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Circuits of the Wind #3
Circuits of the Wind: A Legend of the Net Age
THE LYRIC STORY OF THE NET GENERATION—GROWING UP AND COMING OF AGE ON THE INTERNET The Internet is everywhere now, but Ray Valentine saw it first explode. CIRCUITS OF THE WIND is the story of Ray's quest to find himself as he grows up wandering the computer underground—the wild, global outback that existed before the net went mainstream. How else does an end-of-century slacker reach out to the world from Sohola, that northern state that's a little more Midwest than it is New England? The net holds the key to what he's after—but even as he pioneers this virtual world, the veneer of his real life begins to crack.
In VOLUME THREE of the CIRCUITS OF THE WIND trilogy, Ray gets a data entry job with an outbound line just so he can live constantly, and secretly, on the net—and after he succeeds in business without really trying, he finds even more excitement and success as an online correspondent in the booming Web of the dot-com Nineties. He's living on the net, feeding off the very pulse of it, but it's still not what he's after—his entire life of wandering online seems to be a total waste. Or is it?
In VOLUME THREE of the CIRCUITS OF THE WIND trilogy, Ray gets a data entry job with an outbound line just so he can live constantly, and secretly, on the net—and after he succeeds in business without really trying, he finds even more excitement and success as an online correspondent in the booming Web of the dot-com Nineties. He's living on the net, feeding off the very pulse of it, but it's still not what he's after—his entire life of wandering online seems to be a total waste. Or is it?
198 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2012
197 people want to read
About the author
Michael Stutz
13 books4 followersMichael Stutz is an American writer. His reality fiction (including Circuits of the Wind, a three-volume novel) explores Generation X nostalgia and life in the Net Age with trademark poetic rhythms and rhapsodic lyricism.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 3, 2013
This volume really wraps this book up nicely. Over the course of the three volumes we both relive the birth and growth of the connected age and experience Raymond/Ray Valentine's growth along with it. His sense of wonder in exploring the new world, and his need for connection, grows and changes as the volumes progress, increasingly haunting him with a pressing destiny that he still must figure out. I don't think it's the sort of book I expected when I read the description, but it is one I'm glad that I found.
July 10, 2013
Although I've rated the latter two volumes of the cycle at three stars while the first at four, I would tend to average toward four rather than three. The problem is the reader, to a certain extent, with this one.
If you're closer to the character of Ray Valentine than you might otherwise care to admit, it can be a tough read. By this I mean that the author has completed his trilogy by hammering home the same personality defects over and over again, from the addictive need to find fulfillment in something (in this instance the budding Internet) to an inability to form any lasting relationships. Ray's life is one long progression of the same thing happening over and over again, and he never learns.
The real problem would be the lack of a cohesive understanding of this from the author's point of view. Ray might not know it, but the reader will, and it becomes increasingly taxing to follow his life as he never learns a thing. Ray is constantly blowing up for brief periods of time, becoming every bit the legend Stutz seems to believe the early years of the Internet to have been, only to crash back down and have to start all over again. Clearly Stutz was fascinated with the material, and there's every indication that this is more or less his life story (making it that much more difficult to be critical), a point that is even woven into Ray's experiences as he too comes to see writing a novel about the Net Age as his major calling.
The whole approach is so laser-focused on Ray's experiences as he lives them that the whole thing never seems to learn any better than Ray himself the mistakes he keeps making. If you feel like you've already read me type that, well, that's the kind of read this whole thing is.
But as I said, there's something to be taken from that. If the character and the story don't do it, and even if that's not the point the author was trying to make maybe the real conclusion for the reader is to treat it as a cautionary tale. If you don't learn anything, either, then yeah the whole thing will turn out to be a waste of your time.
Stutz's best writing was in the first volume (what had been occasional bursts of florid language becomes more and more common the more the author becomes convinced that he's making the official record of the early civilian experience of the Internet), when he had definite focus. Especially in the second volume, and certainly in the third as well, it begins to feel like he's following more a template of what Ray's experiences are supposed to be, in college and the workforce, than the comparatively more organic nature of his childhood discoveries. The more Ray slogs on, the less convincing everything becomes, because he becomes so obviously and willfully detached from everyone that it becomes painful to watch (or read) it all unfold.
