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Trump Sky Alpha: A Novel
A novel on the political madness of our time and the Internet’s deep workings, by the author of The Infernal
One year after the president has plunged the world into nuclear war, a journalist takes refuge in the Twin Cities Metro Containment Zone. On assignment, she documents internet humor at the end of the world, hoping along the way to find the final resting place of her wife and daughter. What she uncovers, hidden amid spiraling memes and twitter jokes in an archive of the internet’s remnants, are references to an enigmatic figure known only as Birdcrash, who may hold the key to an uncertain future.
One year after the president has plunged the world into nuclear war, a journalist takes refuge in the Twin Cities Metro Containment Zone. On assignment, she documents internet humor at the end of the world, hoping along the way to find the final resting place of her wife and daughter. What she uncovers, hidden amid spiraling memes and twitter jokes in an archive of the internet’s remnants, are references to an enigmatic figure known only as Birdcrash, who may hold the key to an uncertain future.
303 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 19, 2019
25 people are currently reading
893 people want to read
About the author
Mark Doten
8 books42 followersMark Doten was born in Minnesota in 1978. His work has appeared in Conjunctions, Guernica, The Believer, and New York magazine.
He wrote the libretto for The Source, a work of musical theater about Chelsea Manning and Wikileaks, with music by Ted Hearne, which had its world premiere at BAM's Next Wave Festival in October 2014, and was named one of the best classical vocal pieces of the year by The New York Times.
He attended Macalester College and Columbia University and is the recipient of fellowships from Columbia and the MacDowell Colony.
The literary fiction editor at Soho Press, he lives in Brooklyn.
His first novel, The Infernal, was published by Graywolf Press in February 2015.
He wrote the libretto for The Source, a work of musical theater about Chelsea Manning and Wikileaks, with music by Ted Hearne, which had its world premiere at BAM's Next Wave Festival in October 2014, and was named one of the best classical vocal pieces of the year by The New York Times.
He attended Macalester College and Columbia University and is the recipient of fellowships from Columbia and the MacDowell Colony.
The literary fiction editor at Soho Press, he lives in Brooklyn.
His first novel, The Infernal, was published by Graywolf Press in February 2015.
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August 24, 2019Continuing in the series of things written in gr=Review Boxes which are not reviews. Let's see if we can find something to call this one. Whatever it is I hope it is one part entertaining and one part informative. Even if both elements are pretty low=grade.
I've had a pop=music obsession for the past month. No one would believe it. But today I'm going back to my Metal Roots. Soundtrack wise. Here's Testament ::
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVbTX...
So I ran across Mark Doten when doing my now semi=regular googling for 'robert coover'. It's not a weird thing. He's a public figure and I'm a stalking fan. Perfectly normal. Well anyway google sent me to a review of this. I skim'd that review. I don't know which it is or where it is or I'm not linking to it for no reason. At any rate, there must have been a few other words other than 'robert coover' that tingled my spidey senses because I think I had already amazon'd it (political controversy, I know, but the solution of course is to make amazon a public entity, to do what the organized workers tell us ;; not to wring our hands in consumer guilt. anyway) before I'd clicked that initial link.
You'll want to read it. If you are endeavoring to read Trump=fiction. If you are endeavoring to read Internet Fiction. If you are endeavoring to read Child Abuse Survival Fiction. That last one won't ever get mentioned anywhere in public discourse about his novel. I won't speculate as to why other than that folks are blind to it when 'Trump' and 'Internet' are involved. And when white-male-cis-etc is author.
So, no it's not as insane as The Public Burning. And, thank god, Rump is not channel'd as devastatingly as Nixon was, nor as sympathetically yet, no we don't have to think of him as a 'human being' he remains a brute monster, which he is and all his acolytes). But you'll recognize him. And there is a tinge here of fiction's superiority over reality, as it were, even in the face of the absurd fantasy of the real world of Rump=ismus.
I'm going to go amazon Doten's other book. Because--I confess--easy Completionismus.
And if you are keeping score (I don't know how to properly use the phrase 'virtue signaling' but I'd like to use it ironically I believe when I want to confess that I'm virtue signaling that tRump Sky Alpha is Small Press--Graywolf (with an 'a') Press,--which, reading, makes up for the bad thing I did buying this from amazon, like how buying a box of organic mac&cheese makes up for that pack of cigarettes you smoked last night. (did I do that right? I even got the devastating irony in there which is totally exhausting me. I confess.)
That other book I Review'd today, the one about Boiled Beef, was an advertisement in itself. Here's another advertisement. Soundtrack. My buddy Devin Townsend has a new record dropping like next week and here's an early track from it ::
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1n7uv...
