Four New Messages

by Joshua Cohen

A quartet of audacious fictions that capture the pathos and absurdity of life in the age of the internet

*A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice*
* One of Flavorwire's "50 Books That Define the Past Five Years in Literature"

A spectacularly talented young writer has returned from the present with Four New Messages, urgent and visionary dispatches that seek to save art, sex, and even alienation from corporatism and technology run rampant.

In "Emission," a hapless drug dealer in Princeton is humiliated when a cruel co-ed exposes him exposing himself on a blog gone viral. "McDonald's" tells of a frustrated pharmaceutical copywriter whose imaginative flights fail to bring solace because of a certain word he cannot put down on paper. In "The College Borough" a father visiting NYU with his daughter remembers a former writing teacher, a New Yorker exiled to the Midwest who refuses to read his students' stories, asking them instead to build a replica of the Flatiron Building. "Sent" begins mythically in the woods of Russia, but in a few virtuosic pages plunges into the present, where an aspiring journalist finds himself in a village that shelters all the women who've starred in all the internet porn he's ever enjoyed.

Highbrow and low-down, these four intensely felt stories explain what happens when the virtual begins to colonize the real -- they harness the torrential power and verbal dexterity that have established Cohen as one of America's most brilliant younger writers.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Contemporary, Literature, The United States Of America, American, Literary Fiction

193 pages, Paperback

First published August 7, 2012

About the author

Joshua Aaron Cohen (born September 6, 1980 in New Jersey) is an American novelist and writer of stories.

Reviews

[Orsodimondo · Rating 2 out of 5]

IN GUERRA CON I LIKE



Sto ancora cercando di capire come mai non mi sia piaciuta questa raccolta e mi abbia fortemente deluso nonostante io abbia un debole per i racconti, e io lo avessi anche per Joshua Cohen dopo la recente folgorante lettura del suo I Netanyahu.
Il motivo più evidente è che il mix di argomenti e del modo adottato per trattarli su me non ha avuto alcuna presa: grande difficoltà a restare sulla pagina, mente che divaga altrove visto che quanto scritto, pur se collocato proprio davanti agli occhi, è così scarsamente interessante. Tutto sommato, data la facilità con cui la mia attenzione veniva richiamata altrove, dovrei concludere che è stata una lettura noiosa.
Ora però vorrei cercare di capire come mai sia andata così. Nonostante, come dicevo, il mio buon atteggiamento di partenza.

E anche leggere sulla bandella che si trattava di letteratura immersa in Black Mirror, digitale e virtuale intrecciati a personale e privato e familiare, reale compromesso da realtà virtuale, anche questo era stato un buono stimolo.
Ma invece, mi son perso dal primo racconto, “Emissione”, dove tutto mi è sembrato assurdo, inverosimile, e sostanzialmente non spiegato.



Sorvolando sulla ‘cornice’ berlinese dell’io narrante e del suo incontro intorno a una birra, la storia è quella di uno spacciatore – o meglio, un delivery: il suo boss riceve l’ordine, lo chiama, lo rifornisce, e lo manda a consegnare e incassare. Questo giovane tizio, americano anche lui come il narratore, entrambi temporaneamente berlinesi, viveva in un campus universitario e sarebbe stato uno studente universitario se ogni tanto avesse superato qualche esame. Una sera fa la sua consegna e rimane alla festa a chiacchierare piacevolmente con la padrona di casa che ha fatto l’ordine. Chiaro che attingono entrambi al prodotto, chiacchierano sul divano, e forse c’è tra loro qualche fantasia erotica, ma nulla sembra accadere in quel senso.
Il giorno dopo il nostro anti-eroe scopre di essere chiacchierato e commentato e sbeffeggiato e criticato e insultato online, dove la ragazza con cui ha ciacolato a lungo la sera prima ha postato una ‘storia’ che lo riguarda e lo dipinge in modo molto negativo (atti sessuali ai danni di una ragazza addormentata). Il nostro cerca in tutti i modi di rimuovere il post. Non mi pare che ci riesca. Non mi ricordo neppure come finisce la storia: probabilmente perché troppo distratto a spiegare a me stesso – ma senza soluzione – il perché di tutto ciò. Il perché del fake post, il perché dell’effetto così dirompente su un personaggio che tutto sommato poteva ignorare il public shaming conducendo una vita così marginale e poco pubblica.



Claudia Durastanti traduce con la consueta bravura e credo che non sia stato un compito semplice. La scrittura credo voglia trasmettere l’inquietudine e l’ansia di Cohen per un mondo che evolve in una direzione non necessariamente ‘umana’, ma da qualche parte l’intento di partenza mi pare sia andato smarrito. Storie e scrittura mi sono apparse forzatamente contorte, sconnesse e inconcludenti, e certo non di largo respiro: m’è parso che la tonalità vincente fosse una sorta di riflessione supponente, per me quasi sempre fastidiosa.

[Joshua Nomen-Mutatio · Rating 5 out of 5]

On the very first page of Joshua Cohen’s latest book, a quartet of M to L size stories, he describes a writer's move from New York to Berlin and—in lieu of an exhaustive description of Berlin’s collective attitude towards working—beckons the reader to:

"Take a pen, write this on a paper scrap, then when you’re near a computer, search:

www.visitberlin.de

Alternately, you could just keep clicking your finger on that address until this very page wears out—until you've wiped the ink away and accessed nothing."

Much of this collection, like the present day, revolves around the realm of the online, and comes out on the other end having successfully reflected, refracted, re- and de-contextualized, poked, prodded, danced with and defenestrated this increasingly pervasive tool that—unlike any other tool to date, really—contains immense numerations of representational worlds upon (and within) worlds.

Now, much ink and pixel has been spilt on the subject of the Internet Age, in both fiction and non, and—to further illustrate the proliferation of shortened attention spans and a quicker and quicker inclination towards a dismissive "X is so yesterday’s trend"ness—it's tempting to issue a cynical yawn and eye roll and apply a series of fierce clasps of sarcasm-pinchers (i.e. "scare quotes") and remark something like 'Yet another book/article/etc that [cue bored-sarcastic voice] "Explores the all-pervasiveness of the internet and social media and how it’s shaped blablabla and changed our perceptions of blablabla and asks us to consider blablabla while also leaving room for blablabla." Yawn. Bla. Pssh. Etc.' And it's true that there's a lot of boring and derivative and irrationally fear-mongering commentary of this genus that is swarming the labyrinthine info-canals, but I submit that it is also true that there are diamonds in this beswarmed rough, and I place Four New Messages firmly in the glistening and durable gem pile.

The first and last stories are the most explicit about exploring the changing tides of social interaction and self-perception that have bent to the gravitational pull of the Internet Age, and the middle two, while including some casual references to online life, use these references in the same way any author makes mention of the things that are a part of their day to day living. Quothe the Wallace:

"I've always thought of myself as a realist. I can remember fighting with my professors about it in grad school. The world that I live in consists of 250 advertisements a day and any number of unbelievably entertaining options, most of which are subsidized by corporations that want to sell me things. The whole way that the world acts on my nerve endings is bound up with stuff that the guys with leather patches on their elbows would consider pop or trivial or ephemeral. I use a fair amount of pop stuff in my fiction, but what I mean by it is nothing different than what other people mean in writing about trees and parks and having to walk to the river to get water a 100 years ago. It's just the texture of the world I live in."