The most confusing element of the whole thing is that Stutz seems to take for granted many of the elements that he should have explained better, while going on at lengths about the repetitious beats, as well as Ray's perennial hopes and fears. For instance, you might assume that Ray was an only child, but in fact he has a younger sister. Like the parental dynamic, Stutz only mentions her when he has to. Was Stutz himself an only child? Are we supposed to assume that Ray simply never bonded with his sister? These are the kinds of details that would have been fascinating to explore. And what of Ray's actual interests? He keeps scouring the Internet, in its many early forms, and dubs himself the Wanderer because that's basically all he ever does. And then later he's described as full of ideas. Really? He used to be motivated only by the idea of all the potential of the machines around him, to reach out and find someone who could understand him. But he lost that, and that's another thing that's never really examined.
Anyway, if you're a reader who won't mind following this kind of story, if you can learn where Ray doesn't, then you might find this to be quite a fascinating story indeed.
If you're closer to the character of Ray Valentine than you might otherwise care to admit, it can be a tough read. By this I mean that the author has completed his trilogy by hammering home the same personality defects over and over again, from the addictive need to find fulfillment in something (in this instance the budding Internet) to an inability to form any lasting relationships. Ray's life is one long progression of the same thing happening over and over again, and he never learns.
The real problem would be the lack of a cohesive understanding of this from the author's point of view. Ray might not know it, but the reader will, and it becomes increasingly taxing to follow his life as he never learns a thing. Ray is constantly blowing up for brief periods of time, becoming every bit the legend Stutz seems to believe the early years of the Internet to have been, only to crash back down and have to start all over again. Clearly Stutz was fascinated with the material, and there's every indication that this is more or less his life story (making it that much more difficult to be critical), a point that is even woven into Ray's experiences as he too comes to see writing a novel about the Net Age as his major calling.
The whole approach is so laser-focused on Ray's experiences as he lives them that the whole thing never seems to learn any better than Ray himself the mistakes he keeps making. If you feel like you've already read me type that, well, that's the kind of read this whole thing is.
But as I said, there's something to be taken from that. If the character and the story don't do it, and even if that's not the point the author was trying to make maybe the real conclusion for the reader is to treat it as a cautionary tale. If you don't learn anything, either, then yeah the whole thing will turn out to be a waste of your time.
Stutz's best writing was in the first volume (what had been occasional bursts of florid language becomes more and more common the more the author becomes convinced that he's making the official record of the early civilian experience of the Internet), when he had definite focus. Especially in the second volume, and certainly in the third as well, it begins to feel like he's following more a template of what Ray's experiences are supposed to be, in college and the workforce, than the comparatively more organic nature of his childhood discoveries. The more Ray slogs on, the less convincing everything becomes, because he becomes so obviously and willfully detached from everyone that it becomes painful to watch (or read) it all unfold.
The most confusing element of the whole thing is that Stutz seems to take for granted many of the elements that he should have explained better, while going on at lengths about the repetitious beats, as well as Ray's perennial hopes and fears. For instance, you might assume that Ray was an only child, but in fact he has a younger sister. Like the parental dynamic, Stutz only mentions her when he has to. Was Stutz himself an only child? Are we supposed to assume that Ray simply never bonded with his sister? These are the kinds of details that would have been fascinating to explore. And what of Ray's actual interests? He keeps scouring the Internet, in its many early forms, and dubs himself the Wanderer because that's basically all he ever does. And then later he's described as full of ideas. Really? He used to be motivated only by the idea of all the potential of the machines around him, to reach out and find someone who could understand him. But he lost that, and that's another thing that's never really examined.
Anyway, if you're a reader who won't mind following this kind of story, if you can learn where Ray doesn't, then you might find this to be quite a fascinating story indeed.
June 5, 2013
Thinking of Ray makes me shiver. His thoughts about his life negatively affected my thinking about my own future. So this shows that the author is good at getting under the reader's skin, but this was a very unpleasant experience for me. I just feel sad and empty when I think about this book, and this might have been what he was going for. Normally I enjoy sad/dark/depressing books, but this one hasn't sat well with me. I really wanted to like this book and feel satisfied with the ending, but it just didn't do it for me. If you're in to the kind of feelings like I described I experienced, then this is the book for you! It does have a lot of prosy bits and some exciting/hopeful parts, both of which were welcome and nice.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews