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Eastern Standard Tribe
Art is a member of the Eastern Standard Tribe, a secret society bound together by a sleep schedule. Around the world, those who wake and sleep on East Coast time find common cause with one another, cooperating, conspiring, to help each other out, coordinated by a global network of Wi-Fi, instant messaging, ubiquitous computing, and a shared love of Manhattan-style bagels.
Or perhaps not. Art is, after all, in the nuthouse. He was put there by a conspiracy of his friends and loved ones, fellow travelers from EST hidden in the bowels of Greenwich Mean Time, spies masquerading as management consultants who strive to mire Europe in oatmeal-thick bureaucracy.
Eastern Standard Tribe is a story of madness and betrayal, of society after the End of Geography, of the intangible factors that define us as a species, as a tribe, as individuals. Scathing, bitter, and funny, EST examines the immutable truths of time, of sunrise and sunset of societies smashed and rebuilt in the storm of instant, ubiquitous communication.
Or perhaps not. Art is, after all, in the nuthouse. He was put there by a conspiracy of his friends and loved ones, fellow travelers from EST hidden in the bowels of Greenwich Mean Time, spies masquerading as management consultants who strive to mire Europe in oatmeal-thick bureaucracy.
Eastern Standard Tribe is a story of madness and betrayal, of society after the End of Geography, of the intangible factors that define us as a species, as a tribe, as individuals. Scathing, bitter, and funny, EST examines the immutable truths of time, of sunrise and sunset of societies smashed and rebuilt in the storm of instant, ubiquitous communication.
224 pages, Hardcover
First published February 17, 2004
81 people are currently reading
1888 people want to read
About the author
Cory Doctorow
267 books6,191 followersCory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist, journalist and blogger — the co-editor of Boing Boing and the author of the YA graphic novel In Real Life, the nonfiction business book Information Doesn’t Want To Be Free, and young adult novels like Homeland, Pirate Cinema, and
Little Brother
and novels for adults like
Rapture Of The Nerds
and Makers. He is a Fellow for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and co-founded the UK Open Rights Group. Born in Toronto, Canada, he now lives in Los Angeles.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 285 reviews
June 16, 2019
An interesting idea that about how the Internet has changed social & work groups, although it ultimately doesn't make a lot of sense. Still, it was a fun, near future trip that pokes a lot of fun & holes into our current conditions. The main character isn't particularly likable which didn't help the story. The few other characters weren't very well fleshed out. All in all, not a bad way to pass the time. It's fairly short.
May 30, 2009
Eastern Standard Tribe reads so quickly and flows so well that it feels like it must be light weight fluff -- a throw away entertainment and nothing more -- but it doesn’t take much, only a little thought and a willingness to engage with “dead bodies” and “living flesh,” to see that it is much more.
Cory Doctorow is an unrepentant blogger, and it shows in this, his second novel. His language fizzes and crackles like three bags of Pop Rocks burning their carbonated pleasure on a tongue, popping out computer geek jargon in one line and imaginary pop culture in the next, before spinning off into a welcome tirade full of compelling arguments.
One minute Doctorow’s revealing truly terrifying insights into the field of mental health, demonstrating how a pseudo-science bent on homogeneity can wield enough power to put people away without due process or any process at all. The next he’s casually envisioning a mobile, futuristic Napster to rule the highway airwaves with piracy turned privateering.
It is sci-fi so successful in its plausibility that it almost ceases to be sci-fi. In Doctorow’s future there are cars that run on vodka or fry grease, airplanes with hot tubs, comm sets that nullify texting and turn it into chatting, and circadian tribalism that offers a new system of societal organization just waiting to take over those systems we’ve long accepted, embraced and grown tired of.
It’s all either already happening or is going to happen. And if it doesn’t happen it will likely only be because whatever it is has taken another form. It’s not prophetic, but it is fascinatingly observant.
Taken together, Eastern Standard Tribe and Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom suggest that Cory Doctorow has the potential to be a Canadian Philip K. Dick. I can’t give much higher praise than that. But if you aren’t familiar with Dick’s work try this equation:
A non-nihilistic Chuck Palahniuk - Chuck’s always disappointing third act + a smart, sci-fi kick in the ass = Cory Doctorow.
Check out how his “Chi is flowing” before they turn one of his books into a movie and taint his prose forever. He may not be the most literary rat on the ship, but his energy makes him the most likely to escape the scuttle.
Cory Doctorow is an unrepentant blogger, and it shows in this, his second novel. His language fizzes and crackles like three bags of Pop Rocks burning their carbonated pleasure on a tongue, popping out computer geek jargon in one line and imaginary pop culture in the next, before spinning off into a welcome tirade full of compelling arguments.
One minute Doctorow’s revealing truly terrifying insights into the field of mental health, demonstrating how a pseudo-science bent on homogeneity can wield enough power to put people away without due process or any process at all. The next he’s casually envisioning a mobile, futuristic Napster to rule the highway airwaves with piracy turned privateering.
It is sci-fi so successful in its plausibility that it almost ceases to be sci-fi. In Doctorow’s future there are cars that run on vodka or fry grease, airplanes with hot tubs, comm sets that nullify texting and turn it into chatting, and circadian tribalism that offers a new system of societal organization just waiting to take over those systems we’ve long accepted, embraced and grown tired of.
It’s all either already happening or is going to happen. And if it doesn’t happen it will likely only be because whatever it is has taken another form. It’s not prophetic, but it is fascinatingly observant.
Taken together, Eastern Standard Tribe and Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom suggest that Cory Doctorow has the potential to be a Canadian Philip K. Dick. I can’t give much higher praise than that. But if you aren’t familiar with Dick’s work try this equation:
A non-nihilistic Chuck Palahniuk - Chuck’s always disappointing third act + a smart, sci-fi kick in the ass = Cory Doctorow.
Check out how his “Chi is flowing” before they turn one of his books into a movie and taint his prose forever. He may not be the most literary rat on the ship, but his energy makes him the most likely to escape the scuttle.
November 28, 2007
This book was written by Cory Doctorow, one of the writers at BoingBoing.net, so it might not surprise you that you that it's under the Creative Commons license and you can read it for free at his site. Being, however, a chump, I paid real Earth dollars for it in meatspace. Meatspace! I am a hip cyberpunk! From the future!
The book is near-future science fiction with just about one cool new idea: in a pervasively connected homogenized world, the most meaningful form of of group identity isn't geography or interest so much as when you're awake. Thus, the book features net-based conglomerates of people who all live in a single time zone, regardless of where they live on Earth. Actually, the way Doctorow describes the idea, certain places have a particular set of tastes and mannerisms, and the net allows people anywhere on Earth to participate in that culture, provided they are willing to synchronize themselves to that location's timezone. The resulting Tribes are never defined satisfactorily. Are they backscratching networks? Pseudo-states? Cancerous IRC channels run amok? It's a fun idea that isn't carried far enough.