Devin is Canadian, so give him a little extra maybe?
At any rate, do I recommend Trump Sky Alpha? I sure do! Like I said, I'm going to read his other novel which is the opposite of what I do sometimes when I first meet an author. But those authors are usually Nobels, like Saramago, whose single novel I might read and then determine to read none more again from them because, bad taste.
And as always, if you're reading Award LongLists again, you're going to be missing this one. Because Award Lists have incredibly narrow vision. That's just a true thing.
______
eta, an hour or so later, after a break=fast burrito of bacon and egg and greens ::
Sorry to bother you again, but I wanted to add a little community back=and=forth here. A few comments have been made on gr and I want to speak to those if I may do so in a spirit of baffle'ment about the experience other folks have of something I've had too an experience of and I really don't know what quarter they are coming from.... here goes.
"This book is an incoherent mess of random, edgy passages written for the sake of being edgy." --I have no idea what that is supposed to mean. I mean people use the "for the sake of" line all the time but it almost always signals that they've gotten something wrong. I mean, that is almost never a reason people write books. 'for the sake of being edgy. What the h'll is 'edgy'? But too, don't worry, nor is the book 'incoherent' naught a 'mess' naught 'random'. But, well, you know what to do when you read comments like this ;; don't read them, roll over them, let it pass, it's no matter....
"and tries too hard" --heh. That's another cliche I can never quite understand. What the hell is 'trying too hard'? Does it mean you're just supposed to let it flow and then find that the path of least resistance is surfing all your various TV streaming services you pay more for combined than what you would've for cable? At any rate, when you know who says it, sometimes, you know what to make of it.
"There is also not a single woman in the book..... she thinks, talks, and interacts with the world like a man." --Seriously, I am not going to comment on this. Other than to say, to coin that cliche, "I'm calling bullshit!" Also, I'm a bit anxious whether I 'interact with the world' like a man or like a woman and then I want to know which I should. I'm not even kidding. (I know, calling out essentialism is waay not current anymore)
"DO NOT READ THIS BOOK. Why not, do you ask? There is a 72 page chapter--fully 25% of the narrative-- describing graphic torture interspersed with the villain's monologue." --Okay, so for those of you who have read the book -- you noticed what was elided in this screed? The whole Childhood Abuse Survivor thread because, well, not paying attention.
"(and I have *so* many unanswered questions about the world building, like, how does food get delivered?)" --Holy Cow! Wrong reading matrix, dude!
"But you know what? I've been around the sun enough times to know that "can't you take a joke?" is the Nuremburg Defense of the asshole." --See how knowingness can get in the way?
"if torture was needed" --I can't stress this enough ;see what this Review'r is eliding?
"Stream of consciousness run-on sentences that go for pages and pages. " --98% of the time that kind of thing is said, the thing about 'run-on' and about SoC, that thing is not there.
"I have no idea why literary critics think this book is worth a damn;" --; this is quickly becoming my Review of the Day! Who are these 'literary critics'?
"Not one online review I saw even mentioned the Chapter of Torture" --This Reviewer, and I know maybe I'm making too much of this, did not once mention the Child Abuse Survivor thing.
Here's someone else so we can get on with our day :: "I LIKED this book, and I loved this book." --Nice!
At any rate, I do feel better getting that off my chest. Thanks for listening.
I've had a pop=music obsession for the past month. No one would believe it. But today I'm going back to my Metal Roots. Soundtrack wise. Here's Testament ::
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVbTX...
So I ran across Mark Doten when doing my now semi=regular googling for 'robert coover'. It's not a weird thing. He's a public figure and I'm a stalking fan. Perfectly normal. Well anyway google sent me to a review of this. I skim'd that review. I don't know which it is or where it is or I'm not linking to it for no reason. At any rate, there must have been a few other words other than 'robert coover' that tingled my spidey senses because I think I had already amazon'd it (political controversy, I know, but the solution of course is to make amazon a public entity, to do what the organized workers tell us ;; not to wring our hands in consumer guilt. anyway) before I'd clicked that initial link.
You'll want to read it. If you are endeavoring to read Trump=fiction. If you are endeavoring to read Internet Fiction. If you are endeavoring to read Child Abuse Survival Fiction. That last one won't ever get mentioned anywhere in public discourse about his novel. I won't speculate as to why other than that folks are blind to it when 'Trump' and 'Internet' are involved. And when white-male-cis-etc is author.
