A couple of days ago Marieke Hardy’s mobile book, “Vigilante Virgin”, began transmission. The project is being sponsored by Borders, who have called it “an Australian first”. Me, I’m a bit dubious. But let’s have a closer look at what they mean by “mobile book” first.

At 7am each weekday from October 12 to November 6, subscribers will receive, via an exclusive web link in an SMS, an exciting chapter of Marieke’s 20-part story.

From a technological perspective, what Marieke’s doing sounds quantitatively different from the cell phone/mobile phone novels that have had their most success in Japan, and which have been around since 2005. Those things are little java-based applications specifically intended to be used exclusively on mobile phones.

It sounds like what they’re talking about is a 20-part story on the web. The “mobile” bit really only comes into play because subscribers will get texted the web address of each new chapter. And most likely then access the page using the web browsers on their mobiles. I’m guessing you could probably access it via computer too.

If you take the question of delivery method out of the equation, then, what you’re left with is an online story told in installments. And there’s already been a few of those – one that readily springs to mind is Australian author Max Barry’s Machine Man, a subscription-based online story told in daily instalments, which has been going since March 2009.

There’s other online serial fiction out there too, like Joshua Allen’s Chokeville (currently on hiatus but well worth the wait), Gentleman Adventurer Othar Tryggvassen’s twitter feed, and the twitter novels Small Places, Russet and the now-defunct The Falcon Can Hear the Falconer. Oh, and I’m doing one too, via Twitter, called Aramis Fox, with an online story-so-far archive for those who came in late. And that’s just some of the ones I know about. There’s bound to be plenty more out there.

(To draw another comparison, “Vigilante Virgin” will cost readers 55 cents per instalment (which comes to $11.00 for the whole story), while Machine Man is free up to the first 43 instalments, and then $US6.95 for the rest of the story, which is expected to come in at around 200 instalments in total. The other ones I mentioned are all free.)

So. Not really a mobile phone novel, at least as the phrase is commonly understood, and not really an Australian first, either. I guess technically “Vigilante Virgin” might be the first password-protected Australian-authored online-story-in-instalments accessible via mobile-phone-delivered subscription. It’s not as sexy a phrase for the media release, but it’s possibly a bit more accurate.

There’s no crime in being the biggest ball of twine in Minnesota, even if there is a bigger one in Arkansas. The second-biggest (or even tenth-biggest) ball of twine is still a pretty damn big ball of twine, which is impressive enough in and of itself. You don’t need to go around telling everyone it’s the biggest in the country.

Seriously, the more people muck around with story-telling experiements like this, the more likely it is that something interesting and exciting will come out of it. Godspeed to all of my serial-fiction-writing colleagues.

By Max Barry

Review © 2009 G.N. Jacobs

How much is enough? Would you sell cigarettes knowing how many will die? Would you kill 14 of your own customers in a crazy marketing scheme designed to show how valuable your sneakers are? Such questions infuse Max Barry’s satire Jennifer Government with a dread of corporate misdeeds past, present and future.

Picture, if you will, a near future world where family surnames have been replaced by corporate names and there is no government to speak of, except a minimally invasive watchdog force that has to get funding before launching an investigation. Meet Field Agent Jennifer Government, a single mom armed to the teeth in the Melbourne office, out to stop corporate misdeeds wherever she finds them. Things don’t go well for Jennifer at the mall, NRA thugs subcontracted to Nike by way of the Police shoot up to 14 customers to make the latest shoe line no one can afford seem irresistible. Jennifer falls onto the windshield of a Mercedes seriously injured.

Jennifer becomes an anti-corporate avenger searching for proof that Nike hired the killings done. She needs to find Hack Nike, the lowly merchandising officer, duped into patsy status. Just enough hearsay says that John Nike, Vice President of Guerilla Marketing, is the officer responsible. Jennifer has powerful personal motives for bringing John Nike to justice stemming from the time they were John and Jennifer Maher when they worked for Maher Advertising. Perhaps Jennifer will also explain the mysterious barcode tattoo below her left eye?

I found Max Barry’s satire very nearly brilliant when looking at it in broad strokes. If the writer wishes to warn us about corporations in an over the top satire, then sure, a regional Nike executive will order ten killings to boost sales. This is no more ridiculous than filmmakers positing that reality shows and sports will logically expand to include murder as we saw a few years ago in Series 7 or the first and only Rollerball.

Not all satires and other predictions of our social future have to come true for them to hold power. If we let things be we may end up in such dystopian futures where the NRA becomes a paramilitary force that can kill anyone and get away with it unless the victim’s families can pay for prosecution. Or we can choose to continue that blissfully inefficient and entertaining government that stands between our sins and those that would exploit them. Jennifer Government fills this literary niche with great skill and with a lot of firepower.

Max Barry chose in many places to gloss over the small details of the minutia of regular lives set against this wild romp that spans Melbourne, London and Los Angeles. There could have been a slight bit more of interaction between Jennifer Government and her daughter, Kate Mattel (named after the school). I didn’t feel the frustration of a mother who has to keep breaking a promise to get a dog as much as another writer might have created. But still, as I like to say, “if you’re looking at the scenery you’re missing the story.”

If Barry were to do a book without the science fiction overtones I would suggest getting on more planes and visiting places. I didn’t feel like the scenes in Los Angeles or London really reflected the cities I remember and know. But, then the point of this book is that unchecked corporate greed will turn the whole world into carbon copies of some hypothetical bland city that doesn’t exist, yet.

What I really appreciated was the bare bones of the police procedural underlying the warning. Jennifer Government is not some super-cop investigator because, as always, the foot soldiers in the vast corporate war are very nearly morons that escape by sheer luck. Her ability to survive promiscuous gunfire was impressive and equally lucky. I could almost pretend that Jennifer was a real cop doing battle with evil corporate officers bent on nothing less than world domination.

The element that tickled my ribs the most was the reveal of the Big Bad. The case becomes more than a sneaker marketing campaign or a brutal hostile takeover fight between Shell and ExxonMobil. Let’s just say, I will never look at customer loyalty programs like frequent flier miles and discount cards quite the same way again. Actually, I think I was already suspicious of these programs, which is why this element tickled me so much.

Jennifer Government raises the bar for all of us who like to satirize corporate behavior in hopes someone will listen and spend a little more time off the corporate fast track. Neither your time nor your money is wasted.

http://www.amazon.com/Jennifer-Government-Max-Barry/dp/1400030927/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1254435621&sr=1-1

J’ai pas mal bouloté de bouquins ces derniers temps. Du coup histoire d’être à jour dans mes critiques, je vous recolle une critique dans les dents. Ces derniers temps, Max Barry s’est distingué en filant un page de son nouveau roman par jour gratuitement par email, ce jusqu’au premier tiers du livre. Les news concernant cette pratique promo intéressante ont réveillé mon envie de me faire son premier texte, un bon gros best-seller des familles, Jennifer Government. Rien de tel qu’un thriller marketing socialiste pour laver ma mauvaise conscience d’étudiant en communication. Bienvenue dans un monde où les marchés sont entièrement dérégulés au point que les Etats-Unis englobent à la fois l’Amérique du Sud, l’Australie et une partie de l’Europe. Un monde où votre nom de famille est celui de l’entreprise pour laquelle vous travaillez et où seul compte le profit, peu en importe le prix.

John Nike est un exécutif moyen au marketing de la firme à la virgule, quand lui vient l’idée du siècle. Pourquoi ne pas organiser de faux meurtres autour de la sortie des nouvelles baskets Mercury, pour donner l’illusion que les gens sont prêts à tuer pour elles !
Jennifer Governement est une des agents sur place, informée par une source chez Nike lorsque le massacre a lieu. Incapable d’empêcher la tuerie, elle ne peut que jurer qu’elle trouvera le coupable, quand bien même sa hiérarchie est contre pour des raisons budgétaires.
Buy Mitsui est un ancien tradeur français, immigré aux US dans l’espoir d’une vie meilleure. Seul témoin des meurtres à avoir réagi, il prend conscience de l’absurdité du monde dans lequel il vit et envisage de plus en plus sérieusement de se faire sauter le crane.
Ces personnages et bien d’autres vont se croiser au fur et à mesure que les esprits malades du marketing organisent un coup d’état.

Ouais, bon, c’est un peu un bouquin de communistes. Enfin, disons que c’est un bouquin sérieusement pro-socialisme, qui essaie de montrer l’absurdité d’une course à la dérégulation des marchés et des entreprises. Plutôt bien foutu, l’univers est aussi crédible que facile à appréhender. Le tout évite de baigner dans une atmosphère moraliste grâce à l’intrigue, montée tel un trhiller. Chaque chapitre adopte le point de vue d’un de la bonne demi-douzaine de personnages et il m’aura été difficile de m’arrêter dans la lecture. Niveau style c’est très propre, peut-être un peu trop d’ailleurs. Je suis pas le genre à me plaindre de l’écriture « script », mais ceux qui cherchent un peu de fantaisie lexicale peuvent passer leur chemin. Jennifer Government ne fait pas mentir sa réputation. Il fait réfléchir un peu, tiens en haleine beaucoup et reste très accessible pour un roman d’anticipation. La classe donc.

Une dernière précision pour finir, Jennifer Gouvernement est disponible en version française, suffit de rajouter un « u » dans la recherche Amazon.
Demain, retour des films qui sortent pas chez nous et que c’est bien dommage.

UPDATE STAGE !!!

Je profite de la rentrée pour essayer de mettre un peu les choses en ordre. Non je n’ai pas épluché les participations au concours 4. Je veux parler de mon lien Amazon dans la colonne de droite. La boutique est à jour des critiques du blog, plus pour que vous puissiez jeter un oeil à ce que j’ai chroniqué (vu le peu de thune que ça me rapporte).

WILL IMMIGRANTS MOLEST YOU?

As Stephen Fry noted on Twitter earlier this morning, the new and improved Daily Mail-o-matic is a “fun toy for all the family”.

Now, if only we could somehow get a kooky Fox News Chyron and Auto-Feed-Generator going… Oh wait, never mind.

Update: Serendipitously related to the above in a somewhat tangential kind of way, here’s Australian author Max Barry discussing our society’s increasing preoccupation with avoiding risk.

Not hard to connect the dots…

I have been on a reading binge this summer, but an odd one, as I see to be re-reading a pile of books on my book shelf.

Certainly this saves some money.  And, after all, the reason these books remained on my bookshelf after I read them previously is that I felt I would read them again.  But still, I am on something of an unusual retro-tear when it comes to my book choices.

First I knocked off all of the Derek Robinson flight related books, sticking to the chronological order of the books based on the events in the books versus their publication date.  Those were, in the ordering I chose:

• War Story
• Hornet’s Sting
• Goshawk Squadron
• Piece of Cake (which was made into a mini-series)
• Damned Good Show
• Good Clean Fight

All of the books except Goshawk Squadron are related in some way, either following the thread of Hornet Squadron through two wars, with a diversion in Damned Good Show where Hornet Squadron’s intelligence officer gets moved over to Bomber Command for a tour.

I quite enjoy the whole series, bleak though it can be at times, with very young men showing up and dying, some times before they’ve even unpacked.  The series has gives me a feeling similar to that which I get when I re-read I, Claudius, in that they are so well set in their period that it I cannot really tell when the book was written.

Then, that complete, I started plucking Martin Cruz Smith novels off the shelf, specifically the Arkady Renko series.  And it has really turned into a series.  The gap between the release of books in this series indicates to me that it did not start out to be a series.  Certainly the author has no other recurring characters like Arkady.  It makes me wonder what made it become a series.  Is the main character enjoyable to write, is the popularity of the series a major factor, was his publisher on the phone begging until he wrote more?

Anyway, the one benefit of going through the first four novels, which I have read before is that there are two new ones out in paperback since I last read the series and another one is scheduled for release next year.  The series so far is:

• Gorky Park (also made into a movie)
• Polar Star
• Red Square
• Havana Bay (I’m in the middle of this one right now)
• Wolves Eat Dogs
• Stalin’s Ghost

And somewhere along the line I also managed to read Jennifer Government and Pygmy, both of which were interesting in their ways, but not enough that I think I will ever reread them.  Jennifer Government is sort of Snow Crash light, a similar fractured corporate run modern world, but without the whole metaverse aspect. And Pygmy was… erm… a critical look at Junior Swing Choir?  It is interesting and funny, but grew tiresome for me before I got to the end.

And at some point I have to re-read my copy of the Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle novel Inferno because I see they have a sequel out, only 33 years later, carrying on the tale of Alan Carpenter in Hell called Escape from Hell.

There is always more to read than I have time.  This is why I do audio books in the car during my commute.  I might have to go that route for Inferno and Escape from Hell.

What have you been reading this summer?

by Freddy J. Nager, Founder & Fusion Director, Atomic Tango LLC

"I write business books for a living. What do you do?"

I’m pissed. I just read one of the dullest business books ever — and I’ve read some pretty awful ones, including a few that I think are actually alien invasion plans written in code. You know, like anything written by economist N. Gregory Mankiw. He’s the guy who advised Bush on the economy, and reading one of his books is like chewing a sheet of tin foil. Mankiw’s baffling prose and Earth-inappropriate ideas lead me to suspect that he’s really a Klingon. Though I’m just guessing.

The book I read last night that set me off was called “Strategic Business Forecasting” by Ronald Sugar and Simon Ramo. Now why would I read anything like that if not on assignment or being threatened with waterboarding? Because the damn reviewer said it was witty…

In an L.A. Times article entitled “‘Strategic Business Forecasting’ is Wittier than Its Title,” reviewer Peter Pae claims, “Much of Ramo’s witty writing style is intact, with Sugar providing detailed analysis. Ramo became legendary for capsulizing complex ideas into wry witticism.”

Uh, no.

I didn’t find a trace of wry wit in this book. Indeed, “SBF” is so dry, I’m using it as a dehumidifier. The first half describes how to predict the future with an approach that’s essentially educated guessing. The second half consists of the authors’ predictions, and reads like a collection of undergraduate essays based on Wikipedia articles.

Uh, Peter, did you actually read this book? Really, now, fess up — did you?

Now, I might not have minded “SBF” so much if:

1. I had not expected business insights with a heady dose of levity, like the choice treats cooked up by my idol Dan Neil (also of the L.A. Times); and
2. It had it not cost me $23 and two hours of my time. For that much time and money, I could have gone to see “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” and learned how to make hundreds of millions of dollars from a movie based on toys fighting. (Two words: Megan + Fox.)

I needed an antidote.

The antidote to the boring business book.

So I reached to my bookshelf and pulled down my prized hardcover copy of “Syrup” by Max Barry, which was written ten years ago and remains the best novel about marketing ever. Yes, a romantic comedy about marketing. It could only appeal to a geek like me, right?