Once this idea peters out, you're left with writing that is merely acceptable and a plot whose most winning quality is brevity. Doctorow's prose is breezy and irrelevant, with little to no redeeming humor. I think my only mid-book vocalizations were two non-sequential snorts, which, as my sister can tell you, is damning testimony. Apart from the Tribes idea, it's just your standard near future megacoroporations, non-lethal police weaponry, and phenomenally capable all-in-wonder cell phones. I don't want to live in a future with IRC. In conclusion, not my favorite book ever.
The book is near-future science fiction with just about one cool new idea: in a pervasively connected homogenized world, the most meaningful form of of group identity isn't geography or interest so much as when you're awake. Thus, the book features net-based conglomerates of people who all live in a single time zone, regardless of where they live on Earth. Actually, the way Doctorow describes the idea, certain places have a particular set of tastes and mannerisms, and the net allows people anywhere on Earth to participate in that culture, provided they are willing to synchronize themselves to that location's timezone. The resulting Tribes are never defined satisfactorily. Are they backscratching networks? Pseudo-states? Cancerous IRC channels run amok? It's a fun idea that isn't carried far enough.
Once this idea peters out, you're left with writing that is merely acceptable and a plot whose most winning quality is brevity. Doctorow's prose is breezy and irrelevant, with little to no redeeming humor. I think my only mid-book vocalizations were two non-sequential snorts, which, as my sister can tell you, is damning testimony. Apart from the Tribes idea, it's just your standard near future megacoroporations, non-lethal police weaponry, and phenomenally capable all-in-wonder cell phones. I don't want to live in a future with IRC. In conclusion, not my favorite book ever.
October 3, 2011
I'm giving this a 3 because I thought a lot of the world-building was interesting and I found the voice engrossing. However, the book is deeply flawed in some irritating ways.
The narrator is sarcastic and not particularly likeable, but he is interesting, I must grant. He's affiliated with a group based in the EST but finds himself in London undercover trying to sabotage other groups. (There's a really interesting theory here about how the internet changes the way that people self-identify; however, the lengths the narrator will go to and the different lengths his coworker Fede is willing to go to don't actually make that much sense to me, despite the explanations.) He meets his Magic Pixie Dream Girl by running her over by accident. She offers to split the insurance payment if he'll play along; shockingly, she's batshit and disloyal. Shocked, I tell you. Shocked. Still not sure why the narrator is.
There's a lot of flashbacks and forwards, as the narrator begins on the roof of a mental hospital, trying to decide whether it's better to be smart or happy. He declares that this is the driving force of the story, and it's a very effective hook. Unfortunately, he forgets it halfway through and we're never quite sure why.
There's a conservation of characters that is clever and yet nowhere near as effective as it should be. There's some shenanigans involving copyright law that's also clever, but perhaps not as well explained as it might be.
The characters are interesting, if dislikable. The plot is also quite interesting, if a bit underinflated. The worldbuilding is downright fascinating, but still a bit on the half-baked side. There's a lot of wit and clever asides, but it's not quite enough to bring this up to the level it aspires to be. There's so much potential here, but it never quite came through.
The narrator is sarcastic and not particularly likeable, but he is interesting, I must grant. He's affiliated with a group based in the EST but finds himself in London undercover trying to sabotage other groups. (There's a really interesting theory here about how the internet changes the way that people self-identify; however, the lengths the narrator will go to and the different lengths his coworker Fede is willing to go to don't actually make that much sense to me, despite the explanations.) He meets his Magic Pixie Dream Girl by running her over by accident. She offers to split the insurance payment if he'll play along; shockingly, she's batshit and disloyal. Shocked, I tell you. Shocked. Still not sure why the narrator is.
There's a lot of flashbacks and forwards, as the narrator begins on the roof of a mental hospital, trying to decide whether it's better to be smart or happy. He declares that this is the driving force of the story, and it's a very effective hook. Unfortunately, he forgets it halfway through and we're never quite sure why.
There's a conservation of characters that is clever and yet nowhere near as effective as it should be. There's some shenanigans involving copyright law that's also clever, but perhaps not as well explained as it might be.
The characters are interesting, if dislikable. The plot is also quite interesting, if a bit underinflated. The worldbuilding is downright fascinating, but still a bit on the half-baked side. There's a lot of wit and clever asides, but it's not quite enough to bring this up to the level it aspires to be. There's so much potential here, but it never quite came through.
November 17, 2012
This is another great read, but I've found that Doctorow's first two books (This and Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom) are a bit different to his later novels. They're both set further into the future, and while the concepts are interesting, it's all a bit more vague as to how the technology that supports them would actually function. This is to be expected when it comes to speculative fiction I suppose, but I much prefer the detail of the later books.
I found the first couple of sections of this book frustrating, in that I couldn't figure out exactly what he was trying to signify through the use of time zones, latitudes and acronyms. I spent an inordinate amount of time online trying to figure out what this phrase was getting at, for example:
"I've spent most of my life in GMT-9 and at various latitudes of Zulu, which means that my poor pineal gland has all but forgotten how to do its job without that I drown it in melatonin precursors and treat it to multi-hour nine-kilolumen sessions in the glare of my travel lantern."
I never did find an explanation online, particularly for "latitudes of Zulu", but eventually I figured out he meant, "in Canada."
It is still an excellent and entertaining read - I would just suggest that anyone new to Doctorow should probably start with something like "For The Win".
I found the first couple of sections of this book frustrating, in that I couldn't figure out exactly what he was trying to signify through the use of time zones, latitudes and acronyms. I spent an inordinate amount of time online trying to figure out what this phrase was getting at, for example:
"I've spent most of my life in GMT-9 and at various latitudes of Zulu, which means that my poor pineal gland has all but forgotten how to do its job without that I drown it in melatonin precursors and treat it to multi-hour nine-kilolumen sessions in the glare of my travel lantern."
I never did find an explanation online, particularly for "latitudes of Zulu", but eventually I figured out he meant, "in Canada."
It is still an excellent and entertaining read - I would just suggest that anyone new to Doctorow should probably start with something like "For The Win".
February 20, 2016
I liked parts of this; there were some interesting ideas and a few things that made me chuckle or even laugh out loud. It was short, so the things I didn't like didn't go on too long. I did like how things turned out for the main character, although the resolution involved a somewhat-too-tidy chain of coincidences.
The format/style was peculiar, telling part of the story in 3rd person, past tense and part of it in 1st person, present tense although the main character in both parts is the same person (Art "not his real name"). At the beginning, he talks about killing the story in order to dissect it, and I guess that's what the 3rd person, past tense part represents.
While the story has some unique qualities, it also made me think of Halting State; Bright Lights, Big City; Neverwhere and Anansi Boys.
I just don't enjoy reading about/watching decent guys be involved with beautiful-but-bitchy (and/or possibly crazy) girlfriends, and I didn't like Linda. She had one redeeming, rather out of character, sequence in which she helped Art when his back went out; otherwise, she was an obnoxious, scheming caricature of a person.
The format/style was peculiar, telling part of the story in 3rd person, past tense and part of it in 1st person, present tense although the main character in both parts is the same person (Art "not his real name"). At the beginning, he talks about killing the story in order to dissect it, and I guess that's what the 3rd person, past tense part represents.