So, no it's not as insane as The Public Burning. And, thank god, Rump is not channel'd as devastatingly as Nixon was, nor as sympathetically yet, no we don't have to think of him as a 'human being' he remains a brute monster, which he is and all his acolytes). But you'll recognize him. And there is a tinge here of fiction's superiority over reality, as it were, even in the face of the absurd fantasy of the real world of Rump=ismus.
I'm going to go amazon Doten's other book. Because--I confess--easy Completionismus.
And if you are keeping score (I don't know how to properly use the phrase 'virtue signaling' but I'd like to use it ironically I believe when I want to confess that I'm virtue signaling that tRump Sky Alpha is Small Press--Graywolf (with an 'a') Press,--which, reading, makes up for the bad thing I did buying this from amazon, like how buying a box of organic mac&cheese makes up for that pack of cigarettes you smoked last night. (did I do that right? I even got the devastating irony in there which is totally exhausting me. I confess.)
That other book I Review'd today, the one about Boiled Beef, was an advertisement in itself. Here's another advertisement. Soundtrack. My buddy Devin Townsend has a new record dropping like next week and here's an early track from it ::
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1n7uv...
Devin is Canadian, so give him a little extra maybe?
At any rate, do I recommend Trump Sky Alpha? I sure do! Like I said, I'm going to read his other novel which is the opposite of what I do sometimes when I first meet an author. But those authors are usually Nobels, like Saramago, whose single novel I might read and then determine to read none more again from them because, bad taste.
And as always, if you're reading Award LongLists again, you're going to be missing this one. Because Award Lists have incredibly narrow vision. That's just a true thing.
______
eta, an hour or so later, after a break=fast burrito of bacon and egg and greens ::
Sorry to bother you again, but I wanted to add a little community back=and=forth here. A few comments have been made on gr and I want to speak to those if I may do so in a spirit of baffle'ment about the experience other folks have of something I've had too an experience of and I really don't know what quarter they are coming from.... here goes.
"This book is an incoherent mess of random, edgy passages written for the sake of being edgy." --I have no idea what that is supposed to mean. I mean people use the "for the sake of" line all the time but it almost always signals that they've gotten something wrong. I mean, that is almost never a reason people write books. 'for the sake of being edgy. What the h'll is 'edgy'? But too, don't worry, nor is the book 'incoherent' naught a 'mess' naught 'random'. But, well, you know what to do when you read comments like this ;; don't read them, roll over them, let it pass, it's no matter....
"and tries too hard" --heh. That's another cliche I can never quite understand. What the hell is 'trying too hard'? Does it mean you're just supposed to let it flow and then find that the path of least resistance is surfing all your various TV streaming services you pay more for combined than what you would've for cable? At any rate, when you know who says it, sometimes, you know what to make of it.
"There is also not a single woman in the book..... she thinks, talks, and interacts with the world like a man." --Seriously, I am not going to comment on this. Other than to say, to coin that cliche, "I'm calling bullshit!" Also, I'm a bit anxious whether I 'interact with the world' like a man or like a woman and then I want to know which I should. I'm not even kidding. (I know, calling out essentialism is waay not current anymore)
"DO NOT READ THIS BOOK. Why not, do you ask? There is a 72 page chapter--fully 25% of the narrative-- describing graphic torture interspersed with the villain's monologue." --Okay, so for those of you who have read the book -- you noticed what was elided in this screed? The whole Childhood Abuse Survivor thread because, well, not paying attention.
"(and I have *so* many unanswered questions about the world building, like, how does food get delivered?)" --Holy Cow! Wrong reading matrix, dude!
"But you know what? I've been around the sun enough times to know that "can't you take a joke?" is the Nuremburg Defense of the asshole." --See how knowingness can get in the way?
"if torture was needed" --I can't stress this enough ;see what this Review'r is eliding?
"Stream of consciousness run-on sentences that go for pages and pages. " --98% of the time that kind of thing is said, the thing about 'run-on' and about SoC, that thing is not there.
"I have no idea why literary critics think this book is worth a damn;" --; this is quickly becoming my Review of the Day! Who are these 'literary critics'?
"Not one online review I saw even mentioned the Chapter of Torture" --This Reviewer, and I know maybe I'm making too much of this, did not once mention the Child Abuse Survivor thing.
Here's someone else so we can get on with our day :: "I LIKED this book, and I loved this book." --Nice!
At any rate, I do feel better getting that off my chest. Thanks for listening.
January 3, 2019
I think it's the Kirkus review of this book that mentions that it's a satire that might've been funnier in less-horrifying times. And that's... that's not entirely wrong. Doten manages, in both the bravura opening sequence and in an equally impressive late-game passage, to capture the disordered and diseased thinking of our current President in ways that make the book's more outlandish surrealities (the titular zeppelin, for example) seem actually rather plausible -- and I wouldn't blame you if you didn't necessarily want to deal with that, at the start of this latest hell-year (even if this one holds hope of being that much closer to the end).
But if you chose to skip this book, you'd be missing something far more interesting than the Trump of it all: an examination, perhaps the best I've ever read, of the internet and how we got ~here~. Doten dissects meme culture in the midst of a nuclear apocalypse and he nails it; he examines the deep-web conspiracy theorists and gets them in one; he considers that while the world might still end with a big fucking bang, the reality is that the bang will only come around because of a cacophony of whimpers.
It's hard to not read this book with a chill of panic in your gut, but maybe -- just maybe -- that's a good thing. Because if you can read this and feel that panic, that sense of "oh god it's all so bad," then perhaps there's still enough time to turn it all around.
But if you chose to skip this book, you'd be missing something far more interesting than the Trump of it all: an examination, perhaps the best I've ever read, of the internet and how we got ~here~. Doten dissects meme culture in the midst of a nuclear apocalypse and he nails it; he examines the deep-web conspiracy theorists and gets them in one; he considers that while the world might still end with a big fucking bang, the reality is that the bang will only come around because of a cacophony of whimpers.
It's hard to not read this book with a chill of panic in your gut, but maybe -- just maybe -- that's a good thing. Because if you can read this and feel that panic, that sense of "oh god it's all so bad," then perhaps there's still enough time to turn it all around.
Read
November 30, 2019DNF - what a rambling mess.
February 24, 2019
This book is an incoherent mess of random, edgy passages written for the sake of being edgy.
March 6, 2019
DO NOT READ THIS BOOK.
Why not, do you ask? There is a 72 page chapter--fully 25% of the narrative-- describing graphic torture interspersed with the villain's monologue. And I'm not talking about some Bond villain-style "dangle them over the piranha tank with my fingers poised over the winch control" torture; I'm talking detailed descriptions of mutiliation.
Basically Doten fridged his own protagonist (who is, incidentally the only woman in the book with a speaking role). That's the point (the 50% mark) where I noped out as fast as I could. A bit later on in a spirit of bored masochism, I flipped through the last quarter of the book-- there's at least one rape scene, which after the Chapter of Torture barely registers on the WTF-meter.
It's clear from the writing choices throughout the first half that the book intended as satire, and those parts that I read aren't that badly written. I was even drawn in. The setting is "1984" in the post-nuclear apocalypse (and I have *so* many unanswered questions about the world building, like, how does food get delivered?). There are scathing portrayals of President Trump and his supporters/sycophants among the political/economic elite (which means this book is going to be horribly dated within 3 years). There's a decent analysis and justified pillory-ing of online meme culture (as a former network engineer, I am fully aware of what both Pepe and RFC1149 are).
But you know what? I've been around the sun enough times to know that "can't you take a joke?" is the Nuremburg Defense of the asshole.
In my opinion Doten should have gone with the Bond villain ridonculous style of torture, if torture was needed. It would have befitted the rest of the novel, provided an appropriate frame for the villain's monologue, even made a statement about US sponsored black sites if Doten wanted. The choice Doten made (and his editor, and his publisher) was... not that.
I have another warning for the reader of this review, which is that the story told in Trump Sky Alpha is-- not good. Plot holes you could drive a truck through. Characters with no agency and inexplicable motivation. Doten fridges his protagonist halfway through, leaving him with no viewpoint character, sympathetic or otherwise, for the last quarter of the book. Stream of consciousness run-on sentences that go for pages and pages. More attention paid to showboating Doten's wit than storytelling.
I have no idea why literary critics think this book is worth a damn; unless the ones who took a pass didn't publish their thoughts. Not one online review I saw even mentioned the Chapter of Torture; one put in a sly mention of "acid satire;" a wink and a nod to their peers, perhaps, but in my opinion fails to convey the most important information-- should a reader spend their time, money, an attention on this book, or something more worthy/enjoyable/a better-fitting cup of tea? There are times when a reviewer should talk about the spoilers; because not all surprises are good ones.
I didn't choose this book to read; it came to me through a local business's SF Book of the Month subscription, and I really feel like had they been better informed as to the book's content, they would have made a different choice.
Why not, do you ask? There is a 72 page chapter--fully 25% of the narrative-- describing graphic torture interspersed with the villain's monologue. And I'm not talking about some Bond villain-style "dangle them over the piranha tank with my fingers poised over the winch control" torture; I'm talking detailed descriptions of mutiliation.
Basically Doten fridged his own protagonist (who is, incidentally the only woman in the book with a speaking role). That's the point (the 50% mark) where I noped out as fast as I could. A bit later on in a spirit of bored masochism, I flipped through the last quarter of the book-- there's at least one rape scene, which after the Chapter of Torture barely registers on the WTF-meter.
It's clear from the writing choices throughout the first half that the book intended as satire, and those parts that I read aren't that badly written. I was even drawn in. The setting is "1984" in the post-nuclear apocalypse (and I have *so* many unanswered questions about the world building, like, how does food get delivered?). There are scathing portrayals of President Trump and his supporters/sycophants among the political/economic elite (which means this book is going to be horribly dated within 3 years). There's a decent analysis and justified pillory-ing of online meme culture (as a former network engineer, I am fully aware of what both Pepe and RFC1149 are).
But you know what? I've been around the sun enough times to know that "can't you take a joke?" is the Nuremburg Defense of the asshole.
In my opinion Doten should have gone with the Bond villain ridonculous style of torture, if torture was needed. It would have befitted the rest of the novel, provided an appropriate frame for the villain's monologue, even made a statement about US sponsored black sites if Doten wanted. The choice Doten made (and his editor, and his publisher) was... not that.
I have another warning for the reader of this review, which is that the story told in Trump Sky Alpha is-- not good. Plot holes you could drive a truck through. Characters with no agency and inexplicable motivation. Doten fridges his protagonist halfway through, leaving him with no viewpoint character, sympathetic or otherwise, for the last quarter of the book. Stream of consciousness run-on sentences that go for pages and pages. More attention paid to showboating Doten's wit than storytelling.
I have no idea why literary critics think this book is worth a damn; unless the ones who took a pass didn't publish their thoughts. Not one online review I saw even mentioned the Chapter of Torture; one put in a sly mention of "acid satire;" a wink and a nod to their peers, perhaps, but in my opinion fails to convey the most important information-- should a reader spend their time, money, an attention on this book, or something more worthy/enjoyable/a better-fitting cup of tea? There are times when a reviewer should talk about the spoilers; because not all surprises are good ones.
I didn't choose this book to read; it came to me through a local business's SF Book of the Month subscription, and I really feel like had they been better informed as to the book's content, they would have made a different choice.
March 25, 2019
What the actual fuck did I just listen to? In the times we are living in this book had the potential to be a great work of sci fi political satire but instead it was just a blubbering mess. It was closer to sounding like one of Trump’s speeches than the author probably intended since it basically made no sense. There was a constant spewing of repetitious facts along with abrupt jumps POVs and time, followed by more disconnected info dumping. There would occasionally be a bit of coherent storyline thrown in but I had no idea why or what it was linked to so it was basically pointless. The whole thing was a mess. I actually hated it. The only reason I finished the book was because I couldn’t believe something so horrible was published and made so little sense. There had to be something cohesive holding it all together, like maybe it was all a drug fueled dream or something. The author should have just written a short story and used the cover blurb as the finished product. It would have been less painful for readers. This book was not only a jumbled mess but it was also slow. Absolutely nothing happened. Every time I thought something did it got side tracked by another repetitive spewing of facts and crap that I already knew by heart from hearing several times before. I guess if I had the print book I could have skipped ahead more easily but even then I don’t think I would have enjoyed it more and it definitely wouldn’t have made more sense. In the end I was just angry and it wasn’t because of the political situation that this book was attempting to open my eyes to in real life. It was because I had wasted 7 plus hours listening to this horrible book. If I could give it no stars I would but I can’t so it gets one. I want to be clear though that the single star goes to the narrator for two reasons. First is for doing a pretty good job with the voices and actually reading the book. The second reason is for the torture it must have been to have produced the freaking thing. I hope you didn’t have to do to many takes! Rant over.
April 11, 2019
This book is a mess. It's a gigantic run-on sentence and nearly impossible to read. The author is not as witty as he thinks he is.
November 11, 2020
Credit were credit is due, Doten's "voice" of Trump is outstanding. Most of it is as hilarious as it is horrifying. I'm not sure reading this during election week was the best idea, but it definitely made some of the content strike much harder.
The meat of Trump Sky Alpha is a barely comprehensible mixed bag sandwiched by brilliant satire. The opening and closing sequences were fantastic. Everything in between...I'm just not so sure. I have no idea what Doten will do next, but I'll at least have to think about checking it out. This book was at least that crazy.
The meat of Trump Sky Alpha is a barely comprehensible mixed bag sandwiched by brilliant satire. The opening and closing sequences were fantastic. Everything in between...I'm just not so sure. I have no idea what Doten will do next, but I'll at least have to think about checking it out. This book was at least that crazy.
February 5, 2019
I one-star this trip,
the title is too precocious and tries too hard,
the novel itself exists in a state of exaggerated juxtaposition,
which cancels comparatives out.
There is no room for love on Goodreads,
I have sculpted it
and twisted it away from the heart.
#poem
Chris Roberts, Patron Saint to the Whooping Crane
the title is too precocious and tries too hard,
the novel itself exists in a state of exaggerated juxtaposition,
which cancels comparatives out.
There is no room for love on Goodreads,
I have sculpted it
and twisted it away from the heart.
#poem
Chris Roberts, Patron Saint to the Whooping Crane
January 8, 2019
I thought the last thing I would want to do is read a book about Trump and the wreckage he could bring. To my surprise, this book sucked me in. It's uneven in parts (and pretty weird) but the first section in particular is masterful.
December 31, 2019
I am neither a fan of political satire nor dystopian novels so you can imagine my own surprise at how much I truly enjoyed Mark Doten's experimental, post-modern book imagining the causes and consequences of a Trumpian apocalypse.
"Trump Sky Alpha" tells the story of Rachel, an investigative journalist who is tasked with finding out the cause of an internet blackout almost a year after then-President Donald Trump used the nuclear codes, initiating a nuclear war that resulted in the deaths of some 90% of the world's population. A book that is more importantly a conversation about the ways in which technology and the internet have been used as tools for colonial expansion and oppression, rather than as tools to "bring the world together," this book is not so much about Trump as it is about the forces, brought about through the internet and technology, that led to something like Trump and the potential consequences of his presidency.
Thoughtfully written, coherent, albeit very post-modern in its form, this book is one of the most interesting and important fictional (yet realistic) takes on technology today that I have ever read.
"Trump Sky Alpha" tells the story of Rachel, an investigative journalist who is tasked with finding out the cause of an internet blackout almost a year after then-President Donald Trump used the nuclear codes, initiating a nuclear war that resulted in the deaths of some 90% of the world's population. A book that is more importantly a conversation about the ways in which technology and the internet have been used as tools for colonial expansion and oppression, rather than as tools to "bring the world together," this book is not so much about Trump as it is about the forces, brought about through the internet and technology, that led to something like Trump and the potential consequences of his presidency.
Thoughtfully written, coherent, albeit very post-modern in its form, this book is one of the most interesting and important fictional (yet realistic) takes on technology today that I have ever read.
March 20, 2019
Repetition does not equal profundity.
Imagining the Twitterverse during a nuclear war might make for a cute McSweeney's feature. Theorizing about how the Internet is another form of American imperialism might make for a though-provoking Slate essay. Combining these ideas in a full-length work of speculative fiction, however, is a lousy idea.
Repetition does not equal profundity.
In fairness, Mr. Doten seems to understand that we live in an age when lousy ideas become lousy realities with terrifying speed, so maybe "Trump Sky Alpha" succeeds as meta-fiction. If that wasn't the author's intention, however, "Trump Sky Alpha" isn't quite as stupid a concept as, say, the Romp-Him, but it's still dumber than, say, artisanal ice.
Repetition does not equal profundity.
Hey . . . did you know that the rise of Donald Trump is a historical deviation empowered by the abuse of technology? What a shockingly original insight, surely one you've never heard before, provided you've been in a coma since November 2016 and regained consciousness half an hour ago. This almost universally accepted truth about Donald Trump (even his acolytes snicker about it) is worth exploring, certainly, maybe even satirizing. But making this point on your first page and drilling it into your reader's skull for the subsequent 300+ is neither exploration nor satire, it's didacticism. It may even be propaganda. It sure isn't literature.
Repetition does not equal profundity.
Okay, there are little interstitials between the jeremiads which attempt character development and narrative. They're pretty bad. Since the apocalypse Mr. Doten conjures is never literal, the dystopia he creates is vague and unconvincing. The characters in "Trump Sky Alpha" are only recognizable as human when they're whining -- an epic, italicized chapter about 3/4 of the way through the book comes across as the waste product of a toxic breakup. The Oedipal symbolism Mr. Doten attempts to graft onto this extended political diatribe seem forced and random. And there's a description of being catheterized which has no thematic relevance, but it's as close as "Trump Sky Alpha" gets to real pain, so I can understand why an editor left it in.
Repetition does not equal profundity.
Yes, much as I hated this book, I did finish it, even the biographical blurb at the end, which says nothing about Mr. Doten's personal life, but does describe academic credentials he's attained and awards he's won, as if trying to intimidate the reader out of criticizing the book they just endured. Yeah, nice try, Mark, but you could be a tenured professor at two different Ivies and sweep the major literary prizes, but I'd still have no use for "Trump Sky Alpha."
Oh, and one more thing, Mr. Doten . . .
Repetition does not equal profundity.
Imagining the Twitterverse during a nuclear war might make for a cute McSweeney's feature. Theorizing about how the Internet is another form of American imperialism might make for a though-provoking Slate essay. Combining these ideas in a full-length work of speculative fiction, however, is a lousy idea.
Repetition does not equal profundity.
In fairness, Mr. Doten seems to understand that we live in an age when lousy ideas become lousy realities with terrifying speed, so maybe "Trump Sky Alpha" succeeds as meta-fiction. If that wasn't the author's intention, however, "Trump Sky Alpha" isn't quite as stupid a concept as, say, the Romp-Him, but it's still dumber than, say, artisanal ice.
Repetition does not equal profundity.
Hey . . . did you know that the rise of Donald Trump is a historical deviation empowered by the abuse of technology? What a shockingly original insight, surely one you've never heard before, provided you've been in a coma since November 2016 and regained consciousness half an hour ago. This almost universally accepted truth about Donald Trump (even his acolytes snicker about it) is worth exploring, certainly, maybe even satirizing. But making this point on your first page and drilling it into your reader's skull for the subsequent 300+ is neither exploration nor satire, it's didacticism. It may even be propaganda. It sure isn't literature.
Repetition does not equal profundity.
Okay, there are little interstitials between the jeremiads which attempt character development and narrative. They're pretty bad. Since the apocalypse Mr. Doten conjures is never literal, the dystopia he creates is vague and unconvincing. The characters in "Trump Sky Alpha" are only recognizable as human when they're whining -- an epic, italicized chapter about 3/4 of the way through the book comes across as the waste product of a toxic breakup. The Oedipal symbolism Mr. Doten attempts to graft onto this extended political diatribe seem forced and random. And there's a description of being catheterized which has no thematic relevance, but it's as close as "Trump Sky Alpha" gets to real pain, so I can understand why an editor left it in.
Repetition does not equal profundity.
Yes, much as I hated this book, I did finish it, even the biographical blurb at the end, which says nothing about Mr. Doten's personal life, but does describe academic credentials he's attained and awards he's won, as if trying to intimidate the reader out of criticizing the book they just endured. Yeah, nice try, Mark, but you could be a tenured professor at two different Ivies and sweep the major literary prizes, but I'd still have no use for "Trump Sky Alpha."
Oh, and one more thing, Mr. Doten . . .
Repetition does not equal profundity.
August 12, 2021
Internet fiction--the inevitable domain of my fellow Zoomers & Coomers as they become the next generation of published artists--is still in its infancy. References to memes and video games, central to our cultural identity, will replace gaudy allusions to Fine Literature®.
Chapter 2_2_INTERNET_HUMOR_AT_THE_END_OF_THE_WORLD with its Rare Pepes and 4Chan antics is the best encapsulation of the cynicism prevalent in those raised on the internet that i’ve ever encountered. Unfortunately, the rest of the novel doesn’t quite reach this high: the intro chapter and final third are all kind of goofy. However, I’m glad the narrative didn’t devolve into uninspired DRUMPF BAD territory, as it very well could have (and probably would have been more commercially successful if it had).
Chapter 2_2_INTERNET_HUMOR_AT_THE_END_OF_THE_WORLD with its Rare Pepes and 4Chan antics is the best encapsulation of the cynicism prevalent in those raised on the internet that i’ve ever encountered. Unfortunately, the rest of the novel doesn’t quite reach this high: the intro chapter and final third are all kind of goofy. However, I’m glad the narrative didn’t devolve into uninspired DRUMPF BAD territory, as it very well could have (and probably would have been more commercially successful if it had).
