Funny Futurism pt. 1

Here's a short I just read in the annual NY Times Magazine issue with ideas in it; one (idea? I guess?) about stories written about stuff in the future.

The quarterly McSweeney's got things rolling with an issue devoted to stories set in the year 2024 A.D. Then two of America's most acclaimed novelists, Gary Shteyngart and Jennifer Egan, chimed in with their own unsettling visions of the near future.

In Shteyngart's "Super Sad True Love Story," a sinister Bipartisan government is waging an oil war with Venezuela, New York is balkanized into heavily fortified neighborhoods like the United Nations Retail Corridor and äppäräti — iPhone-like devices worn around the neck — give constant updates on your credit worthiness and sexual hotness. The circa 2020 New York in Egan's "A Visit from the Goon Squad" is a bit less apocalyptic: the end of 15 years of war has brought a baby boom. "If thr r childrn," one character asks in a text message, "thr mst b a fUtr, rt?"

If you know me, yup! Still have a major beef with Gary Shteyngart. More like Larry Grime-fart IV! Who fucking sucks! He put himself in one of his books and I think that was his alias. I'll look it up later. But I'll be fair with this stupid idiot so let me finish this piece.

A future for the world but maybe not for the publishing industry. the current wave of literary near futurism comes at a time when the printed book — and the very act of traditional reading — seems under siege by digital technology. Both Shteyngart and Egan embrace a kind of if-you-can't beat-'em-join-'em approach, weaving instant messages, social networking and other forms of digital communication into their texts. Egan even pulls off a powerful 70-page chapter written entirely in PowerPoint. The overall effect of their experimentation is to produce a powerful nostalgia for the ever-vanishing present. This time, maybe the future really is already here.

Wait a second this isn't an idea! At best it's a thing that two writers did or something? George Saunders, David Foster Wallace, Kazuo Ishiguro have all written stuff like this in the past few decades. Check it out, so do bands (whoa). Listen to anything Jason Lytle touches with his cyborg soul. Maybe these guys suck to you but I like them and I'm pretty sure the thematic spheres that these artists generate with their work find planes of intersection with that Shteyngart and Egan stuff.

/** But I don't know Jennifer Egan. Check out what Nick says--He doesn't suck at blogging. */

I'll tackle Gary Shteyngart because I hate him and apparently people--alive people!--read his books. I rarely punch books as hard as I did to my copy of "Absurdistan" (for those of you who love to laugh, it's a really funny example of wordplay. Hilarious portmanteau, the kind that just adds a suffix--with 0 aplomb--to a thing. But if you're laughing at that title I want to beat you up.)

oh wait

Sorry I need to continue this later, and I'll only remember to do it if I post this part now. Holy shit! That is crazy!!! This isn't even as perfect as it can be and I'm posting it to the content machine that is Internet! This thing that is going to make us so retarded that in ten years we'll be wearing necklaces with fucking cheeky names. Just the stupid arrogance of people like me guys, taking technology bad places. Anyway, I need to get in my Car-o-Matic Brought To You By Axe Deodorant Driving Mac(OS XIV)hine and go to the Philadelphia Eagles Airport in Philadelphia to pick up my Nike Ultimate++x9 BRO-BOT.

l8r (Confused, smart people? It's a shortening of the word "later". My bad for destroying the English language [this apology was sponsored by SillyName, the new Consumable Thing from Consume-Corp-Systems-Lab-Trump-Electronics, a subsidiary of MicrosoftAOLTimeWarnerJimmyJohn's. now subtlety-free.]

~✛❀✛✛✛✛❚Part.2❚✛✛✛✛❀✛~