While the story has some unique qualities, it also made me think of Halting State; Bright Lights, Big City; Neverwhere and Anansi Boys.
I just don't enjoy reading about/watching decent guys be involved with beautiful-but-bitchy (and/or possibly crazy) girlfriends, and I didn't like Linda. She had one redeeming, rather out of character, sequence in which she helped Art when his back went out; otherwise, she was an obnoxious, scheming caricature of a person.
October 5, 2009
Doctorow's voice is so crisp, so clean, it leaps off the page and runs around the house like a puppy on amphetamines. The plot is straightforward, nothing subtle or complex about it. What's subtle is the ease with which Doctorow gets into your head with his ideas. In no time at all you find yourself nodding in agreement, as he explains how tribes work, how they've always worked, and how the global expansion and ease of communication continue to drive such sensibilities. I'm still not sure how much is fiction, and how much is just a reflection of how brutally smart the man is.
April 20, 2009
Freaking. Awesome. I used this quote in so many college essays:
“So you’re a fish out of water. You live in Arizona, but you’re sixteen years old and all your neighbors are eighty-five, and you get ten billion channels of media on your desktop. All the good stuff—everything that tickles you—comes out of some clique of hyperurban club-kids in South Philly. They’re making cool art, music, clothes. You read their mailing lists and you can tell that they’re exactly the kind of people who’d really appreciate you for who you are. In the old days, you’d pack your bags and hitchhike across the country and move to your community. But you’re sixteen, and that’s a pretty scary step.
“Why move? These kids live online. At lunch, before school, and all night, they’re comming in, talking trash, sending around photos, chatting. Online, you can be a peer. You can hop into these discussions, play the games, chord with one hand while chatting up some hottie a couple thousand miles away.
“Only you can’t. You can’t, because they chat at seven AM while they’re getting ready for school. They chat at five PM, while they’re working on their homework. Their late nights end at three AM. But those are their local times, not yours. If you get up at seven, they’re already at school, ’cause it’s ten there.
“So you start to f with your sleep schedule. You get up at four AM so you can chat with your friends. You go to bed at nine, ’cause that’s when they go to bed. Used to be that it was stock brokers and journos and factory workers who did that kind of thing, but now it’s anyone who doesn’t fit in. The geniuses and lunatics to whom the local doctrine tastes wrong. They choose their peers based on similarity, not geography, and they keep themselves awake at the same time as them. But you need to make some nod to localness, too—gotta be at work with everyone else, gotta get to the bank when it’s open, gotta buy your groceries. You end up hardly sleeping at all, you end up sneaking naps in the middle of the day, or after dinner, trying to reconcile biological imperatives with cultural ones. Needless to say, that alienates you even further from the folks at home, and drives you more and more into the arms of your online peers of choice.
March 19, 2018
3.5* I enjoyed this, my first Doctorow, and I will read more of his books. I quite liked the idea of the 'Tribes' as aren't some of us almost like that now? The images of the near future and tech developments were brilliant and clearly imaginable (most of them) and this story did make me laugh at times.
January 12, 2011
Art Berry lives in a world just slightly askew from the rest of us. In our increasingly wireless world of instant and constant communication, he gives his loyalty not to a state or a company or family and friends he sees regularly, but to the Eastern Standard Tribe—a largely faceless collection of people whose home time zone is the Eastern Standard Zone, who are locked in cutthroat competition with other tribes aligned with other time zones. Art himself is currently working in London, engaged in industrial sabotage against the Greenwich Mean Tribe. Virgn/Deutsche Telekom thinks he's working for them, improving their user interface; in fact he's trying to make it almost unusable. He's got a partner and supervisor from the Tribe, Federico, and a new girlfriend, Linda, whom he met when she staged an accident with him as the fall guy so that she could claim the insurance.
For some reason, that doesn't suggest to Art that perhaps Linda is fundamentally untrustworthy and not looking out for his best interests.
Art's having fun, screwing with V/DT's user interface, dreaming up a really good, fun, and profitable idea for EST to sell to MassPike, involving rights management for downloaded music. There are frustrations, too, of course, as he begins to dimly realize that Fede might be double-crossing him, trying to steal his idea and cut him out of the deal. There are more frustrations as Linda and Fede make increasingly contradictory and irreconcilable demands on him. Eventually, on a trip which he thinks is to pitch the idea, and a side trip home to Toronto to introduce Linda to his Gran, Art finally figures out that Linda is not his friend, either. He reacts very badly, and winds up on the roof of a mental institution in Massachusetts, trying to decide whether to stick a pencil into his brain.
There are some neat ideas here, and the story moves along briskly, alternating between the main story and Art on top of the asylum, trying to figure out what he does next, with quite adequate amounts of suspense. Unfortunately, it doesn't quite satisfy. Except for Art, neither the characters nor the book's main conceit, the Tribes, feel fully developed. I was left feeling that this will probably be a fun book to read when Doctorow finishes writing it.
For some reason, that doesn't suggest to Art that perhaps Linda is fundamentally untrustworthy and not looking out for his best interests.
Art's having fun, screwing with V/DT's user interface, dreaming up a really good, fun, and profitable idea for EST to sell to MassPike, involving rights management for downloaded music. There are frustrations, too, of course, as he begins to dimly realize that Fede might be double-crossing him, trying to steal his idea and cut him out of the deal. There are more frustrations as Linda and Fede make increasingly contradictory and irreconcilable demands on him. Eventually, on a trip which he thinks is to pitch the idea, and a side trip home to Toronto to introduce Linda to his Gran, Art finally figures out that Linda is not his friend, either. He reacts very badly, and winds up on the roof of a mental institution in Massachusetts, trying to decide whether to stick a pencil into his brain.
There are some neat ideas here, and the story moves along briskly, alternating between the main story and Art on top of the asylum, trying to figure out what he does next, with quite adequate amounts of suspense. Unfortunately, it doesn't quite satisfy. Except for Art, neither the characters nor the book's main conceit, the Tribes, feel fully developed. I was left feeling that this will probably be a fun book to read when Doctorow finishes writing it.
January 10, 2020
When I read this in 2005, Doctorow was being touted as the supposed heir apparent to “cyberpunk” writers like William Gibson and Bruce Sterling who use modern IT tech to extrapolate the near-future. Whatever labels you want to throw on it, this was pretty good, even though the basic premise (that in future, netheads will define their peers by time zones rather than geography) is hard to take seriously. Then again, the main character is a bit of a head case.
February 28, 2018
I enjoyed this, but mostly for the 'user experience' ideas that the main character had--the 21st century inventor. Some of them were brilliant. I didn't find the idea of the tribes convincing at all, but the rest of the story was fine.
January 30, 2024
An interesting concept that doesn’t get too deep into what it could have been. Overall a well written book with a humorous and likable main character. It could have been a lot more but for what it is it’s worth a read.
December 18, 2024
Relatively short and easy to read. Being set in the near future it took a couple of chapters to get used to a world slightly more advanced than the one we currently live in, but I liked the plot and found it well-paced with well-timed flashbacks that made me want to keep reading!
May 21, 2024
There’s a particular brand of smarmy sci-fi that holds such an obvious disdain for anyone who stands in the way of the beleaguered nerdy dude main character. Which is a concept I just simply can’t get into or enjoy. Sorry!
May 23, 2012
As I've said before, and will surely say again, I think Cory Doctorow is an amazing human being and I am glad he has sufficient influence to force his vision of the future onto reality, at least a little bit. I mean, seriously, if there are any other modern, (relevant*) authors whose entire literary catelogue I can download without guilt or financial expenditure, someone needs to point me to them immediately.
And for a few dozen pages each, Cory Doctorow's books really sing. I mean, really, who else looks at the corporate emphasis** (or lack thereof***) on usability engineering, and takes it to the logical extreme of business entities sabotaging each other by sending in rogue usability engineers to give the companies bad advice and produce products that are non functioning and overly cumbersome to use. . . .....OR IS IT HAPPENING ALREADY!****
Moreover, the plot thread that gives the story structure--Our hero, Art, trapped on the roof of a towering monolithic sanitarium, a pencil up his nose, poised, ready to lobotomize himself--is wonderfully evocative and compelling.
But actualy, the central plot kind of sucks. Art's friends Fede and Linda are obviously crazy from the get go**** and it's not really ever plausibly explained why Art would hang out with losers like them. Nor is the main conceit ever really explained. Art is a brilliant usability engineer. Why on earth would he be more useful as a saboteur...I mean there is no motivation even for the antogonism between tribes, really.
And while we're on the subject, the tribes themselves don't even make sense. Yes, I get it, you start being friends with people in a particular geographic area and you want to chat with them online, this neccessitates a bit of sleep deprivation. But I don't buy for a second, that the only people you're going to want to hang out with live in one time zone, even if you allow for a very generous amount of homophily based movement.
So yeah, ultimately, this book feels like a poorly rehashed****** Catch 22. But you know what, I had fun reading it, I had fun writing the review, and I have no qualms about saying, Go Download All of Cory Doctorow's Books Now. And better still, they're free.*******
* there are hundreds of self-published "authors" for whom this might true, but I don't have time to read them...that's what editors are for.
** Apple, early Google.
*** Microsoft, late Google.
**** See ***.
***** Not that there isn't a delightful irony in the fact that Art's crazy friends are the ones who
try to have him committed, but a small amount of delightful irony does not make up for a large about of crappy plot.
****** Actually, drop the 're', and I hated Catch 22, anyway.
******* Footnote not realated to the text of the review, but I didn't have any good place for it above. One part of the book that I really enjoyed was Art's early foray onto the Eastern Standard Tribe chatrooms. It's a perfect logical enpoint to IRC chat rooms, complete with finding useful services via cryptographically secure means *and* dealing with obnoxious trolls. It's too bad social networking has all but killed off IRC (at least in my tribes, that is...)
And for a few dozen pages each, Cory Doctorow's books really sing. I mean, really, who else looks at the corporate emphasis** (or lack thereof***) on usability engineering, and takes it to the logical extreme of business entities sabotaging each other by sending in rogue usability engineers to give the companies bad advice and produce products that are non functioning and overly cumbersome to use. . . .....OR IS IT HAPPENING ALREADY!****
Moreover, the plot thread that gives the story structure--Our hero, Art, trapped on the roof of a towering monolithic sanitarium, a pencil up his nose, poised, ready to lobotomize himself--is wonderfully evocative and compelling.
But actualy, the central plot kind of sucks. Art's friends Fede and Linda are obviously crazy from the get go**** and it's not really ever plausibly explained why Art would hang out with losers like them. Nor is the main conceit ever really explained. Art is a brilliant usability engineer. Why on earth would he be more useful as a saboteur...I mean there is no motivation even for the antogonism between tribes, really.
And while we're on the subject, the tribes themselves don't even make sense. Yes, I get it, you start being friends with people in a particular geographic area and you want to chat with them online, this neccessitates a bit of sleep deprivation. But I don't buy for a second, that the only people you're going to want to hang out with live in one time zone, even if you allow for a very generous amount of homophily based movement.
So yeah, ultimately, this book feels like a poorly rehashed****** Catch 22. But you know what, I had fun reading it, I had fun writing the review, and I have no qualms about saying, Go Download All of Cory Doctorow's Books Now. And better still, they're free.*******
* there are hundreds of self-published "authors" for whom this might true, but I don't have time to read them...that's what editors are for.
** Apple, early Google.
*** Microsoft, late Google.
**** See ***.
***** Not that there isn't a delightful irony in the fact that Art's crazy friends are the ones who
try to have him committed, but a small amount of delightful irony does not make up for a large about of crappy plot.
****** Actually, drop the 're', and I hated Catch 22, anyway.
******* Footnote not realated to the text of the review, but I didn't have any good place for it above. One part of the book that I really enjoyed was Art's early foray onto the Eastern Standard Tribe chatrooms. It's a perfect logical enpoint to IRC chat rooms, complete with finding useful services via cryptographically secure means *and* dealing with obnoxious trolls. It's too bad social networking has all but killed off IRC (at least in my tribes, that is...)
September 14, 2017
As someone who suffered intermittent jet lag for about three weeks following a vacation involving a six hour time difference, the aspect of the novel that should have resonated with me the most was the idea of trying to live in one part of the world while maintaining an internal clock for somewhere else. Alas, that's the part that Doctorow seems to pay the least attention to, despite it being sort of central to his whole premise.
This is the first novel I've read from Doctorow, who I don't know much about except that he writes satirical SF novels, has certain opinions about copyright laws and digital sharing and appears occasionally in that online comic that's all stick figures. He strikes me as one of those writers that is pretty good at writing essays outlining his ideas and thus should be very careful to avoid having his novels turn into essays with plots. He seems aware of that pitfall here and does his best to straddle a sort of middle ground but unfortunately it doesn't do the plot or the essay any favors at times.
He sets the novel in a near future world where the Internet has allowed people from different parts of the world to bond together via similar ideas and mentalities. As those mentalities (an extension of subcultures) often seem centered around certain geographical areas, those "tribes" pledge allegiance to different timezones. Each tribe has agents living in different parts of the world furthering the tribe's agenda while pretending to be a native of that time zone, meaning that a lot of coffee and melatonin gets consumed as they are perpetually never in sync with anyone else around them (nobody seems to think of the obvious excuse to avoid suspicion, which is just claiming you have narcolepsy or you're an online gamer). I suppose you can quibble with the conceit that you can group people by time zone (the East Coast/West Coast differences are nothing Woody Allen hasn't done before but being that the Central Standard Time has Canada, Texas and Mexico finding a common denominator might be difficult . . . I don't think he even addresses what happens during Daylight Savings Time, although maybe its been discarded in his future) but I don't think he's proposing it seriously, more as a jumping off point for other ideas.