In each story Cohen tends to use metafictional tools, but often with more tact and aplomb of a subtler, more artful form than one might imagine when they immediately register the term "metafictional." Mostly, he points to a fictional writer/narrator who is mediating the story (the basic technique reminded me of David Aforequoted Wallace's multi-layered Matryoshka-narrators in Oblivion's "Another Pioneer" and, in general, my mind kept free-associating towards Girl with Curious Hair as a point of departure for these stories—not derivative of it by any means, but emanating broadly similar tuning fork vibrations, which is a very high compliment when coming from yours truly). He also drops in meta-nuggets like asides about the multiple choices he makes as a writer (and refers to the writer/reader as a sort of royal "we" on occasion, too) but they seem unobtrusive and glide along with the other layers of narrative just fine. (One abrupt aside I particularly liked that stopped me in my tracks—in a good way—was: "We will pause here to allow you to recite your pin numbers to yourself.") This basic observation is rather unimportant in all actuality, but I make mention of it mostly to get to the preemptive strike of a point that THE METAFICTIONAL CONCEITS ARE NOT THE POINT. This is basically something I've been harping on for a while, which is essentially that, if used to substantive ends, experimental/avant garde/metafictional techniques are just tools in the toolbox alongside things like proper spelling and grammar, metaphors and analogies, punctuation, italics, foreshadowing, etc, and need not be so readily dismissed as tired gimmicks and/or lame attempts at iconoclasm and/or desperate cries for attention (unless they are, which, yes, they certainly can be).

A few remarks on style: Cohen is "highly stylized" as they say. He has a real knack for tweaking normal uses of words and phrases into something evocative and clever and aesthetically interesting and pleasurable. He coins several neologisms and portmanteaus (shortlist of e.g.’s: assisterati, ATMized, kikeabilly, paragraphicules, rodentia, pornonym, pentaquel) and goes on controlled jags of ecstatic exposition and sometimes wonderfully congested prose of the sort that are right up my readerly-writerly alley.

The first story, "Emission," is narrated by a writer character whom I just assumed was a skewed stand-in of sorts for the actual author (despite the very first sentence of the story being, "This isn’t that classic conceit where you tell a story about someone and it’s really just a story about yourself.") while most of the story focuses upon a character he meets straightaway named Mono, a lower-end-of-the-mid-level drug dealer who shares an embarrassing sexual story about himself one night while dipping into his own supply of Columbia's finest chattiest substance with some customers. This story works its way into the ubiquitous electronic web and Cohen gives a dramatic and humorous glimpse (via the rather banal) into the information-multiplying, -mutating and -permanence-seeking nature of the internet's double-edged sword of easy and instant access.

In "McDonald’s" a writer, again, is recounting a story that he's been working on to his father (and later on, his mother) and throughout this he is vehemently avoiding using the titular word, the name of the entity symbolized by the world's most recognizable corporate logo, while also making such obvious reference to it that the avoidance is clearly a lost battle from the beginning (it is the story's one word title after all). The story brilliantly captures the crossroads where cynicism, cynicism-about-cynicism, the desire to create unique and meaningful art while acknowledging the need to harness and deal with the most ubiquitous and ugly and banal things all collide and collude and tangle and fidget uncomfortably, etc. The final descriptions of then actually entering a Golden Arches clone I found to be compelling in a straightforward realist's kind of way—a melancholic meta-meditation on the great golden M and all that might well come uncoiling forth during such ruminations.

"The College Borough" really knocked my socks off. Again, it is writing about writing, but not in the manner of the usual suspects. This time the narrator is a former writer, whose most important transformation—a transformation of which the (strange and inventive) reasons and motivations behind are later revealed—comes to be when he (and the rest of his fellow writing students) gives up writing in exchange for something more concrete (e.g. "A writer can write "the room had a couch," or a writer can just give up writing, go out and drag a couch back into the room"), a united purpose—a purpose of which isn't revealed until the final, and rather haunting, sentence of the story. There's a central element of the story that linked itself in my mind to the replication of Manhattan in Blueprints of the Afterlife and Caden Cotard's crazed recreation of the same in an abandoned warehouse in the film Synecdoche, New York. To say much more of the plot would be to say too much.

"Sent" is a real doozy. The longest of the four messages, clocking in on my Kindle at 39% of the book. It's broken into two very much disconnected-seeming sections: I. The Bed and II. Moc. How the first really connects to the demarcated chunk that follows it is something I'd need a second read to possibly decipher in any remotely plausible way. The first involves a sort of older-than-time folktale that seamlessly merges into a woodcarving on a bed, which we then follow through several generations, until its grotesque demise. It's oddly compelling. First highlighted line about two pages in was, "Imagine you chopped open a tree and inside was a very small tree. That’s what it's like to be human. To be both conscious and conscious of one day not being—and so we seed another."

To briskly over-summate, the latter section mostly orbits around pornography and casts said phenomena in a rather (surely 99% deservingly) horrible light. However, as the final pages begin to close in, it becomes rather clear that the production and use and existence of pornography (especially in the hyper-driven-on-all-levels context of the internet) is simply used as a vehicle for driving a deeper point home about the growing presence of heavily computationally-mediated relationships between human beings, and it delivers in a way that very much captures "how the world acts on my nerve endings," quothe the Wallace. The whole thing, both discrete sections, is vividly and jarringly symbol-laden and one could spend a significant and enjoyable swath of time and energy unpacking its richly imagined details.

I often feel a bit of angst about the Internet Age, but it is counter-balanced by an undeniable love and gratitude for it as well. I think some of this has to do with shifting moods and outlooks that don’t necessarily have much to do with something as broadly defined as "technology" or "the internet." I turn to Ryan Boudinot’s Blueprints of the Afterlife to indirectly (but still directly) illustrate this point succinctly:

"Anytime things were going right for you, the future of the world seemed bright. Anytime they were going wrong, the imminent collapse of civilization was at hand. Can't you see how thoroughly you projected your own subjective vision of reality on the world?"

This is not (as one might errantly imagine) merely a book tsk-tsking the corrupt and lonely modern age—I absolutely doubt Cohen's any sort of deluded anarcho-primitivist—but nor does it want to simply lay down and passively be mowed over by Progress and Technology either. It’s a skeptical inquiry but also a kind of exuberant embrace and one that understands that technology is something that both moves and is moved by us--done so at times inelegantly and with unpredictable outcomes, well-intentioned and malevolent, reckless and cautious, with love and with pathos, but always collectively, whether we like it or not, as a Leviathan with perhaps too many heads, but one that is undeniably, irrevocably us.

[Paul Sánchez Keighley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very pleasant surprise.

Last year I read Joshua Cohen’s 800-page Witz and absolutely abhorred it. Although ubiquitously compared to Gravity’s Rainbow and Infinite Jest, I suspect, because of its girth and wordiness, it doesn't even come close to the oxygen-depriving altitudes of those two works as Witz is nothing more than surface-level linguistic gymnastics. GR and IJ are mountains; Witz is a flowery field. A very, very big flowery field. Never has a book so desperately needed to be watered down with humility. And yet, amidst the grandiloquent verborrhea, ever so often it's possible to descry a hint of potential.

I didn’t want to give up on Cohen, so I gave him another chance, and boy did Four New Messages deliver.

A collection of three long-ish stories and what’s almost a short-ish novella, this format forced Cohen to do exactly the opposite of what bogged Witz down: to get to the point, and not let his freewheeling penning of puns and clusterwords senselessly metastasise through hundreds of pages.

Emission: A wacky internet-age riches-to-rags story wherein some comedic elements are more effective than others; if it was aiming for pathos, it fell short. ★★★☆☆

McDonald’s: Absolutely wonderful. A post-modern delight easily at the height of DFW’s more accessible stuff. A clever idea about a relevant topic (the ubiquity of brands in modern life and, consequently, in literature) with pitch-perfect delivery; one of the best short stories I’ve read in a long time. ★★★★★

The College Borough: A pretty simple story told straight, but what a good story it is. Touching in the way art should touch you. It’s about the place of literature in modern times, it’s bittersweet, it’s poignant and it’s great. ★★★★★

Sent: Similarly to Witz, this one’s length rendered it unfocused. It's about internet porn, and has some interesting ideas, but there's only so many ways you can describe cuming on someone's face before it starts feeling (ob)noxious. It would be a two-star story if it weren’t for that Wagnerian overture about the life of a Slavic bed. ★★★☆☆

Two three star and two five star stories so four stars for Four New Messages.

Sounds about right.

[Jonfaith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Then it covered itself with a shawl, tugged from a puddle in its lap--the fringe of that rug of bearskin, omnivorously soiled, full of thistle.

Joshua Cohen's collection of four longish stories sort of left me baffled. Mr. Wallace is dead and yet some keep praying and practicing as if only by inertia (or habit). Sorry for the parody of Nietzsche's Gay Science, but i was bit confused by this insistence of self-awareness. We see narrative repeatedly derailed by distraction, detail and the knowledge that fiction is but a brochure for but another virtual experience. Structure thwarts, I'm afraid as does someone screaming "I'm clever" throughout the performance. Every word in that sentence should be in quotes with a paragraph of footnoted explanation below this text. I don't know if the experiment is postdated or if I'm too fucking old for four stories exploring the dearth of the actual, the commodification of language and emotions. There is a pulse of the sentimental in the third piece The College Borough and it is by far my favorite.

Cohen is but a pup, albeit a wonderfully wordy one. I look forward to what the next decade provides.

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

The four parts of Four New Messages are described in the blurb as ‘audacious fictions’ – definitely a more accurate label than ‘short stories’. Cohen writes brilliantly as Cohen always does, but there’s little to connect with in these pieces other than the style. What style it is, though – language to make you gasp, sentences that seem to reinvent what sentences can do. I don’t know if I will remember the people or situations depicted in these fictions, but they consolidated my faith in the author as a master stylist.

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[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

We send messages every day. Thoughtlessly, dutifully, compulsively. In 21st-century America, sending messages is how we communicate.

But sometimes “sending a message” has another connotation, whereby the act of doing one thing communicates something else. A politician who opens her campaign in her opponent’s hometown “sends a message” that she’s going to be aggressive. A man who takes his wife to the Italian restaurant where he proposed is declaring more than a desire for meatballs. These messages are metaphors in action.

Four New Messages, Joshua Cohen’s collection of four long stories, opens with its most accessible tale. “Emission” is about a drug dealer named Mono who finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s not a drug deal but a social contract that goes awry.

Late one night at a party, Mono commits the most heinous of 21st-century offenses: He over-shares. Unfortunately for Mono, someone uses the information to put his future in jeopardy. This “nocturnal emission” is both a metaphor for his offense and the substance (sorry) of the story he shares.

“Emission” is a cautionary tale, of and for our time, about a man’s attempt to control a message that he doesn’t want out in the world. In other words, it’s the story of a fool.

In “McDonald’s,” the next story, the conflict centers on an author’s reluctance to mention the name of a fast-food corporation in a short story he’s writing. While the title reveals that the fight was lost before it began, the reader, as witness to the construction, gets a front-row seat to the struggle.

The narrator frets over the message he may or may not be sending by including the name of a multinational corporation whose role in the lives of most Americans is already too pervasive. “I walked—I mclive in Brooklyn, I mchave no car—to McDonald’s.”

It’s not the free advertising or the food products crudding up our arteries that’s problematic for the protagonist; it’s the realization that a world without McDonald’s is a world we wouldn’t recognize. Branding has become a part of the furniture of setting. “[Writers will] insert a brand into their story because brands have been inserted into their lives.”

“Sent” is the last story, and it’s the collection’s longest and deserves more consideration than I can give it here. Its narrative components include a family crib passed down many generations, the squalor of Soviet-style block apartments, a roving mobile pornography studio and a young American’s obsessive search for an amateur actress who appeared in an Eastern European porn video.

“Sent” begins as an epic folktale, wanders into participatory reportage and concludes as a failed quest. To tell you the truth, I’m not entirely convinced that it isn’t a glorious send-up of Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything is Illuminated.

Throughout the latter half of the story, the protagonist, who might be the same man we meet in “Mc- Donald’s,” sends messages to his parents via email. These messages are always subterfuges of a sort, expansions of the fiction that is his motivation for traveling abroad, but curtailed in a way so as not to create confusion or worry. In other words: lies that fool no one.

Perhaps Cohen set his protagonist adrift in this Baltic purgatory, not to ask us to imagine it, but to shame us for the first-world priorities—embracing technology we don’t understand, putting our trust in corporations and obsessing about things that serve no purpose—that consume us so completely that we don’t have to imagine what life might be like on the other side of the world if we don’t want to, and 999 times out of 1,000, we don’t want to.

But in this strange place where the past has a choke-hold on the present, the protagonist finds his voice. Is Cohen’s message a rejection of consumer-driven capitalism?

No. I think embedded in all this miscommunication is a deep-seated frustration with the way we talk to each other, the way we tell our stories.

Contemporary American realism isn’t a mirror; it’s advertising for an outdated value system. We’ve moved on, advanced, evolved, etc., but technology continues to make it easy to communicate—as long as we keep it short and snappy. Ergo, the primacy of language that is efficient and economical, i.e. the language of advertising.

Four New Messages suggests there is progress to be made, but we are holding ourselves back. We can explore new ways of sharing our experiences in the world and risk looking foolish, or we can shrug our shoulders and say, “It’s the world we mclive in.”

[Javier Avilés · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cuatro mensajes nuevos, de Joshua Cohen

No soy de relatos, ya lo sabéis. Pero también que a veces hay relatos que me deslumbran. Uno de los que componen este libro de Joshua Cohen es de esas extrañas y magníficas composiciones.
Con la edad, uno tiene que ponerse a la defensiva. Descubres escritores que podían ser tus hijos. Es decir que sientes como tu lugar en el mundo está siendo lenta pero implacablemente desplazado hacia la nada. Y eso me pasa con Cohen. En primer lugar Cohen trata temas recurrentes imbuidos en nuestro presente, con todo lo que conlleva. Y una de las singularidades de nuestra "nueva sociedad" es la tecnología. Lo que para viejos como yo es una especie de "realidad virtual" a la que prestamos atención tangencial, desdeñándola en muchas ocasiones, es para esa generación que nos despeñará en el abismo, una realidad tan consistente y plena que no debe ni puede ser considerada virtual.
ES la Realidad.
Por eso cuando escritores mayores hablan de cosas de internet suelen sonar bastante forzadas.
Pero en Cohen, dos de cuyos relatos tratan sobre alguien que quiere eliminar su presencia en la red y otro, el que más me ha gustado, sobre la búsqueda de unos realizadores de películas porno, y otro presenta el uso de la red de forma laboral, el empleo de todo aquello que algunos nos empeñamos en situar todavía en un limbo de irrealidad, de virtualidad inconsistente, es presentado y empleado de forma perfectamente natural.
Pero después, en un relato ambientado en los ochenta, creo, liberado de la influencia tecnológica, Cohen demuestra su dominio de la narración haciendo una especie de correlato entre las épocas analógicas y digitales, en el que la construcción de un edificio supone una especie de alegoría sobre el pasado.

En segundo lugar tenemos el lenguaje. Una forma de expresarse más o menos coloquial, que se autocorrige incesantemente, académica y ligera al tiempo, en la que está presente continuamente el hecho de la escritura, en la que la publicidad y la tecnología se inmiscuyen sin que el autor intente impedirlo, todo ello despojado de trivialidad, muy trabajada y elaborada. Todo ello alcanza su máximo en la narración que más me ha gustado, Enviado, en el que un relato mítico de corte clásico va degenerando hasta llegar a lo más sórdido y aún así representar una especie de nuevo relato mítico contemporáneo.

En fin, habrá que tener en cuenta a Cohen.

(Y eso que había dicho que no iba a volver a leer narrativa contemporánea)

[Cheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was lured to this by James Wood, who included this in the New Yorker top 2012 books.
The first story "Emissions" made me feel old and cranky. Sex, drugs, computer hacking -- sigh. So much energy. But so unpredictable. Great ending.
The second one, "McDonald's" is so intricately metafictional that it became a confusing morass of embryonic concepts. Some bits here and there are terrific, but overall, I want to shake him: "Just say it!"
"The Bed", being the first part of "Sent", was wonderful - almost a fairy tale of the life of a wooden bed as it lived through generations. But then the rest of it abruptly yanks you into something else and disintegrates into surrealistic bizarre fragmented scenes of Eastern European porn industry. WTF?
What is it when a preoccupation with sexual themes so surely marks the writer as male and young-ish?
Cohen is an acrobat of words and ideas. This will appeal to lovers of absurdist metafiction on steroids, but I think it still needs some maturation and refining.

[Jose Carlos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cuatro mensajes nuevos de Joshua Cohen: la útil inutilidad de la literatura
El norteamericano Joshua Cohen es un escritor mayúsculo, y así lo demuestra en su libro de relatos Cuatro mensajes nuevos, publicado por De Conatus, en donde despliega el poder fabuloso de toda su prosa. Y en especial, lo hace en el primero y en el último de los cuentos, sin detrimento de los que permanecen en el medio. Simplemente, Emisión y Enviado muestran el imaginario que atormenta al autor: la modernidad digital, la pornografía, un mundo que se aleja de las imágenes y de las palabras para sustituirlas por sucedáneos de los sucedáneos, junto a una continua reflexión metaliteraria que nos muestra relatos que se van construyendo y destruyendo ante nuestros ojos. A menudo se compara a Cohen con Foster Wallace; en este libro comparte la alarmante carga reflexiva y filosófica de Wallace, pero se muestra mucho más directo y contundente. Estamos ante un recital maestro de lo que deben ser las narrativas de corto recorrido, erigidas con un empeño de originalidad tan prodigioso como desconcertante. El título que engloba el texto, esos Cuatro mensajes nuevos, es de por sí claro: puede ser el aviso de que tenemos una serie de emails sin leer en nuestra bandeja de entrada, pero también se puede aplicar a que los cuatro mensajes son los cuatro relatos que componen el volumen. Cada uno con su advertencia particular.
1-No te fíes de Internet (ni de un camello)
El libro se abre con Emisión. Todo indica, desde las primeras frases, que vamos a enfrentarnos a un juego metaliterario adobado con una crítica feroz al mundo de las nuevas tecnologías y, muy en concreto, de las redes sociales: “Este no es el clásico artificio donde cuentas la historia de alguien y en realidad la historia trata de ti. Mi historia es bastante simple”.
Ese clásico artificio sería la narración concebida al antiguo estilo, lineal y plana; el autor adopta la voz del narrador para imponernos los principios estéticos de su teoría del relato. Y esa historia simple es algo deprimente, pero ejemplifica la esencia que permanece presente a lo largo de todo el libro y ejerce de pegamento entre las piezas: la crisis de las humanidades, la inutilidad de la escritura, la imbecilidad de la literatura (o, al menos, la imbecilidad que puede significar dedicarse a ella): “Unos años después de graduarme en la universidad y obtener un título de desempleo —mi tesis trataba de la metáfora— me trasladé de Nueva York a Berlín para trabajar de escritor, aunque quizá esto sea incorrecto, porque en Berlín no trabaja nadie. No voy a entrar en aquí en el porqué. Esto no es historia, no es un episodio del History Channel”.
¿Qué acaba de suceder ante nuestros ojos de lectores impresionables e impresionados? Dos recursos
arteros han dotado de relieve a este primer párrafo. En primer lugar, el recurso de autoridad encubierto de Joshua Cohen que, con este principio, acaba de convocar a J. D. Salinger, en concreto al protagonista de protagonistas, al rebelde (pero luego, quizás, no tanto), Holden Caulfield de El guardián entre el centeno (Alianza Editorial); este íncipit narrativo se solapa al universalmente conocido de la novela de Salinger: “Si de verdad les interesa lo que voy a contarles, lo primero que querrán saber es dónde nací, cómo fue todo ese rollo de mi infancia, qué hacían mis padres antes de tenerme a mí, y demás puñetas estilo David Copperfield, pero no tengo ganas de contarles nada de eso. Primero porque es una lata, y, segundo, porque a mis padres les daría un ataque si yo me pusiera aquí a hablarles de su vida privada”.
Es la dinamitación del relato clásico y podemos, claramente, sustituir el David Copperfield de Dickens (en Austral) por el History Channel. El segundo recurso radica en que Cohen sigue al pie de la letra uno de los puntos más importantes del decálogo cuentista del argentino Julio Cortazar, que en su epígrafe tercero asegura:“La novela gana siempre por puntos, mientras que el cuento debe ganar por knock-out”. Y Cohen, con semejante principio, nos ha proporcionado un directo a la mandíbula. Ya nos tiene aturdidos, nos ha ganado. Pero, un momento, dirán algunos, si Cortazar es un clásico, y antes se ha afirmado, y también el propio Cohen, que no estamos ante un clásico artificio. Consideramos a Cortazar como un clásico del relato, en efecto, pero un clásico revolucionario. Sus cuentos pueden ser muchas cosas, pero desde luego, lo primero que son es innovadores. Cortazar destruye lo anteriormente aceptado desde los puntos de vista nuevos, desde la narración metaliteraria, así aniquila la vieja estructura del relato. Y Cohen también.
La tarea de zapa sobre el concepto clásico de la figura del escritor continúa unas líneas después:
“el hecho mismo de que yo fuera novelista era una ficción, y como era incapaz de terminar una sola novela y nadie me pagaba para que viviera la novela tediosa y vacía que era mi vida, decidí rendirme”. El ataque al género autorreferencial, autoficcional, a la mitología impostada que rodea a la imagen del escritor que no escribe, ha sido derribado en el inicio del relato, cimentando las bases generales de lo que podremos encontrarnos a continuación. Por tanto, este peculiar protagonista de Emisión se vuelve a Nueva York, hace un máster en empresariales, juega en bolsa y su economía engorda, huyendo de la miseria a la que estaba abocada su carrera de escritor. Pero es que, claro, con una tesis doctoral sobre la metáfora no se puede aspirar a esa expresión tan norteamericana de poner comida en la mesa. Desde aquí, el narrador recuerda su pasada vida en Berlín, fijando su atención en Mono, el verdadero protagonista de la historia. Liquidando la archiconocida y manoseada literatura del yo. Y esto le permite al narrador dar paso a la historia contada por el propio Mono, Richard Monomian, un armenio. Ambos coinciden en Berlín, y Mono le cuenta las circunstancias que lo llevaron a huir de Nueva Jersey (una historia dentro de otra historia, Cohen haciendo de las suyas).La historia de Mono es tan simple como escabrosa: Mono era un dealer, un camello, repartía drogas a domicilio. En uno de esos repartos se acomodó en casa de unos desconocidos que tenían montada una fiesta con motivo de las vacaciones de primavera, y también consumió. Lo peor fue lo que ocurrió después, se masturbó sobre una chica que dormía el colocón y eyaculó sobre su mano. Y no quedó impune. El blog Emisión relataba el suceso con pelos y señales (otra historia en el interior de la historia de Mono, que pertenece a la historia del narrador). Desde aquí: la enorme bola de Internet que rueda y rueda, que invade la privacidad de Mono, que le impide encontrar trabajo, que se convierte en una amenaza completa para su vida. El resto del relato, y los motivos de la huida de Mono hasta Berlín, los dejo para quienes disfruten de este texto, que además de subvertir algunos principios narrativos, de incluir lenguaje de chats, de señalar la red como un lugar agresivo y peligroso, ha sido el primer ladrillo en los cimientos de la estética literaria de Cohen (y lo del ladrillo no lo digo por capricho, el tercer relato del libro lo justifica, como veremos).
2-La comida basura puede bloquear al escritor
McDonald´s es la segunda historia del libro. Si antes la amenaza fueron las redes sociales, ahora le toca a la fast food, la llamada comida basura, es decir, a las hamburguesas, cargadas de un significado paralizante. Pero trata de mucho más, obviamente, porque una cosa es lo que parece que Cohen nos dice, y otra bien distinta lo que ha dicho. En este relato, la historia que ha escrito su protagonista se va construyendo ante el lector, mientras se la cuenta a su padre para que lo ayude a salir de un bloqueo. El protagonista es un redactor farmacéutico atascado en un texto de ficción, incapaz de colocar sobre el papel una palabra. De nuevo, la imposibilidad de la escritura tal y como la concebimos, un ataque a la romántica idea que todos tenemos en la cabeza al escuchar la palabra escritor: “Había empezado a escribir un relato, otro exabrupto de mierda de los centenares que he empezado en mi vida solo para transformarlos en bolas arrugadas (nunca antes había estado bloqueado, me habría ido bien un poco de bloqueo pero…), llegué a aquella parte del relato y simplemente…, simplemente tuve que parar, ¡era ridículo!”. Si antes, en Emisión, nos ha golpeado directo a la mandíbula, ahora nos ha sujetado de las solapas con este principio. El escritor ha llegado a un punto en donde, al tener que escribir la palabra que no puede escribir, se ha detenido. De forma que empieza a contar el relato, con las variaciones que va introduciendo, con las alteraciones que su padre le sugiere. Así, asistimos a un proceso de construcción/deconstrucción/re-construcción metaficcional del texto, un procedimiento arquitectónico (de nuevo una referencia a la edificación de estructuras, en consonancia con la tercera pieza del libro) consistente en utilizar el texto como una bola de demolición y, tras combinar las dos perspectivas, la del autor del relato del que se habla dentro del propio relato y de las variantes que incorpora el padre con sus sugerencias, recomponerlo de nuevo. Y de pronto, el narrador nos confiesa que el padre al que cuenta su terrible bloqueo no existe, y ahora se dirige a su madre. Y prosigue con la historia. Va cambiando las perspectivas, los puntos de vista, en un recital narrativo faulkeriano, hasta que llega un momento en que no sabemos quién está dentro o fuera de las historias, ni que relato, como una especie de matrioska vuelta del revés, se contiene dentro del otro. La historia se metamorfosea delante del lector, los personajes aparecen y desaparecen hasta alcanzar un final sorprendente que se ceba virulentamente con una de las imágenes más comunes del American way of life: un McDonald´s. Y la tremebunda aseveración final: “Se acabó el escribir, no hay nada más inteligente que eso”. Un relato de manual para quienes pretenden aprender algo de la forma en que se debe afrontar una historia, un ejercicio de estilo que es una clase magistral de recursos inacabables.
3-Construir un relato puede ser como levantar un rascacielos
La tercera pieza es El distrito de la universidad. El juego metatextual alcanza ahora al propio funcionamiento de un taller literario impartido por un escritor que, sin duda, es muy del gusto de Cohen y de este periodo de la posverdad: ególatra, desagradablemente insultante, pagado de sí mismo y odioso. Es el bartleby de Vila-Matas por antonomasia: su nueva novela, rechazada por la editorial, era: “una novela que revisa mi novela anterior”. Autor de esos que prefieren no hacerlo, que —insisto— sin duda habría fascinado a Vila-Matas, no solo no escribe nunca más, además emplea unos métodos de enseñanza muy peculiares. Su primera clase consiste en una cena en un restaurante mexicano que tiene poco de mexicano (de nuevo esa obsesión de Cohen por la amenaza de los sucedáneos). Después les encarga a los alumnos un relato en donde escriban sobre él, poniéndolo de las peores maneras posibles, para terminar asegurando que no piensa leer ninguno de los trabajos. Lo que nos cuenta el protagonista de este relato es su propia historia de formación en un taller literario que comienza, como lo han hecho las piezas anteriores, con un párrafo sorprendente: “Yo ayudé a construir el edificio Flatiron”. ¿Qué tiene esto que ver con un taller de literatura? Pues mucho, porque el profesor decide no impartir ni una clase más, y concentra a todos sus alumnos en un único empeño: construirán una réplica del neoyorquino edificio Flatiron —también conocido como edificio Fuller— en una zona del campo de deportes de la Universidad. La literatura, la creación literaria como un desafío arquitectónico. Y el profesor distribuye el trabajo en función de las cualidades de la prosa de los alumnos: un poeta que con su escritura levantaba vigas endebles se encargará de los cimientos, en donde sí puede progresar; una alumna de estilo recargado, descriptivo, barroco y abigarrado, fue la encargada de las cristaleras; otro, muy del realismo sucio, se convirtió en electricista; una autora de poesía vistosa pero vacía será la diseñadora de interiores…, y así con todos. Y de nuevo la angustia ante la copia, lo imitado, la reproducción que actúa como sucedáneo. El edificio Flatiron será denominado Falsiron, en cuya erección el profesor de escritura invertirá todo su dinero, se arruinará e incluso terminará viviendo en él. Muchas reflexiones se contienen en esta narración, cuyo desenlace ocultará, de nuevo, para quienes deseen afrontar unas páginas que vuelven a ser una lección de literatura, de sus funciones, incluso de su arquitectura.
4-La pornografía es un falso cuento de hadas
Por último, Enviado, relato en dos partes diferenciadas: La cama y COM/MOC. La primera mitad bebe de los tradicionales cuentos infantiles, de hadas, con bosques, leñadores, y la historia sobre la fabricación de una cama que, en su cabecero, acumula una serie de símbolos tallados en la madera. La cama irá pasando de generación en generación, un significado del legado cultural y del peso de las historias, dado que el propio leñador (el leñador primigenio) se había tallado a sí mismo en el momento de recoger madera para construir aquella cama. Este detalle implica una historia dentro otra historia (de nuevo), metaliteratura o metatexto cuyo vehículo es el mueble en una especie de puesta en abismo. Sin embargo, con el paso de los años, y de sus dueños, el mensaje del hombre entre los árboles del bosque recogiendo la madera para tallar la cama (y su cabecero), se va diluyendo a causa de la incomprensión para interpretar la escena de quienes se han visto alienados por el progreso. Es el deterioro del acervo cultural, de la reserva sapiencial de la oralidad. La corrupción del mensaje que se alberga en toda obra de arte. Todo lo narrado anteriormente, en la parte de La cama, es una crónica de pacotilla. La cama se destruye por causa de una relación sexual que la rompe en pedazos. Una relación sexual que se graba de forma sórdida para que sirva de video pornográfico. Y esto, dará acceso a la segunda parte del relato: COM/MOC. El protagonista será un aspirante a periodista que vaga por Estados Unidos, de motel en motel, buscando un reportaje. Al final, amargado, solitario, desencantado, empieza a visitar páginas porno en Internet. n un final de la pieza delirante, el aprendiz de periodista, enamorado de la chica del video de la cama rota, emprende su búsqueda hasta dar con un lugar que parece sacado de un cuento de hadas, para crear una conexión de cierre circular con el principio del relato: un remedo de nube de Internet en donde habitan copiadas en caché todas las actrices porno de las películas. Un giro sorprendente para poner el colofón a un relato sorprendente, a un libro sorprendente y, sobre todo, admirable.
Así es este Cuatro mensajes nuevos de Joshua Cohen.

[Jean Ra · Rating 2 out of 5]

Con el tiempo aprendes a cribar y saber cuando no has de plegarte a cualquier veleidad estética, por muy refinada que luzca. Por eso, aunque los dos libros de Joshua Cohen que leí anteriormente me encantaron, éste compendio de relatos, por contra, me suena a boutade literaria, a exhibicionismo por parte de un escritor que es muy consciente del tamaño de su talento. Y desea que lo notes. Mira cuanto palabreo en cada página, qué frases tan extensas, mira ahora este recurso auto-consciente, varias digresiones dentro de digresiones... deja ya de vacilar, pavo.


Y para colmo no es tan original como él supone: muchos de los recursos retóricos más retorcidos que aquí exhibe ya se encuentran por ejemplo en El limonero real de Juan José Saer, otro amante de la frase extensa y de largo aliento. Me parece bien que en sus siguientes publicaciones Cohen atenuara tanta triquiñuela rebuscada de taller literario.

[Claudia Sorsby · Rating 1 out of 5]

Wow, I can't believe I finished this--what a bore.

The first story (hapless drug dealer is screwed by story on Internet) had a good idea as a kernel, but it was way too long and diffuse. The second was also too long, but had a decent ending. The last two were simply terrible.

I read this on the basis of a favorable review from Rachel Kushner, in the NYTimes. Note to self: Her taste is opposite mine. If she dislikes something, I might like it.

I honestly thought she was joking with this line: "In his latest book, “Four New Messages,” Joshua Cohen takes on the experiential properties of the 'online' modality, its textures and tautologies, its effects on language and thus on humans and meaning," because, really, who takes that sort of twaddle seriously? But the joke's on me, because she wasn't kidding. Blurgh.

[Emily Simpson · Rating 4 out of 5]

For the most part, Joshua Cohen’s Four New Messages explores the brutal presentness technology contributes to our overdriven, twentyfirstcenturized modi. Specifically, it deals with gross termination of privacy and the end of an era where innocent embarrassments and personal faux pas could remain privately shamed.

In Cohen’s world, even less than nothing is sacred. The age of the internet, as this collection aggressively insists, is one of blown (no pun intended) cover and ruination from dissolved anonymity. And it’s funny. And sad. And maybe a bit cautionary too, at least when considering the plight of the central character in “Emission,” a hoodrat whose drunken sexploits become cemented to the nether-reaches of a personal blog- the posting of which haunts his existence.

Particularly impressive is “McDonald’s,” which draws inspiration from its fast-food namesake to form a narrative about a weekend writer who is attempting to explain a new story to his kind but critical parents. That Cohen is able to harness inspiration from such a homogenized, corporate source – one that practically demands absence of originality in every facet of its being – is a mark of his talent.

“Sent,” the collection’s closing piece, extrapolates on the pre- and post-porn lives of unassuming, young Eastern European girls featured in a vid that the protagonist-journalist writes about. He chronicles the women’s fates from pornonym (birthname Toyta begets Tanya begets Tiny Toy, once one starlet arrives in America to progress her career) to an eventuality where ownership over their personhood becomes totally exterior – their lives in this new age belong to an infinite number of faceless viewers.

“The College Borough” was less linguistically striking than the rest of Four New Messages’ range, though still intriguing for the dichotomies (relevance v. non-, pastoral v. urban, enlightenment v. innocence) with which Cohen nimbly plays.

[Ángel Albert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Me ha gustado bastante. He tenido momentos en algunos relatos donde me he tronchado de risa y no veía el momento de parar. Tiene otros momentos donde me perdía un poco pero en general me ha gustado.
Tiene descripciones y asociaciones de conceptos que me han gustado mucho y hace una crítica a la sociedad actual con una ironía que me ha gustado mucho.

Lo recomiendo.

[Ashley · Rating 2 out of 5]

I couldn't get past the first story. It felt like Cohen was trying too hard to be controversial. He failed at any rate.

[Gloria Naldi · Rating 3 out of 5]

5 stelle per il secondo racconto, mentre il quarto è talmente post postmoderno che c’ho capito poco ma comunque Cohen è un genio

[Adam Armstrong · Rating 2 out of 5]

Four New Messages are four stories that speak of life revolving around the technological age. People whose lives are altered and dependant on that technology, and who at times fight against it.

In “Emission”, an unintentional slip of the tongue leads to a rumor that finds massive escalation with the aid of the internet. The protagonist Mono, seeking to eliminate his sudden infamy and reclaim his autonomy and anonymous nature, requests the aid of a “Digital Paralegal”, as she calls herself. However, the online world is not so easily governed, and laws against slander and libel comments cannot be as easily censored in the massively evolving digital world. In addition, he learns that Majorie isn’t exactly what she claims to be.

“McDonalds” is the story of a writer talking about a story he is working on to his parents, and more importantly (to himself anyway), his inability to get around the fact that he doesn’t want to mention a particular burger chain, and thus endorse the company through mentioning it, but at the same time, creating an original burger chain restaurant will inadvertently reflect some aspects of this real life company he is so desperately trying not to write about. It is this ridiculous problem that forces the protagonist to struggle with finishing his writing, and even in telling his parents the story, as he is so long-winded in its telling that he might not ever reach the climax.

“The College Borough” tells of a group of writers who helped build a replica of a building known as “The Flatiron” in Manhattan. Years later but told at the same time, of one of those writers and his wife returning to the very same place years later with their daughter, who is touring the college to see if it is the right fit for her. Both the narrator and his wife wish to avoid the actual Flatiron building and try to get taxi drivers to drive any route that doesn’t involve actually driving past it.

“Sent” is all about the culture of the digital adult world, the craft of creating videos to please and arouse the anonymous internet user, the trickery of release contracts that supposedly say the same thing in English as they do in the language the actress can read, but they do not. It talks about the girls who rise to brief stardom “for the money”, “for the rush”, and even “for the hope”. It is also the story of one man’s search for a particular star from a particular video, whose life seems to only exist for those brief moments on the screen. It is all of these things and more, a complex story weaved through multiple images.

The writing can be difficult at times to follow. Entire paragraphs could contain a single sentence or two of frightening lengths, to the point that it seems more reasonable to break it down into at least two or three sentences, if not more. In the first story, this technique is actually effective and useful, and the second story, at times it has its merits, but it soon bogs down the passages and becomes an ineffective crutch the author finds himself forced to rely on. Take for instance this passage, a single sentence:

“They sat there, he and this girl who knew him only as Dick—this townie fake gownie and though he didn’t know it yet the daughter of a Midwestern appliances manufacturer who maintained , this daughter did, upward of thirty anonymous weblogs: Stuff to Cook When You’re Hungover, Movies I Recently Saw About Niggers, My Big Gay Milkshake Diary, The Corey News (which warned of the depredations of child stardom), What I’ve Heard about Bathrooms in North America—all irregularly updated but all updated.” (page 12)

The ideas of these stories, the “four messages” the author is trying to get across, and really there are a lot more than just four, are brilliant once the reader can get around or understand his exasperated style of language. It is a compelling analysis and sardonic critique of modern society, hidden in the context of these stories that are, at times, too smart for their own good. The author speaks of how technology is changing our perceptions of reality, and questions whether it is for the good or bad of humanity.

[Josh Friedlander · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some time has passed since I read this, robbing me of my initial impressions but also causing me to realise what little impression it made on me. Stylistically and thematically, Cohen (a New Books editor at Harper's magazine) attempts to conjure the feel of the Way We Live Now. Each of these four novellas comes with a URL, and the title and content allude to contemporary WWW-related issues (the instantaneity of email, the ubiquity of porn, online shaming). In our high-speed culture, though, technology seems to be adapting, Proteus-like, more quickly than writers can get their heads around it, leaving their fiction and satire as embarrassingly passé as the '90s cyberpunk stuff one still finds at garage sales and used bookstores.

But obsolescence isn't the major problem here, at least for now. After the first (and most engaging) story - about a campus drug dealer exposed online for a sexual contretemps at a frat party - the prose veers into increasingly unclear and uneven territory. A writer cannot bring himself to write the word "McDonalds", a writing teacher tells his students to build a house, and the final story appears to be about a forest made of matryoshka-like porn stars(?) Frequently it is addressed to the author's parents. It rambles, caroming from topic to topic, unbound to structure or narrative arc. My problems with this book, gave me concern that I might just not be cut out for experimental fiction itself anymore. (Prove me wrong, Ali Smith!)

Cohen's most famous novel, Witz, has been sitting on my shelf for a while. It's an epic 900-odd pages, allegedly Finnegans Wake-level difficult in parts. Cohen is said to have cut down the book from 3,000 pages written on a trip through Eastern Europe, part of which he spun off into the book A Heaven of Others. He is clearly a formidable mind - crafting long, intricate sentences with neologisms which frequently flummoxed my e-readers' built-in dictionary. There are plenty of sparks of good ideas here, buried under all the obscurantism. But does anyone care?

[Alfonso D'agostino · Rating 2 out of 5]

Annissimi fa mi dedicavo al Texas Hold ‘em, che per chi non lo sapesse è quella variante del poker che si gioca con due carte in mano e un massimo di cinque carte comunitarie scoperte a poco a poco sul tavolo, e che valgono per tutti. E come sa chiunque abbia giocato a poker, la massima soddisfazione non te la regalano due Assi serviti alla distribuzione e la loro sopravvivenza fino alla vittoria della mano (p.s. nella versione digitale quattro cinque mouse devo averli sfasciati), ma quella arte sopravvaluta e affascinante per chi ne capisce poco che va sotto il nome di bluff.

Si, lo so che suscita emozione immediata, la faccia da poker, il saper dissimulare, il rischio di giocare come se avessi delle carte d’oro mentre ti ritrovi un due di cuore e un sette di picche tra le dita. Ma ci devi mettere a fianco la capacità di capire quando è troppo, la ritirata dignitosa che fa a pugni con il tuo ego, e l’inesorabile figura da imbecille se si arrivano a scoprire le carte. Tutto sommato, conviene davvero raramente.

Avevo riposto un sacco di aspettativa in Quattro nuovi messaggi, una raccolta di quattro racconti di Joshua Cohen. Prometteva letteratura mescolata a Black Mirror, effetti del virtuale che rendono orrendo il reale, qualcuno aveva persino scomodato David Foster Wallace e il suo osservatorio sulla televisione americana.

L’impressione finale è che Quattro nuovi messaggi sia nato – tra l’altro in anni in cui le nuove tecnologie erano meno intrecciate alle nostre esistenze – da una intuizione felice, ma non ne abbia sviluppato pienamente le premesse e le promesse. Il risultato è uno sguardo letterario che appare contorto, certamente ansiogeno come era nelle intenzioni dell’autore ma con il respiro corto di un senso di impotenza e di inevitabilità che non consente partecipazione. E anche lo stile linguistico, che deve aver costretto l’ottima Claudia Durastanti a un lavoro di traduzione immensamente complicato, contribuisce a rendere il tutto vagamente supponente, e quindi un filo fastidioso.

Sono pagine piene di due di cuori e sette di picche che si fingono coppie di assi e regine. E alla fine, ahimè, me ne accorgevo sempre.

[J · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cohen is a babbler. Like James Joyce, Thomas Pynchon, et al., his sentences are long, winding exercises in syntactic hysterics. He moves between neurosis, wit, despair and epiphany with the pedal-to-the-floor kind of energy of someone who wants to tell you about everything (in every thematic register) at once. I'm not sure these stories, all of which crack wise in one way or another on our overtly technologized, deeply interneted lives, are really anything more than an excuse to string together sentences with half a dozen subjects and objects and referents both internal and external.

The first (and best) story, Emission feels almost like something William Gibson would write if he got more into literary fiction, and paints a delirious picture of our crazed, globalized world from a single deeply unfortunate blog post. The rest offer a perpetually evolving hodgepodge of meta-fiction and meta-myth; sometimes it works, sometimes it falls flat. I really admire the sheer intellectual exuberance it takes to write like this at all, but I think he's trying a little too hard to impress.

[Tobias · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The College Borough" and "Emission" are two of the best short works of fiction I've read in a long time.

[Jennifer · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first story was great- an intelligent stream of consciousness mixed with a funny play on words. The other three were a bit too rambling, conceptual and pretentious.

[Travis Fortney · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was mildly disappointed by this book, as well as confused about what all the buzz was about. It's not that I didn't get it, just that there wasn't anything to get.

Still, I reviewed it at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography, which you can find here: http://bit.ly/13yy2fo

--

How many authors' mere mention in a cover blurb (i.e. this author is like that one) is enough to force you to pick up a book? For me, the list is short, and one name on it is David Foster Wallace.

The Wallace comparison makes me take notice precisely for the ways that his work is inimitable. Whereas the key ingredient in a Richard Ford novel can be boiled down to a kind of wistful interiority, and a book of Mary Gaitskill's short stories can be identified by the author's own brand of sexual frankness, and you can find these characteristics in a host of lesser imitators, what makes exactly makes a Wallace book unique is harder to pin down.

