Then, after the dust settled, a normal person would have noticed her pregnancy, and asked about how she would get home. Or about temporary shelter from the heat until then. Because that’s what normal humans do. 

 

Perhaps she would have just walked home, waited for her husband or news about him. 

 

When she went into labor (which maybe doesn’t happen if she doesn’t panic-walk around the city), she might have sought assistance from a neighbor. Does she even know any of them? I mean, there are probably nurses or assistants living in her building, statistically speaking. 

 

Even someone like me might have been some help - I have been present at the births of my five kids, am married to a nurse, and pay attention. I would have known the basics: assuming no dire emergency issue, make sure baby is breathing, give baby skin-to-skin contact with mom to keep warm, no hurry on the cord cutting, get mom some food and water. 

 

Eventually, we might have learned something interesting, like whether her husband is alive or not. And the name of the baby. 

 

Instead, we got this mess of a book, which feels like an uncomfortable exploration of the protagonist’s fears, dysfunctions, and bigotries, at the expense of any sense of human realism, with a big dose of dog whistles, and an annoying degree of navel gazing. 

 

Save yourself the time, and read a better book instead. I strongly recommend A Paradise Built in Hell - it has a chapter on the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, which is truly eye-opening as to how humans actually function - and also one on hurricane Katrina, which illustrates the human suffering caused by the kind of delusional bigotry the author puts on display in Tilt.

 

My advice to the author would be that perhaps she needs to actually spend some time with people outside her white collar white people world. Maybe hang out in a working class minority neighborhood, where mutuality is far more common than in her own world. It might help her write realistic humans next time. 

 

***

 

“But what about the LA Riots???”

 

I am tempted to snark here about the difference between a natural disaster and a human-caused disaster - in this case a gross miscarriage of justice. But the thing is, natural disasters often become human-caused disasters. So the line is blurry.

 

What I will say is that if you cannot tell the difference between an earthquake and systemic police brutality, you might need to educate yourself. If you cannot tell the difference between a hurricane and the systemic injustice of poverty, de facto segregation, and racialized government response that followed, well, again, you need to educate yourself. 

 

I lived through the LA Riots, by the way. You can read about that in my long footnote to this post. They were scary, to be sure, as a white person. Too many, though, seem to have taken the wrong lessons from the experience, even people like the author, who I would suspect from other elements in the book considers herself a good liberal.