The hero of our novel is Art Berry, who we're told in the beginning is super smart and good at seeing the world in ways that the average person isn't capable of because they're lulled into passivity. Unfortunately Doctorow demonstrates this through one of the more cliched ways of showing how a character is good at penetrating the BS of the world, namely lecturing everyone in church about their own religion better than they can despite not being a believer (to the delight of the open minded pastor), something that always comes across to me as slightly condescending and smug. But it establishes his "he's a loner, baby, an intellectual rebel" credentials fairly early on, which is good because the book is pretty short.
From there we eventually shift into two parallel narratives, Art telling us about his stay in an asylum after he's involuntarily committed and what happened to get him stuck there. Prior to be thrown in the padded wall slammer he's doing okay for himself, working in London secretly undermining the Greenwich Mean Tribe with a friend and fellow conspirator, while starting to date a woman he was involved with in an accident. Its only when he comes up with a neat idea for music file sharing in traffic that things start to go haywire for him.
Oddly enough, for a novel centered around the future, the nature of copyright and the associations we make with people who don't live near us, the most entertaining parts of the novel are where poor Art has to try and prove himself sane to people that are convinced that you're insane until proven otherwise and all your attempts to prove your sanity only mark you as insane. Its not the most savage treatment of how we deal with people with mental health problems you'll see but there's a nice "Catch-22" vibe as Art's struggles to prove he's not cuckoo for cocoa puffs are only met with condescending pats on the hand and "of course you're not crazy, love" reactions. Doctorow of course can't help himself at some points and has to have Art spew out genius ideas that like-minded open-minded people such as himself immediately recognize as genius and do their best to help him accomplish (you may not agree with how brilliant they are but they're at least worth thinking about) and if I hinted that his ultimate triumph has something to do with getting like-minded folks to help him fight the close-minded establishment I don't think I'd be spoiling that much for you.
The sections not in the asylum are a bit more problematic, as we see Art and his friend Fede do their best to be saboteurs without being found out while trying to strike a deal for Art's idea with the Eastern Standard Tribe. Along the way Art attempts to date Linda, which has its own share of verbal landmines. Art's relationship with Linda walks the line between "grating" and "tedious", with Linda jumping down his throat every time he places a word wrong before shifting back into being, if not loving, at least affectionate. It happens often enough that you start to wonder if Linda is slightly bipolar or Doctorow is making some satirical point about dating that doesn't quite come across in the novel. All it made me wonder is why he doesn't ditch her after the first "moderate your tone" lecture. Is he that desperate for a date or that starved for attention from ladies? You do start to feel sorry for him after a while because he seems nice, if hapless, but its hard to see why he keeps subjecting himself to that level of abuse. Its possible to argue that Linda's actions later perhaps explain her methods but I saw it as just an extension of her personality, for better or for worse.
So that leaves you with Art's file sharing concepts, which probably seemed brilliant in 2004 but now in the days of streaming seem a bit dated (though as a guy with a house full of CDs I perhaps shouldn't be a judge of what's cutting edge) and the whole idea of the tribes, which unfortunately doesn't get a lot of pages devoted to the ins and outs of how exactly it works. While scene after scene of a dude taking No-Doz perhaps would belabor the point, the idea of people living secretly on a different time zone than everyone around them comes across more in idea than execution . . . on paper it sounds like a 21st century John Le Carre novel about "circadian spies", but in practice it appears to be more like a bunch of people at their college reunion reminiscing about how they used to pull all-nighters when studying for finals, not really mining the concept for the drama it perhaps deserves.
Unfortunately because of its length and inability to decide what it wants to focus on, it leaves the book as neither fish nor fowl, not dramatic enough to really engage you in the story but too focused on constructing straw-men for our protagonist to wow to really delve deep into the nuts and bolts of where Doctorow saw society going and explore how we might live in it. Due to its length he wraps it up fairly neatly and pat (a little too pat, with a last minute coincidence that felt too "only in fiction") before it goes too far but what you're left with is the sense that you read a missed opportunity for something a little more biting, a little more provocative. As an example that Doctorow is clever it works just fine, but as a means to make us look at the world differently after the book is finished I'm not sure if it succeeds and since it seems most of the drive of the book is devoted to that it ultimately may not be as successful as it thinks it is.
This is the first novel I've read from Doctorow, who I don't know much about except that he writes satirical SF novels, has certain opinions about copyright laws and digital sharing and appears occasionally in that online comic that's all stick figures. He strikes me as one of those writers that is pretty good at writing essays outlining his ideas and thus should be very careful to avoid having his novels turn into essays with plots. He seems aware of that pitfall here and does his best to straddle a sort of middle ground but unfortunately it doesn't do the plot or the essay any favors at times.
He sets the novel in a near future world where the Internet has allowed people from different parts of the world to bond together via similar ideas and mentalities. As those mentalities (an extension of subcultures) often seem centered around certain geographical areas, those "tribes" pledge allegiance to different timezones. Each tribe has agents living in different parts of the world furthering the tribe's agenda while pretending to be a native of that time zone, meaning that a lot of coffee and melatonin gets consumed as they are perpetually never in sync with anyone else around them (nobody seems to think of the obvious excuse to avoid suspicion, which is just claiming you have narcolepsy or you're an online gamer). I suppose you can quibble with the conceit that you can group people by time zone (the East Coast/West Coast differences are nothing Woody Allen hasn't done before but being that the Central Standard Time has Canada, Texas and Mexico finding a common denominator might be difficult . . . I don't think he even addresses what happens during Daylight Savings Time, although maybe its been discarded in his future) but I don't think he's proposing it seriously, more as a jumping off point for other ideas.
The hero of our novel is Art Berry, who we're told in the beginning is super smart and good at seeing the world in ways that the average person isn't capable of because they're lulled into passivity. Unfortunately Doctorow demonstrates this through one of the more cliched ways of showing how a character is good at penetrating the BS of the world, namely lecturing everyone in church about their own religion better than they can despite not being a believer (to the delight of the open minded pastor), something that always comes across to me as slightly condescending and smug. But it establishes his "he's a loner, baby, an intellectual rebel" credentials fairly early on, which is good because the book is pretty short.
From there we eventually shift into two parallel narratives, Art telling us about his stay in an asylum after he's involuntarily committed and what happened to get him stuck there. Prior to be thrown in the padded wall slammer he's doing okay for himself, working in London secretly undermining the Greenwich Mean Tribe with a friend and fellow conspirator, while starting to date a woman he was involved with in an accident. Its only when he comes up with a neat idea for music file sharing in traffic that things start to go haywire for him.
Oddly enough, for a novel centered around the future, the nature of copyright and the associations we make with people who don't live near us, the most entertaining parts of the novel are where poor Art has to try and prove himself sane to people that are convinced that you're insane until proven otherwise and all your attempts to prove your sanity only mark you as insane. Its not the most savage treatment of how we deal with people with mental health problems you'll see but there's a nice "Catch-22" vibe as Art's struggles to prove he's not cuckoo for cocoa puffs are only met with condescending pats on the hand and "of course you're not crazy, love" reactions. Doctorow of course can't help himself at some points and has to have Art spew out genius ideas that like-minded open-minded people such as himself immediately recognize as genius and do their best to help him accomplish (you may not agree with how brilliant they are but they're at least worth thinking about) and if I hinted that his ultimate triumph has something to do with getting like-minded folks to help him fight the close-minded establishment I don't think I'd be spoiling that much for you.
The sections not in the asylum are a bit more problematic, as we see Art and his friend Fede do their best to be saboteurs without being found out while trying to strike a deal for Art's idea with the Eastern Standard Tribe. Along the way Art attempts to date Linda, which has its own share of verbal landmines. Art's relationship with Linda walks the line between "grating" and "tedious", with Linda jumping down his throat every time he places a word wrong before shifting back into being, if not loving, at least affectionate. It happens often enough that you start to wonder if Linda is slightly bipolar or Doctorow is making some satirical point about dating that doesn't quite come across in the novel. All it made me wonder is why he doesn't ditch her after the first "moderate your tone" lecture. Is he that desperate for a date or that starved for attention from ladies? You do start to feel sorry for him after a while because he seems nice, if hapless, but its hard to see why he keeps subjecting himself to that level of abuse. Its possible to argue that Linda's actions later perhaps explain her methods but I saw it as just an extension of her personality, for better or for worse.
So that leaves you with Art's file sharing concepts, which probably seemed brilliant in 2004 but now in the days of streaming seem a bit dated (though as a guy with a house full of CDs I perhaps shouldn't be a judge of what's cutting edge) and the whole idea of the tribes, which unfortunately doesn't get a lot of pages devoted to the ins and outs of how exactly it works. While scene after scene of a dude taking No-Doz perhaps would belabor the point, the idea of people living secretly on a different time zone than everyone around them comes across more in idea than execution . . . on paper it sounds like a 21st century John Le Carre novel about "circadian spies", but in practice it appears to be more like a bunch of people at their college reunion reminiscing about how they used to pull all-nighters when studying for finals, not really mining the concept for the drama it perhaps deserves.
Unfortunately because of its length and inability to decide what it wants to focus on, it leaves the book as neither fish nor fowl, not dramatic enough to really engage you in the story but too focused on constructing straw-men for our protagonist to wow to really delve deep into the nuts and bolts of where Doctorow saw society going and explore how we might live in it. Due to its length he wraps it up fairly neatly and pat (a little too pat, with a last minute coincidence that felt too "only in fiction") before it goes too far but what you're left with is the sense that you read a missed opportunity for something a little more biting, a little more provocative. As an example that Doctorow is clever it works just fine, but as a means to make us look at the world differently after the book is finished I'm not sure if it succeeds and since it seems most of the drive of the book is devoted to that it ultimately may not be as successful as it thinks it is.
August 17, 2010
Here is a near-future novel about an industrial saboteur who finds himself on the roof of an insane asylum near Boston.
In a 24-hour, instant communication world the need for sleep is the only thing that hasn’t changed. The world is splintering into tribes based on time zones; those in other time zones will be at lunch or sleeping when you need them. Only those in your own time zone can be depended upon.
Art lives in London, and he works for a European telecommunications mega-corporation. His "real job" is to make life as difficult as possible for those in the Greenwich Mean Tribe by inserting user-hostile software wherever he can. Of course, other tribes are doing the same thing to Art’s "home tribe," the Eastern Standard Tribe.
Art is also working on managing data flow along the Massachusetts Turnpike. Most cars have some sort of onboard computer on which songs are stored, sometimes tens of thousands of songs. Art comes up with a system for wireless transfer of songs between cars, while they are driving on the Mass Pike. Art’s business partner, Fede, sends him to Boston to sign an agreement selling the system to a local company. After several days of being told to wait, while “details” are being finalized, Art realizes that he is being screwed by Fede, and Art’s girlfriend, Linda. The two met when Art hit her with his car in London. That is how Art finds himself on the roof of a forty-floor insane asylum near Boston; Fede and Linda had him committed there.
As with any Doctorow novel, this book is full of interesting ideas. It’s easy to read, very plausible and very much recommended.
In a 24-hour, instant communication world the need for sleep is the only thing that hasn’t changed. The world is splintering into tribes based on time zones; those in other time zones will be at lunch or sleeping when you need them. Only those in your own time zone can be depended upon.
Art lives in London, and he works for a European telecommunications mega-corporation. His "real job" is to make life as difficult as possible for those in the Greenwich Mean Tribe by inserting user-hostile software wherever he can. Of course, other tribes are doing the same thing to Art’s "home tribe," the Eastern Standard Tribe.
Art is also working on managing data flow along the Massachusetts Turnpike. Most cars have some sort of onboard computer on which songs are stored, sometimes tens of thousands of songs. Art comes up with a system for wireless transfer of songs between cars, while they are driving on the Mass Pike. Art’s business partner, Fede, sends him to Boston to sign an agreement selling the system to a local company. After several days of being told to wait, while “details” are being finalized, Art realizes that he is being screwed by Fede, and Art’s girlfriend, Linda. The two met when Art hit her with his car in London. That is how Art finds himself on the roof of a forty-floor insane asylum near Boston; Fede and Linda had him committed there.
As with any Doctorow novel, this book is full of interesting ideas. It’s easy to read, very plausible and very much recommended.
June 21, 2010
Ever like a person but drift off when they start discussing their pet obsession? Like a guy who is pretty well-rounded otherwise, but if you get him started on Warhammer 40K or Quantam Physics or his opposition to DRM, he sort of disconnects from you?
That's Cory Doctorow about a 1000 times over. The man appears to be made of pet obsessions. His books are littered with little rants and bits where you see the author poking through the narrative.
And it's a shame, because Eastern Standard Tribe has a really interesting protagonist, a man with vast powers of rhetoric and logic who finds himself trapped in a mental institution in a near-future where people join tribes based on time zones. When it focuses on the characters and shows us how good he is at his job, the book soars.
But everytime I start really connecting with his characters, they pull away, the book traipsing off into some nerdy rant or tangential discussion.
He could have overcome it with time, but the book stops about at the point when I was really growing to like his strange little world. This happens with almost every book of his I read. It's like he has commitment issues with his narrative.
What's really grand about it though is that you can find out for yourself. Every single one of his books is available for free, and it's available in damn near any platform you can think of. I read my copy on the Stanza application on my iPhone.
His books all have a warm, accessible prose style, so there's really no reason not to give them a read. But if you're like me, he may start to feel like a tease.
That's Cory Doctorow about a 1000 times over. The man appears to be made of pet obsessions. His books are littered with little rants and bits where you see the author poking through the narrative.
And it's a shame, because Eastern Standard Tribe has a really interesting protagonist, a man with vast powers of rhetoric and logic who finds himself trapped in a mental institution in a near-future where people join tribes based on time zones. When it focuses on the characters and shows us how good he is at his job, the book soars.
But everytime I start really connecting with his characters, they pull away, the book traipsing off into some nerdy rant or tangential discussion.