Yes, there is the strangeness, the unwillingness to self-censor, the verbal gymnastics, the comic/dystopic, the meta-ness, the general feeling of awe at the display of the author's brainpower. But to me there is also an indefinable joy, a bigheartedness, and a simple accurateness to his vision--such that inserting his name into a blurb or review promises something awe-inspiring within the book's pages.

The Wallace comparison has led to disappointments before--I still don't much appreciate George Saunders' work, for example, and found myself simmering with a totally unreasonable anger when Charlie Rose repeatedly brought up the comparison in an recent interview marking the release of Saunders' new book. When friends recommend that I read a Saunders book, I think less of them. Which is not to say that Saunders' work doesn't have obvious positive qualities.

It works both ways. I never would have picked up Adam Ross's Mr. Peanut if not for the Wallace comparisons, and was pleasantly surprised by that book. Although the two authors are concerned with very different material, I was swept up by Ross's narrative in a way that was at times eerily similar to my experience with Wallace.

Perhaps all of this is due to my own experience of reading Infinite Jest at just the right time, but the experience was so earth-shattering for me that I assume it must be have been that way for everyone, so that when a reviewer drops Wallace's name when there are so many other authors to choose from, I expect that reviewer is expressing the feeling of being knocked flat, awestruck, amazed, and that they have no better words for summing up the experience than to say, "It's as if a Paul Thomas Anderson movie married a David Foster Wallace novel and had a baby," or "This anarchic energy recalls Thomas Pynchon and David Foster Wallace."

The above quotes concern Fiona Maazel's Woke Up Lonely and Joshua Cohen's Four New Messages, respectively, both recently published by Graywolf Press (I reviewed Maazel's book here).

I read Maazel's novel mostly because I found the premise interesting and not due to the above blurb, but the comparisons to Wallace definitely played into my decision to pick up Cohen's book of stories (Wallace is mentioned twice on the back cover, and in seemingly every review of the book, which now includes this one). I have mixed feelings about the comparison and about Graywolf's decision to quote those reviews on the back cover--Cohen is an undeniably talented young writer but the comparison creates an unreasonable expectation.

To get to the point, Cohen's book did remind me of Wallace, but it reminded me of Girl with Curious Hair rather than Infinite Jest or Oblivion. I mean that as a compliment, but I will say that I found Girl to be an uneven book, the work of an author who had not yet reached his full potential, sometimes too clever, sometimes too at the mercy of obvious influences, and sometimes annoying--and I found it to be all of those things even though I read it after Infinite Jest, that is, while deep in the throes of the most geeked-out state of writerly fandom that I had ever experienced and have never again experienced in the decade or so since. Not to put to blunt a point on it, but I cannot yet count myself as a fan of Cohen, and so I didn't have as much tolerance for this books shortcomings. What's missing from Four New Messages (or at least the first three) and is abundantly available in even the earliest Wallace is that very same "anarchic energy" the blurb on the back cover of this book promises.

I'm not sure where I got this impression, but I went into this book expecting longer and more impressive sentences. Instead, Cohen's reputed verbal dexterity mostly consists of shortening or adding suffixes to certain words. I also had the impression that Cohen had the reputation for unique insight into the internet age, but was again largely unimpressed. He does a nice job of using the right vocabulary and inserting some internet jargon into his stories, but to what end? The first story--and by far the best of the bunch--concerns a drug dealer who has his reputation ruined by a blog. The last story concerns the ways that young men are sexualized in the internet age. The middle two stories are basically concept-driven experiments that don't concern the internet. I found the middle two stories mildly annoying, and the bookends mildly disappointing, but only mildly. I felt like Cohen's most exciting ideas--internet porn and online reputation management--had already been well explored in other mediums, and I felt too much boredom and too little excitement while reading this book. Maybe this is a result of the internet age itself, where something that seemed totally new on its release only a few months now seems like old news. Maybe its my own fault, trying to recapture a feeling that just doesn't come around that often. And maybe its just due to the fact that I read the last fifty pages of this while I rather would have been outside frolicking.

Ah, well. In fairness, I should mention that the blurbs on the back cover of Four New Messages concern Cohen's earlier work Witz, an 817-page experimental novel which I haven't read but sounds like it might more closely align with my tastes. I may pick that one up and have a look, or I may wait to see what this prolific young writer comes up with next.

[George Togman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Finished this waiting for the geese concert in Brooklyn #brandconsistency #cameronwinter

[Maurizio Codogno · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un Cohen ancora un po' acerbo

Questi quattro racconti lunghi scritti da Joshua Cohen qualche anno prima del successo del Libro dei Numeri sono piuttosto difficili da classificare. In un certo senso, tranne in parte l'ultimo, sono tutti centrati su di lui, o meglio su uno scrittore che sta facendo introspezione su ciò che è e ciò che vorrebbe fare. Il guaio è che Cohen è un funambolo con le parole (e la povera Claudia Durastanti ha dovuto fare un lavoraccio per renderlo così bene in italiano): il povero lettore si perde nelle divagazioni, e quando la trama ritorna brutalmente al punto di partenza uno si ritrova davvero spaesato. Tra i quattro racconti (o forse sono cinque, perché non ho mica capito quale sia il filo conduttore tra "Il letto" e "Com/Moc", o meglio quello che ho visto è molto esile) quello che mi è piaciuto di più è "Quartiere universitario", dove il narratore racconta di come qualche decennio prima uno scrittore che aveva pubblicato un bestseller ma non riusciva a scrivere un seguito passò un anno sabbatico a insegnare letteratura nell'università spersa in mezzo al nulla. In realtà il progetto di quell'anno fu tutta un'altra cosa: ma andando avanti nella lettura si scopre come il professore fosse davvero capace di leggere dentro le altre persone, e far tirare loro fuori la vera vocazione. Il libro merita anche solo per questo racconto.

[Arlo · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not sure how to rate Cohen on a star scale. He spits some mean sentences- and some serious meta fiction. He kind of reminds me of Michael Jordan, but while he was in highschool. In the sense that he is still perfecting his craft, but there is a noticeable brilliance slowly emerging.
Emission was the most engaging story of the four in a traditional sense and by the last story, which also happens to be the longest, I was in a sense burned out.
Note to self in the future go back and read the last story to give it a fair shot.

Also all four of the "messages" appeared in other publications prior--Paris Review, Harper's magazine etc.

[Tiziano Brignoli · Rating 2 out of 5]

Forse sono rimasto deluso perché mi aspettavo molto di più da questi racconti, ma alla fine sembra si dica tanto, tutto, ma si fa fatica a seguire quello che l'autore vuole realmente dire. Alcune volte bisognerebbe semplicemente usare parole più semplici, concetti più immediati e andare dritti al punto, piuttosto che fare a tutti i costi l'intellettuale.
La presenza ingombrante nella vita della persona da parte della tecnologia sinceramente non è così predominante, se non nel primo e un po' nell'ultimo racconto, che fra l'altro ho trovato estremamente caotico.

[Bill Hsu · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the first three stories. Especially the framing Berlin sequence in the first, since I started this on my flight after 10 days in that city.

Then "Sent" just seemed to go on and on. And on.

[J · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hyperstylized and at times maddeningly so, and yet. These stories combine original concepts with a singular style to produce a mostly invigorating experience.

[Ben Bush · Rating 5 out of 5]

Let's meet up and get coffee and talk about this book IRL.

[Dario Giardina · Rating 1 out of 5]

Contorto. Pretenzioso.