Well, “Syrup” has also attracted an international readership, and is rumored to be coming out as a movie. And that’s because it’s actually witty — hey, Peter, you might want to read it to learn what “wit” looks like. “Syrup” centers on a young guy in L.A. who wants to be a millionaire through brilliant marketing ideas, including a new brand of Coca-Cola called “Fukk.” (Hence, the title.) “Syrup” also contains my favorite definition of marketing:

“Marketing is the biggest industry in the world, and it’s invisible. It’s the planet’s largest religion, but the billions who worship it don’t know it. It’s vast, insidious and completely corrupt. Marketing is like L.A. It’s like a gorgeous, brainless model in L.A. A gorgeous, brainless model on cocaine having sex drinking Perrier in L.A.”

I first read that as a young guy in L.A. working in marketing while surrounded by gorgeous, brainless models. Well, while wishing I was surrounded by gorgeous, brainless models.

So maybe the book only works for me. And it still does, ten years later. And it certainly works wonders after enduring such witticisms as this from page 108 of “Strategic Business Forecasting”:

“Having predicted the range, we then can examine the possible consequences to the future of our own particular activity at each limit with confidence that we probably have covered the situation, certainly not completely, or maybe not even adequately, but at least somewhat usefully. If either of the two limits were to occur and if we had earlier concluded that we could not survive with one, or worse, with either, then the forecasting process already will have been of some help to us in our management duties because we might have acted earlier to better the future as a result of our prediction attempts.”

Damn Klingons.

***

Related Article: Ivory Towers vs Empty Calories: The Best and Worst of Business Publishing

I read an article on salon.com by Barry Yourgrau the other day, about fiction and twitter. Well, that was the google search that I found the article with. It’s more about Japanese mobile phone novels, but it does consider the fictional possibilities of twitter as well. It got me thinking about a few things.

Max Barry has been playing with the short-instalment-over-the-internet format for a little while now with his serialised novel Machine Man (now subscription-only, but you can read the archives for free on his site), and I was enjoying both how he was doing it and where he was going with it. I haven’t subscribed yet, but it’s cheap and I plan to soon.

I’m also following a couple of guys on twitter who are telling long-form fictional stories in 140-character-maximum installments: Othar, a “gentleman adventurer” and Ray Helsing, an “ex-cop, ex-husband, current PI”.

Both of these guys are genuinely interesting and intriguing to follow. There are heaps of fictional characters tweeting out there too, but they’re usually just personas, like Kimiko Ross or Wonderella, rather than telling an actual ongoing story with a definite sense of progression. They’re still fun to have in your feed, but not necessarily going anywhere definite.

So 1 + 1 + 1 = me, I guess. I’ve decided to dip my toe into the novel-via-twitter swimming pool to see if the water’s fine or not. I have no idea whether it’ll develop any kind of following – I don’t have Max Barry’s profile, obviously, so I’ll be starting from scratch – and I’m reluctant to commit to a regular posting schedule because of the vagaries of life et cetera, but for the time being the idea interests me, so here we go.

There’s no real plan here, just a starting point and some vague ideas of what might be interesting to write about. My theory is that trying to cram a creative-writing-shaped peg into an information-delivery-shaped hole is probably not destined for resounding success, but just as a completed nanowrimo novel isn’t likely to be a work of utter genius sprung fully formed, &c &c, it may at least turn out to be the beginning of something worth pursuing down other avenues. Call it a public first draft, if you will.

So if you’re on twitter and you’re interested in seeing how this goes, it’s all taking a place at http://twitter.com/arfox, or you can check out the latest three updates on the main page of this blog, just above the blogroll.

“Jennifer Gouvernement”

Max Barry

L’histoire : Bienvenue en Australie, USA. Le paradis du capitalisme, où tout s’achète, tout se vend, où la police n’enquête que contre rémunération et où les personnes portent en lieu et place de nom de famille, l’entreprise qui les emploie. Ici, John Nike, responsable du marketing de la célèbre marque d’équipements de sport, a une idée géniale pour promouvoir le dernier modèle en date : tuer les clients en guise de buzz. Ce qui aurait pu passer impuni (voire applaudi) met tout de même hors d’elle Jennifer Gouvernement : agent fédéral, mère célibataire, têtue comme une mule, celle-ci part à la recherche du coupable dans un monde où l’égoïsme, la manipulation, la consommation effrénée sont érigés en modèle de vie.

Petit aveu : lorsque j’étais plus jeune, j’étais une fanatique de science-fiction et d’anticipation. Avec une prédilection pour l’anticipation pessimiste, évidemment, comme tout adolescent qui se respecte (no future, tout ça, tout ça). Bref, des “Brave New Worlds”, j’en ai lu un paquet, du bon comme du mauvais. Au bout d’un moment, il faut être honnête, ça tourne un peu en rond – surtout quand un auteur hors du genre redécouvre la roue et pond une n-ième resucée de “1984″ en s’imaginant avoir eu l’idée du siècle.

De fait, ici, rien de neuf à priori : méchant consumérisme, méchants Etats-Unis, méchant capitalisme. Mais c’est dans le réalisme criant et dans le traitement nerveux de l’histoire que l’intérêt réside. Que ce soit “1984″ ou “Le meilleur des mondes”, pour citer les piliers du genre, on est dans de l’anticipation juste un poil assez loin de nous pour rester confortable. Ici, ce n’est pas demain qui est décrit, c’est ce soir. Nous sommes à un cheveu du monde dans lequel se bat Jennifer, et ce cheveu est en train de casser. L’histoire elle-même, bien qu’un poil embrouillée et finalement assez clairement secondaire, ainsi que la multiplication des points de vue (une technique que j’aime beaucoup, quand elle est bien menée), permettent quant à eux à l’auteur de tenir le lecteur en haleine en permanence, sans s’embourber et sans tomber dans la répétition lourde des thèmes qui lui tiennent à coeur.

*****

A lire aussi : “Le dernier homme”, ou bien “La servante écarlate”, de Margaret Atwood. L’anticipation (radicalement différente dans les deux oeuvres) est alors traitée de manière beaucoup plus onirique et littéraire.

I came across this cool serialised novel by Max Barry on BoingBoing a few weeks ago, called Machine Man. Below is the first chapter (Man I really hope he doesn’t mind me putting this here…)

CHAPTER ONE

One Tuesday afternoon my left leg was severed. It wasn’t as bad as it sounds. Well, it was. It was agonizing. There was a lot of screaming and flopping around and trying to tear my shirt into pieces to stem the bleeding. While I was busy with this, my co-workers stared through two-inch polycarbonate security glass and beat on the door. They couldn’t get in. It was sealed for their safety. I had to apply my own tourniquet and try not to pass out for eight minutes. While I lay there, waiting for the time-release, I could see the top of what used to be my leg poking out from between two thick slabs of steel, gently dripping blood to the floor. I felt sorry for it. My leg hadn’t asked for this. It had been a good leg. A faithful leg. And now look at it.

But in the weeks afterward, as I lay in my hospital bed, I came to see the bright side. I remembered that expression: A setback is just an opportunity in disguise. I decided that was true. Because while I was sad to lose my leg, now I could build a better one.

You can check out the site over here, where you can subscribe to the daily release….Do it!

I’m printing off my competition entry as I type. All 250 pages. Plus synopsis. Hoping that the ink cartridge will hang in there because the computer is telling me that the status on black is running low. Can anyone tell me why ink is such a rip-off?  Seriously – we need a world wide protest. Stop buying ink, but they know that they’ve got us by the short and curlies.

So, it’s back to work tomorrow. The roads are cleared, the threatened storm did not appear and I’ll be posting the entry off. Another goal fulfilled.