He could have overcome it with time, but the book stops about at the point when I was really growing to like his strange little world. This happens with almost every book of his I read. It's like he has commitment issues with his narrative.
What's really grand about it though is that you can find out for yourself. Every single one of his books is available for free, and it's available in damn near any platform you can think of. I read my copy on the Stanza application on my iPhone.
His books all have a warm, accessible prose style, so there's really no reason not to give them a read. But if you're like me, he may start to feel like a tease.
March 14, 2009
Cory Doctorow's amazingly written Eastern Standard Tribe starts out with an amazingly epic first chapter, sebsequently following two stories that follow each other, the beginning of the first connecting with the end of the last just before the book ends. This leads to a very strange style of reading, where you know a little more of what happens in the early plot every time you visit the later, but never enough to make either boring.
At times you stop and wonder where the author is going with the book, which would normally be a bad thing, but it just makes you trawl through the pages faster to get your questions answered. The book is so fantastically written that you could be reading each paragraph years apart, and you'd still chuckle and go wide-eyed as Doctorow takes you for an intellectual spin. You simply never get bored of his twists and loops and weird plot twists.
Great book; a good read as a story, an even better one when you add the linguistic tomfoolery.
At times you stop and wonder where the author is going with the book, which would normally be a bad thing, but it just makes you trawl through the pages faster to get your questions answered. The book is so fantastically written that you could be reading each paragraph years apart, and you'd still chuckle and go wide-eyed as Doctorow takes you for an intellectual spin. You simply never get bored of his twists and loops and weird plot twists.
Great book; a good read as a story, an even better one when you add the linguistic tomfoolery.
July 2, 2021
Surprisingly prescient from 2004. People glued to phones - check. People the most connected they've ever been, yet disconnected - check. Stifling bureaucracy - check.
Goodreads says I read this in 2009 and even gave it a somewhat middling review then. I have no memory of this. Somehow that seems appropriate for a book about a guy with a pencil up his nose on the rooftop of a mental hospital.
This book has a lot of depth, and I think perhaps I didn't credit it with that on my first reading in 2009. "Smart or happy?" That question is batted around constantly.
Favorite quote: "I've always known that you were a very smart young man, but being smart isn't the same as being happy. If you're very lucky, you'll get to be my age and you'll look back on your life and be glad you lived it."
It has everything to be plausible near-future. An engaging plot, colorful characters, and enough depth to make you think about today's world more deeply. I'd recommend.
Goodreads says I read this in 2009 and even gave it a somewhat middling review then. I have no memory of this. Somehow that seems appropriate for a book about a guy with a pencil up his nose on the rooftop of a mental hospital.
This book has a lot of depth, and I think perhaps I didn't credit it with that on my first reading in 2009. "Smart or happy?" That question is batted around constantly.
Favorite quote: "I've always known that you were a very smart young man, but being smart isn't the same as being happy. If you're very lucky, you'll get to be my age and you'll look back on your life and be glad you lived it."
It has everything to be plausible near-future. An engaging plot, colorful characters, and enough depth to make you think about today's world more deeply. I'd recommend.
May 25, 2011
Once again Cory Doctorow presents a weird world view shaped by realistic human interactions with technology. While this book wasn't as bizarre as Down and Out In the Magic Kingdom, it is worth reading due to its captivating story and ideas relating to the internet groups being the center of one's sense of community. In many ways, this book reminds me of JD Salinger's The Catcher In the Rye- the main character is a misfit who struggles with interpersonal relationships and is telling the story from a mental institution.
July 19, 2019
I believe that just about any concept, even if recycled or superficially boring, can be grown into a great story. Cultivating narrative greatness might require a surprising -- or unusually restrained -- plot, idiosyncratic or studiously plain characters, poetic or prosaic language. Whatever grafting is necessary, whatever diet and pruning, something delicious can blossom. Eastern Standard Tribe, on the other hand, feels like a plant that has not yet borne fruit.
Full disclosure - I quit reading at the 75% mark. I lost patience with the cyberpunk-lite slang and cultural pontificating. I don't dislike cultural pontificating, but this book seemed to be a novel and ought to pay some tribute to that convention. Instead it felt impatient, like cursory service to the form of the story in order to liberate itself to ferret about in a nest of half-formed ideas.
The main delivery system of ideas here is dialogue, which proves unfortunate. Speech feels teleprompted, alien in the mouths of the actors. This is especially evident during scenes of lust, which echo erotica's imitative paradox*, but it also shows in the tech slang, which has a flux capacitor, reverse tachyon pulse rhythm, and in the conspiracy theory ranting. Again, almost any cliche can be rescued. Writing workshop axioms like just enough and selective details would have helped here.
Perhaps finding proper balance between one's own ideas and paying tribute to a sympathetic simulation of human life lies in how well an author apprehends their overarching goal. This can sharpen dialogue and all other parts of a story into an arrow pointing readers toward destination. But what was that goal in this book? If all the dialogue was driving me somewhere, I cruised right past it, distracted by the narrator's relentless, almost algorithmic chatter.
Setting -- which could have been doing quiet work of its own on the novel's behalf -- is crowded off the stage. The rooftop of an asylum, where one meets the narrator, is the most fleshed out piece of scenery in the first 3/4 of the book. As a result this rooftop interested me the most, but unfortunately this also had the effect of making everywhere and everyone else the narrator was talking about seem unreal. I wish the author had observed in other parts of the plot the power of a well-established place.
(*Sidebar about the imitative paradox - tangential to the book and quite possibly irritating in just the way I blame this book for being:
(I don't only mean the question of whether art imitates life or vice versa. On top of this, to the above cliches and more people apply illusion-breaking questions like, "who talks like that", "who does that", and "what does that even mean?" Such questions chastise or improve a piece of fiction by invoking reality. However, one may easily turn these questions upon the real-world analogues and find answers equally difficult to come by. What does a politician mean? A scientist? A six year old and an eighty year old in conversation? A woman or a man? What do these parties mean to one another or to outside observers participating in their experiences in whatever way?
(In a sense all of our ideas, all our responses to life are models -- crude imitations and echoes of what we experience. In other words they are art - and all of this art also alters experience. By the way, the very word experience gives me a headache because it doesn't only imply what happens but also what we think and feel about it. Did the author have any of this in mind? I doubt it. Now I am being self-indulgent, and ought to wrap up.
(When it comes to what we commonly agree are art products, we break their power by breaking their illusion -- well, sometimes they break their own power -- but in either case the illusions seem to shatter upon our image of reality. I find it fascinating that some ideas have such power over other ones. Why, for instance, was I so bothered by this novel, which is not significantly more silly, boring, or unbelievable than anything I have encountered in the real world? I'm not sure why my idea of reality is superior to self-identified fiction, because it is still art. Maybe it comes down to instinct. When we try to answer the question of whether art imitates life, or vice versa, maybe we are really asking ourselves whether we have the power -- or desire -- to experience what we witness in art.)
