Octavia Butler's
Parable of the Talents has always baffled me. 1) because the book seems to be ignored by and large in favor of its preceding novel,
Parable of the Sower, 1b) it is also ignored in academia, with pretty much every other Butler book getting a number of papers dedicated to them,
and yet
Talents remains woefully unlooked at. Or when it is looked at, it's never closely examined at length. This inattention baffles me because I find
Talents so rich and full of thoughts and ideas to tease apart. I would love to read all of the papers and blog posts on the book.
What first drew my attention to
Talents was the shift in narration.
Sower is told entirely through Lauren's diary entries and Earthseed excerpts.
Talents sees the introduction of Asha Vere, Olamina's daughter*, as the figure who shapes the book we read.
Talents is Asha Vere's annotated version of her mother's diaries. I find this interesting because of 1) the mother-daughter dynamic between Asha Vere and Olamina and 2) I can't help but wonder why in the world Butler chose to make
Talents's Asha Vere's creation**.
Even trying to succinctly state what I find about
Talents so interesting is difficult. But so much of understanding
Talents is difficult for me. In an attempt to decipher the book, I wrote a lengthy paper on the topic. I viewed the book as an adversary that I could throw myself at, and I failed. Quite miserably. Perhaps, it is better to approach the book as a puzzle, as a one-sided conversation, much like the conversation Asha Vere is trying to have with her mother after her death. A conversation that has no neat endings, a puzzle with no solution.
I've linked
this article before (serious spoilers in the link), but I'm linking it again as that article is the impetus of this blog post. Essentially, Gerry Canavan has been placed in the very enviable position of going through Butler's writings which have been donated to the Huntington Library. In this post for the LA Review of Books, he discusses where Butler might've taken the
Parable series had she lived to complete it**. Two things strike me in this article. 1) Where the books might've gone and 2) Olamina's character.
1. Knowing where Butler was taking these books,
Talents begins to make more sense to me. Each book is essentially ret-conning the prior book and requiring us to constantly re-question the preceding book.
Talents forces us to review
Sower, and I suspect
Trickster would've forced us to re-view Asha Vere's version of events in
Talents. Butler tries to keep us uncomfortable, trying to keep us active and engaged readers (of history, books, religion) so a text can maintain its relevancy by adapting to the times. A process, I hazard, that Olamina herself attempts with the Earthseed religion. In creating a religion, Olamina is left trying to figure out how religion can maintain its relevancy (it's potential for change) without becoming corrupted like so many other religions before it (see the President of
Talents). So in part, this end goal of constant revision helps make sense of Asha Vere's narration.****
2. I TOLD YOU SO. While Canavan may be surprised that Butler viewed Olamina warily and referred to her as Olamina, I am not. I am also unsurprised at the utter cruelty Olamina exhibits in these unpublished bits. There is a reason Olamina is only attracted to a woman
after she has attained power over this woman through subterfuge. This cruelty also sheds some unsettling connotations to
Talents closing line of "I know what I've done." Although Olamina's hyperempathy complicates this great cruelty ...?
*Something I found quite interesting when looking into other people's posts/articles about
Talents is the way they name Asha Vere and Olamina. Neither is referred to by these titles. Instead they are referred to as Larkin and Lauren respectively, which is what neither of them call themselves in
Talents. While
Talents can be read independently of
Sower, I feel most people read the books in chronological order. As a result, I suspect writers' inability to respect these chosen names reflects the way the reading experience one has in
Sower so overshadows
Talents.
**So ok, fine, there is a whole field of study about narration, but I'm going to be a shitty academic and not learn myself into competency in this topic. I also fully acknowledge the level of meta/critical theory required to understand narration is beyond me.
***There is also
this post on io9 about how Butler would've continued the
Fledgling books. Spoilers ahoy.
****Asha Vere's construction of the book could easily be a paper topic in and of itself. While she seems to be at great odds with her mother, the construction of the book is surprisingly sympathetic to her. Someone also pls write on why Olamina's brother is
always described as beautiful, because beautiful=gay is just way too simple.
TL;DR tell me all about your thoughts on
Parable of the Talents, because all my thoughts aren't very helpful.
ETA: Ooooh, hey
this article was published this spring and is an interesting read! And the author offers an Octavia Butler class, hnnnngh.
Originally posted on DW with 
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