Hystopia (Means)

Discussion Questions
We'll add the publisher's questions if and when they're available. In the meantime, use these LitLovers talking points to kick off a discussion for Hystopia...and then take off from there:

1. The war veterans take a drug called Tripizoid to enable them to forget the trauma of war. Even providing that it works, are the veterans better off with "therapeutic amnesia"? Is there a benefit to the erasure of traumatic memories...to not remembering? If you cut out memory, what is left?

2. What is the purpose of the novel within a novel—a novel "enfolded" within a novel? How is the inner novel linked to the real one (David Means's Hystopia)? Why might Means have chosen to structure his story this way? Consider that the "editor" tells us Eugene Allen suffered from “Stiller’s disease”—the "propensity...to witness the world from a distance and within secure confines." Is that what David Means is choosing to do,as well?

3. Can you draw parallels between Hystopia's veterans of 40 some years ago and today's veterans from the Middle East? What other ways does the novel comment on contemporary life?

4. Talk about the title, "Hystopia"? What is its significance...its play on words?

5. Why does Rake, whose failed enfolding sends him on a killing spree, deliberately leave clues behind for the Psych Corps?

6. How has Hank, unlike Jake, been able to reverse the mal-effects of his failed treatment? What are the ways in which he is able to find peace?

7. Talk about the references to Hemingway's traumatized veterans. As Agent Singleton notes:

Hemingway's war had produced a certain kind of character, a new way of thinking and speaking that came from what was left out, from the things war had demolished and pushed away forever.

What does Singleton mean? What was "left out" in the "new way of thinking a speaking"? How is this observation relevant to Singleton, Rake and Hank?

8. The author juxtaposes the natural world and the man made world. Describe the state of the State of Michigan, the setting for the novel. In what way does Michigan border on dystopia? What are the parallels to the "rust belt" of today.

9. How does the rather uplifting conclusion of Allen's novel conflict with the editor's note at the very beginning about Eugene Allen's suicide and his sister's unhappy end?

10. One of the major concerns in the book is the role of memory in preserving personal history—and thus self-identity. What, for instance, is the relationship among Rake, Singleton, and Wendy if their memories are erased?

11. How might this book be using personal amnesia as a metaphor for national amnesia?

12. Talk about the following passage: "Don’t accuse the kid of bending history. Accuse history of bending the kid. And the war, the war bent him, too. Like so many, he came back changed."

13. Reviewers have compared this book to an acid trip. Care to comment?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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