Ah! I may have accidentally found my point about this book. Above and beyond its awkwardly recycled parts and effort to be profound (or perhaps to mock such efforts), it is plain discomforting. The protagonist is unpleasant, his girlfriend is unpleasant, the best friend -- a mere sketch of a character -- is vaguely unpleasant, the spare setting of the flashback is unpleasant, the asylum -- as vivid and captivating as it is -- is unpleasant. Here is the cliche that broke this camel's back: an arrogant protagonist who lacks all self-awareness, surrounded by malicious actors and marching proudly to doom. The book's lack of restraint, it's inability to say, "ok, I have made my point" compounded this discomfiture. I get it, I kept thinking. Can we move on now, I get it. It sucks, it's tragic, I have over things to do...
Who does one cheer for in such a situation? What part of the story can one find entertaining? I just wanted the misery to end. The thesis of the book is, "would you rather be happy or smart?" I chose to put the book down and shove the proverbial pencil up my nose.
Full disclosure - I quit reading at the 75% mark. I lost patience with the cyberpunk-lite slang and cultural pontificating. I don't dislike cultural pontificating, but this book seemed to be a novel and ought to pay some tribute to that convention. Instead it felt impatient, like cursory service to the form of the story in order to liberate itself to ferret about in a nest of half-formed ideas.
The main delivery system of ideas here is dialogue, which proves unfortunate. Speech feels teleprompted, alien in the mouths of the actors. This is especially evident during scenes of lust, which echo erotica's imitative paradox*, but it also shows in the tech slang, which has a flux capacitor, reverse tachyon pulse rhythm, and in the conspiracy theory ranting. Again, almost any cliche can be rescued. Writing workshop axioms like just enough and selective details would have helped here.
Perhaps finding proper balance between one's own ideas and paying tribute to a sympathetic simulation of human life lies in how well an author apprehends their overarching goal. This can sharpen dialogue and all other parts of a story into an arrow pointing readers toward destination. But what was that goal in this book? If all the dialogue was driving me somewhere, I cruised right past it, distracted by the narrator's relentless, almost algorithmic chatter.
Setting -- which could have been doing quiet work of its own on the novel's behalf -- is crowded off the stage. The rooftop of an asylum, where one meets the narrator, is the most fleshed out piece of scenery in the first 3/4 of the book. As a result this rooftop interested me the most, but unfortunately this also had the effect of making everywhere and everyone else the narrator was talking about seem unreal. I wish the author had observed in other parts of the plot the power of a well-established place.
(*Sidebar about the imitative paradox - tangential to the book and quite possibly irritating in just the way I blame this book for being:
(I don't only mean the question of whether art imitates life or vice versa. On top of this, to the above cliches and more people apply illusion-breaking questions like, "who talks like that", "who does that", and "what does that even mean?" Such questions chastise or improve a piece of fiction by invoking reality. However, one may easily turn these questions upon the real-world analogues and find answers equally difficult to come by. What does a politician mean? A scientist? A six year old and an eighty year old in conversation? A woman or a man? What do these parties mean to one another or to outside observers participating in their experiences in whatever way?
(In a sense all of our ideas, all our responses to life are models -- crude imitations and echoes of what we experience. In other words they are art - and all of this art also alters experience. By the way, the very word experience gives me a headache because it doesn't only imply what happens but also what we think and feel about it. Did the author have any of this in mind? I doubt it. Now I am being self-indulgent, and ought to wrap up.
(When it comes to what we commonly agree are art products, we break their power by breaking their illusion -- well, sometimes they break their own power -- but in either case the illusions seem to shatter upon our image of reality. I find it fascinating that some ideas have such power over other ones. Why, for instance, was I so bothered by this novel, which is not significantly more silly, boring, or unbelievable than anything I have encountered in the real world? I'm not sure why my idea of reality is superior to self-identified fiction, because it is still art. Maybe it comes down to instinct. When we try to answer the question of whether art imitates life, or vice versa, maybe we are really asking ourselves whether we have the power -- or desire -- to experience what we witness in art.)
Ah! I may have accidentally found my point about this book. Above and beyond its awkwardly recycled parts and effort to be profound (or perhaps to mock such efforts), it is plain discomforting. The protagonist is unpleasant, his girlfriend is unpleasant, the best friend -- a mere sketch of a character -- is vaguely unpleasant, the spare setting of the flashback is unpleasant, the asylum -- as vivid and captivating as it is -- is unpleasant. Here is the cliche that broke this camel's back: an arrogant protagonist who lacks all self-awareness, surrounded by malicious actors and marching proudly to doom. The book's lack of restraint, it's inability to say, "ok, I have made my point" compounded this discomfiture. I get it, I kept thinking. Can we move on now, I get it. It sucks, it's tragic, I have over things to do...
Who does one cheer for in such a situation? What part of the story can one find entertaining? I just wanted the misery to end. The thesis of the book is, "would you rather be happy or smart?" I chose to put the book down and shove the proverbial pencil up my nose.
August 22, 2009
An interesting near future story based on the idea that people with similiar attitudes and likes/dislikes will gather into electronic tribes.
Also a lot of high tech cell phone usage for communication and other things, plus a state psychological system gone very wrong.
The story is Art's, who's played by his friend and his lover. It tells about how he gets in and out of trouble at a very frenetic pace.
Best obligatory sex scene ever - three words - "Vigorous sex ensued"
Also a lot of high tech cell phone usage for communication and other things, plus a state psychological system gone very wrong.
The story is Art's, who's played by his friend and his lover. It tells about how he gets in and out of trouble at a very frenetic pace.
Best obligatory sex scene ever - three words - "Vigorous sex ensued"
July 31, 2017
This book is a whole heap of crazy. It starts out incoherent and confused. And then bleeds into dismal. And then visionary. And then all of a sudden it is paying off with a fantastically readable detailed intelligent silly caper. Which then ends believably but suddenly. As in what? The ideas alone are worth reading and thinking about - perhaps not so much the tribes as the usability bits. A cool read but perhaps hard to start.
September 26, 2009
The plot is okay, but the writing is sub par, and it contains some of the worst descriptive passages of sex I've ever read: "He smiles down at her nipple, which is brown as a bar of Belgian chocolate, aureole the size of a round of individual cheese and nipple itself a surprisingly chunky square of crinkled flesh". Put me off sex for a week that did. And who has square nipples anyway?
April 7, 2011
Another good story from Doctorow! I really enjoy his ability to take current trends and extend them forward in time without turning them into cartoons. He has a knack for believability. His highway mp3 swapping idea is comical and yet I can see people buying into it. The plot is a little contrived but I liked the characters enough to buy into the story.
August 28, 2016
This one was a quick easy read. Interesting enough but not is chair grippingly exciting as Docotorow's other books. Still, an intriguing story line and likeable enough characters. Would make a great short film.
May 15, 2017
I thought it started out a bit slow, plus the story was hard to keep track of with the ever-changing narrations/timelines. But it gets interesting at some point and is a somewhat decent Doctorow.
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October 2, 2015A fun read. Not life changing, but it doesn't have to be. Doctorow creates not-too-distant-future tech that's believable and a main character who's witty and likable.
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