Part of the achievement is due to my online writing buddy, the whip-crackin’ Deanna Carlyle who made me show up and at least attempt to edit or write each night. She also gives good critique, very useful comments and I must also thank Rhonda Stapleton and Donna Caubarreaux for their critiques as part of the IttyBittyNittyGrittyCommittee. It’s always interesting that one will see what another doesn’t.  My critique partner Kiki Lon also had a lot of input on the last round of editing this section of Making the Cut.

Plus I have to give another shout-out to Deanna as she just won First prize in the Young Adult section of the Great Expectations contest. Woohoo!

Not that I need any additional ways to procrastinate but Steph Bowe linked to the Top 50 Australian Writing Blogs, compiled by Jonathan Crossfield.  I’ve only looked at the top couple at this point because I really need to be editing, not adding to my huge list of blog subscriptions, but I know I’ll be returning for another look when time permits. It was nice to see the foxy Max Barry at number 3 (you know Max, whenever I mention you, it has to be ‘the foxy Max’), and I did not know he was writing a serial novel – Machine Man – and posting a page a day to his readers.  I think it’s an interesting writing experiment and I’ve signed up to read the results.

Well, my printer has stopped and brought up the ‘you’ve run out of ink’ message but miraculously, all has printed except the cover page for the comp which I haven’t even typed up yet. That’s fine, I’ll do that at work and hope that at least one of the printers there is working. The sooner all of these comps move to online entries, the better!

With the recent release of his new, innovative ‘book’ (hmm), I reckon it’s a pretty good time to be imposing one of my all-time favourite authors upon you lucky people (huzzah!).

Anyway, here’s a bit of a background. Max Barry is this youngish Australian (I love the writing in spite of this) guy who writes like an American. American in a sense that he tackles very global issues, such as uh, globalization, consumerism, marketing/advertising, corporations, capitalizm (the spelling is an inside joke, if you’ve read Jennifer Government. Plus I like spelling it that way) …you get the idea. Anyway, all the themes mentioned, approached with the kind of LOL hilarity, witty dialogue, good amount of action-packed..goodness, and in the sort of way that makes you go ‘oh man this should be a movie’ (even George Clooney thought so, and kudos to him for that, and I don’t even like George Clooney). The storylines are always sharp and fast (I would compare him to Colin Bateman perhaps, another favourite), and chapters are also usually nice and compact enough for bathroom reading, which is a plus.

I would write up brief synopsis(es?) on his current three books, but that might turn out be too exciting and fangirly so I’ll leave you, oh strange internet wanderers, to do that work for yourself, but because visuals are fun, I shall post pictures of them (okay, I’ll write some blurbs), in order of publication… because it’ll take forever to put them in order of greatness.

Syrup (1999)

Lots of people have cool names, like ‘Scat’ and ‘@’ (heckyes). So this loserish guy (there’s always a loserish guy) wants to get famous and hang with Jennifer Aniston and whoever, so he invents this brilliant new version of Coke (hate to spoil it, but if I don’t, somebody else probably would. It’s called Fukk. I see everybody’s rushing to their local bookstores now). The plot thickens and stuff happens.

Jennifer Government (2004)

I’m not sure what anyone else would say, but I reckon this one’s the best to start with if you haven’t read anything by him, possibly because I did.

I first found out about Max Barry when a friend linked me to a little-known game called Nation States (which now has a second version! And a spin-off application on Facebook called ‘nations’), a game he created to promote  Jennifer Government. Now THAT’s dedication. Anyway, the game was awesome (especially by lame internet standards) and I enjoyed being the dark overlord of a non-existant ‘country’, imposing liberal laws such as mandatory nudity and heavy metal elevator music on my nation, so I decided to check out the book. It was awesome, and a few months later, I found an earlyish edition (it has spelling mistakes!) of Syrup in a second-hand bookstore by pure coincidence and it was sweet as (geddit?!). Company came a while later, and I wasn’t disappointed at all.

Anyway, back to Jen Gov. So this is set into some fictional (or so we think) distant future where American corporations rule the world, people in Australia and New Zealand speak American, and people no longer pay taxes, so everybody’s happy. So happy that they change their last names to the name of the company they work for. Loserish guy gets into a bit of a pickle with rich non-loserish guys at Nike to make this awesome (to Nike) campaign work, but shizz happens and the government decided to stick their fingers into the pie, and BAM!– ACTION! COMEDY! ROMANCE!

(ps. I just realized how much this book cover resembles our blog header. This is purely coincidental, and actually kindof awesome.)

Company (2007)

It starts with a missing donut and expands into a story about a new guy in a corporate company that seems perfectly normal and everything, but then realizes that nobody knows what the company does. Crazy things happen (as they do) and yes, we get back to the donuts.

This is starting to look pretty long…but I don’t care, really. Anyway, it’s not just the hilarious books that make the author so appealing. Max Barry seems to be an all-round hardworking fella in terms of getting in touch with his audience. His blog/website is updated regularly (and he blogs in that Neil Gaiman sortof way, as in, not just promo or “this is where I am touring now” crap. Plus, his blogs are hilarious. The current tagline reads: “Sure, any loser can make a web site. But do their sites have little pictures of my head on them? No. At least, I hope not.”), he uses Facebook (an added me as a friend! And I assume it’s because I joined a ‘Max Barry is freakin’ awesome’ group before he got a Facebook account) and I bet it wouldn’t be too long before he creates an alternative to Twitter, but he’s probably busy with the new ‘book’ which is precisely why I thought it was a good moment to include him at this time (hah, bet you didn’t know I’d get back to that!).

Here’s the dealio.

Max Barry released his new project no less than two weeks ago. It’s called Machine Man. How is it amazing and why should I check it out? Let me list the reasons.

1. First of all, it’s an internet ‘book’ (or a load of pages). Although it’s not exactly one of those corny e-books that you download into your kindle or whatever, but I assume that works except I don’t know how Kindles work or if they’re actually called Kindles (I just heard it from Stephen Colbert). This one’s cooler.

2. Max writes and publishes it in real-time. The format is that you sign up (or read it online or whatever) and you get a new page every weekday. And you also get to comment on each page on his website to make him cry, or smile… or change his mind and suddenly creates a character that resembles that foot in Monty Python to destroy everybody just so he can end it.

3. It is as he mentioned, “written for the medium”. I just thought that sounded cool and appropriate and superiorly academic. But come on, a real-time book, and it’s free for now! This is so Radiohead. Sure, it wouldn’t be as polished and possibly not as fantastic as previous works, but I know there’s a load of potential for awesomeness (or the next publishing revolution?), and it’s been cool so far… So anyway, what are you waiting for?

Hell, they did say that it’s the little things that make people smile, so here goes:

1. As a follow up to the last time I posted here:

Apparently it was a TIME cartoon of the week, at some point.

Pundit Kitchen is always good with macros (or LOLthings, or whatever they’re called). This one made me smile:

Because it’s sad but true.

If you thought my insane fangirling for Jon Stewart was unnatural, I suggest this featured Comedy Central tag.

2. Taking cues from Radiohead?

As a fan of the author, I feel obliged to point out the awesomeness of Max Barry’s new book. Especially since the method of postage is all new-school and cool. So basically what you do is you sign up and every day you get a new page, and because he’s writing it in real time, you can comment and predict what’s going to happen and make him angry or something (better explanation here). Audience engagement/participation at it’s most insane?  It’ll be no Jennifer Government I suppose (but who knows, really), but the nerdy side of me like experimental ideas.

Funny enough, this blog, which he linked on Facebook, spelt his name wrong once, and called him a ’sci-fi’ writer. What!

3. Neil Gaiman makes references to Doctor Who. And I thought you can’t beat that appearance on The Colbert Report…

I wanna make a dalek out of a cake too. Damn..

4. The recent episode of 30 Rock, Apollo, Apollo

Here’s a bit of an observation. Without spoiling too much, basically we get to see life through Jack, Kenneth and Tracey’s eyes.  Jack sees everything in terms of how much they cost, Kenneth sees everyone as a muppet, and Tracey sees himself as everybody.

Anyway, is this another one of those brilliant subtle commentaries on the most prominent characters people in television? Jack appears to be Mr. Krabs, Kenneth is obviously JD from Scrubs, and Tracey is Tyra Banks, of course.

5. I love David Walliams. I love it even more when he gets uncomfortably close to some loser from some lame Disney movie that unfortunately took over the world, proving once and for all that the Disney chap is probably definitely attracted to men, and therefore trying his best to hide it (I’d also like to apologize to the gay community in advance for pointing this out). Or something. Or I just like watching David Walliams fail miserably as being the straight one in Little Britain.

6. International Talk Like William Shatner Day, which I only found out about two days later after that day. Sad, I’ll take part next year.

7. Hugh Laurie plays a cockroach that reminds me of Invader Zim. And he does it extremely well because like Jack Black in Kung Fu Panda, he moves around, does things with his hands, and looks hilarious in the studio (the video doesn’t do him justice at all, what I saw on TV was amazing).  Also, Stepen Colbert plays the President. What other reason do I need to watch this? Oh yeah, Dwight Schrute!

8. I don’t know what others say, but I think Earth Hour failed again.  This made me smile because I enjoy putting down people’s cheesy ideas and I like being right.

9. Justin Timberlake will not release a new album. Also, apparently Katy Perry got pissed on by monkeys or something, but I can’t be bothered hunting down that story. Obama was right, there is hope!

10. Radiohead pwns not just Kanye West, but also Hannah Montana. Because I haven’t posted this here and it’s too good not to be noted, this is brilliant. Man, and I thought Kanye’s “so when Radiohead played, I totally sat down!” thing was good. Bravo, arrogant people in music who entertain me in ways you don’t want to, BRAVO.

“La primera vez que Hack oyó el nombre de Jennifer Gobierno fue en la máquina del agua fría. Había ido allí porque la de su piso estaba estropeada. Seguro que los de la Sección de Reclamaciones les meterían un buen puro a los de Mantenimiento. Hack era el Encargado de Distribución de Mercancías Publicitarias. Lo que significaba que si Nike hacía pósters o gorras o toallas de playa, Hack tenía que enviarlos al destinatario correcto. También significaba que si alguien llamaba quejándose de que le faltaban pósters o gorras o toallas de playa, Hack tenía que anotar el pedido. Ya no se sentía tan motivado como antes.”

SOUNDTRACK: KING’S X-Ear Candy (1996).

I think of Ear Candy as King’s X most upbeat record musically. Even the cover is upbeat!  It’s their first cover in ages which isn’t dark and forbidding.  It actually has a white border!  And of course, it’s hard to miss the psychedelic, brightly colored scarab beetle.

And the music matches the cover really well.  The opener, “The Train” is a catchy bit of near psychedelic rock which brings Ty’s vocal to the front.  It seems to set the tone for the rest of the album.  Even “Picture” contains a simple guitar riff reminiscent of the joy of Out of the Silent Planet.

I’m jumping down to “Mississippi Moon,” one of their supremely pretty songs ala “Goldilox.”  It’s more of a bluesy ballad, but the chorus is just amazing.

“A Box” continues the loveliness from the beginning of the album.  Its message, that there’s no room inside a box, seems to apply to the band’s more claustrophobic sounds as of late.  But lest you think they’ve gone soft, “Looking for Love” is a fabulous rocker, which makes me think of Thin Lizzy. 

Ear Candy also features “American Cheese (Jerry’s Pianto)” a rare track with Jerry Gatskill on lead vocals.  It contains the most Beatlesque sounds of a band that is full of Beatlesque sounds.  This one maintains a great deal more psychedelia than previous songs.  It’s not prog rock by any means, it’s just straight up psychedelia.

Lyrically, Doug opens up about his loss of faith; “Run” addresses it directly: “Yeah she told me, that if I wasn’t good He would get me, make me pay for everything I did, and she said that everybody bad would burn in Hell. I did what she told me and I became someone else.”

Despite the negative feelings in the above song, musically the album is very positive: a lot of the distorted riffs are toned down, and the album feels less angry.  I think this disappoints some of the band’s fans, but it retains such authentic King’s X sounds that it’s hard to argue with it.

[READ: September 5, 2008] “Springtide,” “Other People’s Money,” “The Position” “Factory” & “Abstract”.

In 2007, Forbes magazine asked five authors to write about this scenario: “It’s the year 2027, and the world is undergoing a global financial crisis. The scene is an American workplace.” I discovered these stories when I was looking up some information about Max Barry (I had just read Company). I was surprised to see that the stories were in Forbes, but whatever.  When I saw that there were five authors given the assignment I decided to try all five.

Max Barry-”Springtide”

This story concerns the Do Me Dolls, which are what Bratz dolls we be like in twenty years. The protagonist is Gordy Franklin, the creator of a marketing campaign that hyperstimulates the target audience (4 to 10 year old girls). If one girl wants one, all of her friends want one exponentially more. It works so well, that the girls essentially have destroyed, well, the world in their quest for dolls.

Gordy is currently in his penthouse trying to score with a young girl who is transfixed by the scenes of destruction down below. Her bra is virtually impossible to remove. And then everything shifts.

There are so many twists in this 4 page story.   The surprises keep coming right up to the end.   It’s a very funny piece.   Quite wicked.  I encourage you to read it; it’s fun and very short! And it’s available here.

Cory Doctorow-”Other People’s Money”

This is my second Cory Doctorow story (this is before I read Little Brother).  I enjoyed “Scroogled” very much.  This one was a little too insider-speak (in terms of venture capital) for me to really appreciate.

The story concerns Gretl, a woman who crafts art out of garbage, specifically old technological items (cell phones and what not).  She explains, “You watched them go from fetish item to six-for-a-buck in the blister packs at the pharmacy check out.  This gives them back their dignity.”  Gretl is being hit up by a Venture Capitalist to try and get her to make more money.

The story is primarily a dialog between these two.  There are some really funny concepts thrown around, and I loved the that you could quadruple your money is you had some money but if you got a ton of money it would just sit there languishing.

On a second reading the story made a bit more sense.  It just took getting my bearings of the jargon in the venture capital world.  It left a nice taste in my mouth.  It’s available here.

Warren Ellis-”The Position”

I actually thought that Warren Ellis might be the cohort of Nick Cave, but instead he turned out to be the author of Hellblazer amongst many other graphic novels (which makes more sense than the musician, really).  This story is only a page and a half long.  It concerns a few moments on the Stock Exchange floor in which the VP decides to put all of the money into one stock in an attempt to save the failing market.  There’s a funny twist at the end, which, as you might expect, is dark and twisted.  Available here.

[And as I'm writing this our government is planning to bail out Wall Street. perhaps this story is more prescient than I realized]

Lowell Yaeger-”Factory”

This was the longest story of the bunch (12 pages).  Not only had I never heard of Lowell Yaeger, but even trying to find information or a picture of him proved impossible!  Which is a shame as this story was great.

The set up is fantastic: it is told in the first person, and it is littered with “Facts.”  As in,

Fact:A ream of orange-colored Brite-Lite paper cost $23.99 on sale at the local PaperMax before it closed its doors. That’s about $15 more than what it cost when I was a kid.

The reason that is useful is that the narrator just got his pink slip, even though it was served on orange paper.

In 2027, the country is in tatters, cities are in trouble, the grid is mostly down, and the only thriving business in rural Pennsylvania, where the story is set, is a toilet paper factory, because, well, people gotta wipe.  So, the fact that the narrator is getting laid off looks pretty bad for his family.

Part Two of the story has the employees planning a reaction to their mass layoffs.

Part Three comes when the entire company confronts the owner about the layoffs.  He insists that the company has no money and the bank is foreclosing on them.  There’s nothing they can do.  But he also insists that he’s not going to let anyone take his company away from him.  And that’s where the story shifts gears and gets very exciting.  A great story, right up to the last line.  I really enjoyed it, and it’s available here.

Michael Bagnulo-”Abstract”

I’ve never read anything by Michael Bagnulo before.  This story was really great.  A wonderful sci-fi mindfuck.  It begins with a quote from Philosophical Quarterly.  One point the quote makes is “(3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation.”

The story proceeds from there with Trevor, the universally reviled co-worker, proposing that this group of co-workers create a computer simulated office to run all of their tasks.  A software company, Stint, will host this virtual company, and, once they supply data from their own lives to make their virtual counterpoints, the virtual office will be up and running, doing all of their menial tasks for them. The co-workers start to get freaked about the amount of detail that they have to provide, but Trevor insists that it’s all necessary.

And the virtual office works quite well, until things from the virtual world start appearing in the real world.  Even lies that some of them told are becoming true.

I found the beginning of the story to be somewhat awkward, but by the end, I was totally into it.  It was a lot of fun trying to figure out what was happening.

One gripe, which may be Forbes‘ fault: there were at least three typos in the story.  Irritating.  Aside from that it was really good.  And, it’s available here.

Day 2 and we were relieved to wake up to blue sky and sunshine.

I began the day by dropping into the Kids Tent and watched Danny Katz and Mitch Vane in action. Danny read from their new book ‘The Little Lunch Games’ while Mitch illustrated the story on butcher paper. Kids in the audience were then invited to draw their own characters.

Next I noticed the line-up for a fix, as the caffeine addicts stood patiently waiting to get their morning hit. (I’m a reformed caffeine addict although my poison was Coca-Cola)

I attended a session called First Writes: the Path to Publication. In this session Annette Hughes said ‘the hardest thing about memoir is there’s no end, you’re not dead yet’ which is how I felt when I was writing the pizza delivery girl tales – trying to work out where it should end! (these publicaion sessions always get me in because I’m still on that first path).

Afterwards I talked to Lollie Barr, who wrote the young adult novel The Mag Hags. and whose by-line I see every week in the paper.

And I couldn’t resist asking Aussie Idol Damien Leith for a photo opportunity as I’m a sucker for an Irish accent.
Morris Gleitzman always draws a crowd and the queue in the background of this photo are his young fans eager for an autograph. Perhaps you don’t have to be an Aussie Idol after all?

Next session I attended was ‘Talking the Talk: Getting the dialogue right’ with Max Barry, Virginia Duigan, Michael Gow and Judy Nunn. Max said ‘You are writing a story that is taking place in the mind of the readers’ summing up that we need to give our readers space to bring their own experiences to the story.

I bought Max’s book Company following the session and told him I was nominated him for Foxy Author of the Week on my friend Natalie’s blog. So – of course, had to get a photo with Foxy Max!

Next, I dropped by the kids tents again to see the talented and very young William Kostakis exercising excellent crowd control on the youngsters.

It seems that William has been writing about the same character (Courtney) since 6th grade. That’s a long long obsession. You can read the results in his young adult novel Loathing Lola.

The next session was We’ll Always Have Paris: celebrity versus literary publishing with the heads of Penguin Australia, Pan MacMillan along with the editor of Wet Ink magazine. I introduced myself to Phillip Edmunds as my story Beyond Happily Ever After will be published in Wet Ink next month.

Back at the cabin after a long and full day, we debated a mystery. How did our cabin key end up on our doormat? Well, it seems that the bush turkey was the culprit.

Saturday night dinner options were difficult and after much searching we ended up with two tables at opposite ends of the balcony at Hogs Breath Cafe. After a group near one vacated, we managed to make it one large table and ended up having an interesting conversation about men. But mostly we were exhausted…ready to retire and prepare for another exciting day at the Byron Bay Writers Festival.

Finally went back to finish Jennifer Government, Max Barry’s speculative novel about corporations run amok and dominating the world, or at least trying to, but of course the evilness of soulless companies is thwarted, to a degree anyway, by the will of individuals to do good blah blah blah. Not supremely original but a fun and funny read. And definitely an X Lit. novel. I’m curious to read Barry’s more recent novel, Company, described thusly on Amazon:

From Publishers Weekly
With broad strokes, Barry once again satirizes corporate America in his third caustic novel (after Jennifer Government). This time, he takes aim at the perennial corporate crime of turning people into cogs in a machine. Recent b-school grad Stephen Jones, a fresh-faced new hire at a Seattle-based holding company called Zephyr, jumps on the fast track to success when he’s immediately promoted from sales assistant to sales rep in Zephyr’s training sales department. “Don’t try to understand the company. Just go with it,” a colleague advises when Jones is flummoxed to learn his team sells training packages to other internal Zephyr departments. But unlike his co-workers, he won’t accept ignorance of his employer’s business, and his unusual display of initiative catapults him into the ranks of senior management, where he discovers the “customer-free” company’s true, sinister raison d’être. The ultracynical management team co-opts Jones with a six-figure salary and blackmail threats, but it’s not long before he throws a wrench into the works. As bitter as break-room coffee, the novel eviscerates demeaning modern management techniques that treat workers as “headcounts.” Though Barry’s primary target is corporate dehumanization, he’s at his funniest lampooning the suits that tread the stage, consumed by the sound and fury of office politics that signify nothing. (Jan.)

The corporate-based novel is not unique to X Lit nor Generation X, but it is a significant part of the X Lit lexicon. Consider novels like jPod and Microserfs by Douglas Coupland and the more recent Then We Came to the End, by Joshua Ferris, which I’ve not yet read but based on the amazon description I feel pretty confident citing it:

Amazon Best of the Month Spotlight Title, April 2007: It’s 2001. The dot-com bubble has burst and rolling layoffs have hit an unnamed Chicago advertising firm sending employees into an escalating siege mentality as their numbers dwindle. As a parade of employees depart, bankers boxes filled with their personal effects, those left behind raid their fallen comrades’ offices, sifting through the detritus for the errant desk lamp or Aeron chair. Written with confidence in the tricky-to-pull-off first-person plural, the collective fishbowl perspective of the “we” voice nails the dynamics of cubicle culture–the deadlines, the gossip, the elaborate pranks to break the boredom, the joy of discovering free food in the breakroom. Arch, achingly funny, and surprisingly heartfelt, it’s a view of how your work becomes a symbiotic part of your life. A dysfunctional family of misfits forced together and fondly remembered as it falls apart. Praised as “the Catch-22 of the business world” and “The Office meets Kafka,” I’m happy to report that Joshua Ferris’s brilliant debut lives up to every ounce of pre-publication hype and instantly became one of my favorite books of the year. –Brad Thomas Parsons

No doubt Gen Xers will continue to produce these types of novels. It will be interesting to see how they evolve, as the corporate world changes. And how they compare with the ones that Millennials will no doubt write as well.

I’ve also been reaidng the novel The God of War, by Maris Silver. Set in 1978 about a 12 year old named Ares Ramirez who lives with his mother, Laurel, and little brother, Malcolm, who happens to be autistic, although as Ares narrates they had no name at the time for what he was, made it seem like it could qualify as X Lit. Even more to that point, Ares doesn’t know his father, who is out of the picture. Same goes for Malcom’s. Ares calls his mother by her name and bares much of the responsibility for raising his brother; he also bares the burden for Malcolm’s condition, having dropped him on his head as a baby, although I’m not sure that this is even possible. Anyway, they all live out in the desert near the Salton Sea, which for me echoed Coupland’s novel Generation X. This novel seemed like a sort of Gen X coming of age tale. But I’m having a hard time getting into it, you know. It’s okay, written well and all that. But there’s something about it that doesn’t really give me a chubby, you know. It just seems like a really good MFA project. Still, I’m going to try and stick with it.

That is if I don’t get completely sucked into Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity. I’ve already seen the movie with John Cusack a couple of times so I don’t know why I snagged a copy of it. But then I started reading it and got hooked, or so it would seem. I want to keep reading. And that’s the real test after all. Besides High Fidelity is very Gen X, dude.

Finally, I’ve been reading this non-fiction book — Against Happiness, by Eric G. Wilson. It is basically an argument against the American maniacal pursuit of utter happiness all the time and how the denial of sadness and melancholia is the true path to hell. Maybe it sounds depressing, but for a GenXer like me it is pure bliss, validating (ugh, I hate that fucking word!) my own melancholia while supporting my theory that too happy people are phonies, and probably not really happy at all, but repressed and afraid to let themselves be sad, worried of what other might think of them — as weak. It’s good stuff.

There’s a good chance I won’t finish Max Barry’s novel, Jennifer Governement. The ending seems pretty predictable, not to knock Mr. Barry, after all his published and fairly well read as far as I can tell and I’m just some schmuck blathering away on the interner to little, if any, avail, nevermind actual readership. My reason for this: I’m rereading Cormac McCarthy’s novel, The Road, for….wait for it….a book club. Yeah, that’s right. As non-GenXer as it may be to “join” anything, especially groups, I’ve decided to give it a try. Of course, there are not many books that I would join a book club for but The Road is definitely one of them. We’ll see how it goes. Also, I’ve written previously here that I consider McCarthy to be an X. Lit author. This might well give me opportunity to explain myself in greater detail. But I would like to make one point about Jennifer Government, concerning one of the primary charcters — John Nike. And that is that he, I would assert, is a distant, though softer and more comical, cousin of Patrick Bateman, the main character and narrator of Brett Easton Ellis’ continuingly (is that a word?) controversial novel, American Psycho. Both are slick yuppies with little regard for human life. They share similar concerns with material goods and surface details. And they especially seem to embody that Ellis theme of foregoing deep, meaningful human emotions and feelings for intensity of sensations via sex, drugs and alchohol, and especially violence. Of course, Batement is the epitomy of this particular ethos, grimly and repulsively so, while John Nike is more of comic book version of it, which is probably why no one will scream for Max Barry’s head to be lopped off and posted on spit.

I’m almost finished with the novel, Jennifer Government by Max Barry, and it definitly qualifies as X Lit. Not only is it funny and ironic, but many of the characters seem to be caught in a state “stuckness,” obliged to jobs that they not only dislike, but in fact hate, and even find, well, to be immoral on any number of levels. Then of course there is the portrayal of a society so dominated by corporate interests that individuals’ last names depend on the company they work for — John Nike, Billy NRA, etc. Additionally, the government is literally bankrupt, requiring victims to fund investigations (can anyone say Social Security). Characters attempt to opt out of the system and exist apart from it with varying degress of succeccess. Some fail because they simply cannot compete with so much powers. Others are seduced by money. Creativity is co-opted by corporations for profit. Lives are taken in the interest of profit. This scenario is one that persists as a possibly nightmare come true for many Gen Xers, who seem to share a vague sense of certainty that things will not work out in the end. Things will ultimately end badly. And yet our better angels compel us to stive, in spite of thie angst.

Anyhoo… this got me thinking about other X Lit. authors and books, and I thought I’d try to list them here, as much as possible.

There is Douglas Coupland, of course, especially his novel, Generation X, but his other works qualify as well.

Brett Easton Ellis, by virtue of his age to begin with, but also his themes, particularly in Less Than Zero, the way he deals with gender roles and sexuality seems in tune with an Xer ethos.

Jay McInerney, especially Bright Lights, Big City. Of course, I struggle with this particular one. Does JM really qualify as a Gen X author? Born in 1955, he’s 53, which puts him with the Boomers. Even a recent article, in Time I think it was, classified him as a Boomer. And yet, I seem to want to co-opt him into Gen X, at least for me. Why? Perhap because his first book, BLBC, was formative to me as a writer; it seemed to give me permission to write about the things I’d experienced, to a degree, even though I never lived in NYC or or worked in magazine publishing in Manhattan or dated a model. I did my share of coke and club hopping. I suppose it is more of an 80s novel than a Gen X novel. And while the two realms may overlap they are not equal. A more detailed argument is required to claim Mr. McInerney convincingly. I wonder what he would think?

David Foster Wallace

Rick Moody

Michael Chabon

Jhumpar Lahiri

Junot Diaz

And while it might seem out of left field I am going to add Cormac McCarthy, especially his Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Road. Dystopian fiction is very Gen X, in that it expresses all our worst fears come true, and The Road certainly does that. Also, McCarthy was a man who opted out of the maintstream world for much of his life, living off the grid in a shack in Tenn at one time. He was often broke or close to it, unemployed, but he persisted. He still does, quietly, rarely granting interview because it seems he finds it unproductive, merely boastful. The only way he would interview with Oprah was if she came to him — and really how often does that happen. He lived on the fringe, mostly overlooked until quite recently, as has Generation X. At age 73 or so, McCarthy is a clear case of how the X ethos has more to do with a way of looking at the world than it does with one’s age.

Perhaps an interesting study in contrasts between Boomer and Gen X writers could come out of examing the careers and works of Stephen King, a Boomer born in 1947, and his two writer sons, Joe Hill, born 1972, and Owen King, born 1976. Of course, Hill has just two books to his credit and Owen King only one but over time it could prove insightful.

But returning to the idea of dystopian fiction: I say this is a Gen X preoccupation simply because the “end of the world” was something that me and my friends when we were younger used to talk about quite a bit. Probably because we lived with the threat of nuclear war between the US and the then Soviety Union. Our war was The Cold War. The fact that it never came to pass (although it still could, simply with other players firing the shots) doesn’t make it any less significant.

Few things get me more indignant than Boomers who claim that Gen Xers are a spoiled generation because  we did not grow up with war. Boomers, of course, had Vietnam, the grand-mother-fucker of all wars, which they seem to have a sick affection for, so much so that a small group of their ilk, i.e. the Bush adminstration, felt a need to recreate it. The Iraq War is as much a reenactment of Vietnam as it is a war unto itself. Even those Boomers in power who now take a public stance against The Iraq War have done little to end it. And many not only did nothing to prevent but approved it with their vote — Yeah, I’m looking at you Hillary!

I actually once had conversation with a Boomer woman and her Vietnam vet husband (which because of his status I was pretty much not allowed to have much an opinion on the issue that didn’t agree with them) who claimed that my generation did not know war. When I brought up the Cold War, she dismissed the argument. She seemed to think that because it did not fit her conventional definition of war, i.e. it was not Vietnam (she barely aknowledged, Korea, or either of the WW wars) that it did not apply. But I argued that it was a real war and that it did have real affects on the young people that grew up in its shadow. The Cold War for many Gen Xers, though not all, was the nuclear annihilation equivalent of the school bully promising to kick your ass but not telling you exactly when or where he was going to do it. When you least expect it…expect it. It could happen at any moment.

That kind of threat can really fuck with your head. You begin to think, well, we’re all going to die some day anyway so what is the point of anything. What is the point of getting good grades? What is the point of waiting to have sex, when you may not live long enough to get married to have sex? Fuck now! I mean, there was a time when I actually believed that I would not live to see the age of 21, so of course I drank, got drunk, did stupid ass shit as a teenager. It may seem irrational now, but hindsight is 20/20. At the time, in the moment, it seemed very fucking real! And it was scary as shit. Some people are still surprised that their is a cohort of you people that, when they were young, feared that a sudden, blinding flash of light would be their last vision of the world — and it could come at any time! It could happen now….now….now…now…

Perhaps this is why I am intrigued by Zombie movies andcollapse of society fiction — The Stand, by Stephen King was one of my favorite books when I was younger; I read it over and over. Even today, I have Zombie dreams, especially after I became a father. And in 2003, when the power went out, I freaked a little. Caught in traffic on my way to pick up my then toddler daughter with a gas tank on fumes, I pulled over into a Wal-Mart parking lot and began walking the 7-10 miles to my parents’ house. Of course, it would have been smarter to walk the 1.5 miles back home, get my wife’s mountain bike, and ride there, but I simply was not thinking straight. And all the clogged traffic, the honking horns, the frustrated drivers yelling and honking their horns made me frett that everything could crumble into chaos at any moment. I was watching carefully for the signs. For it to happen now…now…now…

In any case, there are no doubt many more Gen X books and authors. Our early circumstances, graduating into poor economies that made it difficult to find the kinds of jobs we had hoped for may have had the hidden bonus of creating a lot of good writers and artists, filmmakers etc.

There was no place for irony in marketing: it made people want to look for deeper meaning. There was no place in marketing for that, either.”

– Jennifer Government, by Max Barry

Do a quick google or amazon search on Generation X and the majority of the results that turn up will be about business, i.e. marketing to GenXer’s, managaing GenXers at work blah blah blah. Yeah. I don’t really dig that shit much. I mean, I get it. Business is, well, the business of most people, but I don’t really care. Don’t mistake that for apathy. It is simply a refusal to participate, which is not the same thing.

I’m just more interested in books and movies, TV and pop culture in general. What do you want? I was an English major in college. Hell, I even went to grad school for Creative Writing. It was the mid-nineties and the job market was no great shakes. So, I figured, why not waste a few more years in school. Grad School was easier than undergrad. Besides it fit with my goal to avoid a real job for as long as fucking possible, which I managed to do until after 30 thank you very much. Of course, I couldn’t avoid “the real world” forever. But it only took just under 4 years in corporate cube land for me to realize very clearly that I did not belong there. And I hope I never have to return. The horror! The horror!

Anyhoo… after recently rereading Douglas Coupland’s novel, Generation X, I’m on this new kick — actually it is an old kick rejuvenated — too seek out and identify authors and works of fictional (mostly) that reflect the Gen X ethos in some way. I’m sort of developing a way of evaluating novels and short stories and the like through an Xer’s lense, sort of speak.

Hence the quote above from a novel that I am currently deeply immersed in.

The author, Max Barry, is from Australia but I don’t see the Xer ethos as strictly an American one. In fact, I would say that Gen X is more international than any generation before it. Of course, the Mellenials will be even more so. Barry is 33, which puts him in the age range. Of course, this in and of itself does not qualify one as a Gen Xer or possessing of the Xer ethos, but it’s as good place as any to start.

But perhap Mr. Barry wouldn’t appreciate being slapped with the Gen X tag, but no matter. I’ll likely never run into him anyway. So even if he can kick my ass, and no doubt he can, I’m probably safe.

Regardless of whether it is welcome or not, this novel contains a pretty strong Xer vibe.

To begin with the tone is ironic, and funny.

Also, the portrayal of corporate entities as basically soulless behemoths that rob individuals of dignity and identity is quite in sync with the Xer view. In this fictional world, a person’s last names depends on the company that they work for. Hence, one of the characters, Hack, works for Nike and as such is named Hack Nike.

Technology, especially computers and the internet, play a prominent role in the story. Also very Xer-ish… or whatever.

Creativity is not only NOT respected, it is exploited and stolen out right for the singular purpose of making money.

Profit is more important than human life. The book begins with a marketing strategy to sell a new brand of Nike shoes that involves assassinating people who purchase them in order to establish “street cred.”

Even the government and so-called public services are corporate here. Police nvestigations into crimes, even the most serious, require funding by the victims. One must be a paying member of an emergency service first before an ambulance will be sent to your assistance in the event of an emergency.

Yes. It is quite a cynical vision of the immediate future, with of course the United States as the worst purveyor of corporate greed and manipulation, but, even though I’m only half-way through the book, I sense that actions by individuals at the lowest levels, working diligently without praise or even the slightest acknowledgement will be prove the heroes of this tale.

If you need more proof, visit Max’s web site which is linked on my blogroll here. I got my own novel to work on.

Jennifer Government by Max Barry

The cover of this book described it as “Catch 22 meets The Matrix.”  That’s a perfect comparison, and this brilliant sci-fi satire had me hooked from the start.  It’s not only clever satire, and witty, but it’s also got a great pace. 

Corporations have essentially taken over the world.  The United States have spread to take over Australia, Japan, Russia, basically everwhere but Europe (minus London) and other scattered areas.  People no longer have last names, but rather take the companies they work for as their last names.  All institutions are run like businesses, including schools (which are sponsored by McDonald’s and Mattel) and the Police and the Hospitals.  

The satire is rich and plentiful, and while The Matrix took the sharp storyline and bent it down the Noble Path of the Misinformed Buddha, Barry is taking it in a sharper direction.  Corporations rule our lives now, and most of them command our daily functions, so is it really a stretch to imagine them taking over the world?  If you don’t believe that politicians are in the pockets of corporations, you haven’t been paying enough attention.

The plot is tricky to wend out, but only because similar to Catch-22, it involves so many varying characters who cross each other’s paths in strange and beautiful ways.  Hack Nike is a low-level employee hired by the upper ups in US Australia to perform a marketing campaign.  What marketing campaign?  He’s supposed to kill ten people trying to buy the newest Nike sneakers.  That way demand will skyrocket.  He goes to the Police, who instead of helping him offer to take the job as a subcontract, and send it out to the NRA to execute.  Yeah, how fucking great is that?

It spirals delightfully out of control from there, involving government plots, and poor Billy NRA who runs from one crazy ass disaster to the next, when all he wanted was a chance to go skiing.  Jennifer Government, a government agent and woman with a mysterious past, is attempting to bring John Nike to justice, the devilish mastermind who’s orchestrating this sudden violent coup.  

It’s so sharply and yet brusquely paced, leaping furiously from character to character in manic ways, as you watch these different avenues crash together in ways that would make Pulp Fiction blush.  Like most action paced novels, particularly sci-fi, the romances feel forced and corny.  But if you’re willing to overlook that brief hiccup, and in light of how terrible it really could be it’s not too bad, you’re going to enjoy this ride.  How do you not love something that essentially culminates in a riot between factions of McDonald’s and Burger King?

I will be looking up Max Barry’s other works, because allegedly his first novel was another satirical parody called Syrup.