April 22, 2019
O tempora! O mores! In times like these. In times like these … what? For many of us it seems clear that Donald Trump, fantastically nescient PEZident, is not a rupture in history, some unholy aberration, but rather an all too intelligible symptom. The tempestuous presidency of the oft-mocked Orange Commander might in fact be the ultimate logical outcome of the internet age. In Mark Doten’s absolutely extraordinary TRUMP SKY ALPHA, it is not merely the ascendency of Trump to his dubious throne that the internet age would seem to explicate, but also the amassing of forces and energies which could only ever lead to the end of civilization as we know it. Our author, plainly as can be: “The universe has been fine-tuned for the internet in its forty years to set the conditions of totalization to make the world’s end possible.” TRUMP SKY ALPHA is not just a harrowing satire about Trump’s absurdly thin skin or a malevolent speculative fiction set in the aftermath of resultant global nuclear war. It is in many ways more fundamentally a novel about the internet, the utopian aspirations that birthed it and how it was repurposed for capitalism’s perilously accelerating flows and exchanges, about what the internet has done to communication, how internet communication has become characterized as it so often is by the impotent rage and venality of its everyday users. The internet: “They made it, and we did, we all did, to the end of the world.” However, the novel does indeed begin with Trump. Trump Sky Alpha, “Crystal Palace of the Sky,” the president’s “ultraluxury zeppelin,” “from the bridge of which Trump delivered streaming YouTube addresses every Wednesday, DC to New York, and every Sunday, New York to DC,” not perhaps advisedly, the reality of ongoing global nuclear war suggesting the necessity of exigencies and precautions. We have Trump, as well we might expect, calling the end of the world “fake news” whilst evidence of its factuality rises above the earth in the form of innumerable mushroom clouds. There would in fact appear to be a pan-global flotilla of Trump zeppelins. It is the end of the world. There is some harrowing turbulence. The endtimes surreality as “the 2,000-gallon wheeled lobster habitats crashed against the Mount Rushmore-style sculptures that separated the gallery from the main cabin, and 2,000-gallon plate-glass tanks all around the world shattered against statues of Trump and Eric and Trump Jr. and Ivanka, sending huge crustaceans everywhere as passengers worldwide screamed in one voice [...]” Trump, “his face like a Creamsicle dropped in the dirt,” bafflingly impervious, blasted out of the sky and his life functions persisting undaunted. Now, many will doubtlessly expect TRUMP SKY ALPHA to be a calculated attempt to exploit the timeliness of its hijinks, feeding on our understandable desire to jeer at the self-described stable genius in all of his obscene undisguised idiocy and megalomaniacal delusion. Does the novel actually have legitimate literary merit? Oh, my friend, does it ever, in spades. Doten seems to have had a special desire to make this crystal clear right out of the gate. The opening section with Trump in his zeppelin, the fog of war and its delirium, is an extremely striking tour de force that makes it very clear we are in the hands of a gifted craftsman, what with its exquisitely wrought sentences running for many pages etc. I cannot help but feel that the opening tips its hat to Thomas Pynchon’s AGAINST THE DAY, which begins with a riotous section focusing on the Chums of Chance approaching the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair in a hydrogen balloon. This may or may not be a conscious influence, but there can be no denying that Doten can easily stand up to comparisons with Pynchon and his ilk, having written something of a “systems novel” in league with the 20th century greats rather than some kind of snarky humorist stunt. You can certainly compare him to Pynchon, Joseph McElroy, and “post-modernist” muckraker Robert Coover (whose THE PUBLIC BURNING famously found its star, Richard Milhous Nixon, pantsed in Times Square). I also thought of Philip K. Dick and Steve Erickson. Doten thanks Ben Marcus, Sam Lipsyte, and Denis Cooper in his Acknowledgments, and you will may well also sense a certain fraternity with these esteemed gentlemen as well. Yes, this is the real deal. Doten doesn’t teach at Columbia and Princeton for nothing. Those extraordinary virtuoso sentences of considerable length in the opening section can themselves not help but evoke Hungarian Pynchon fan László Krasznahorkai. Very quickly, however, we come to see that the variegated form and the stylistic versatility on display speak to a roving keenness of sensibility. Doten has a number of tricks up his sleeves and TRUMP SKY ALPHA intends to make full use of them. From Trump in his zepplin we move in the second section to Minneapolis, the Twin City Metro Containment Zone, and Rachel, a journalist specializing in internet matters when civilization was still up and running, who has lost her wife and daughter in the horrors and is now quarantined in what happens to be Doten’s home state. We learn a little about the events of 1/28, events which served as the background of the opening section. The death of something in the neighbourhood of 90% of the human population. The internet put on ice. Apparently in the days leading up to the global nuclear conflagration the internet had been brought down by an attack from a hacker named Birdcrash, head of an organization called the Aviary, and when connections were reestablished the shit was already hitting the fan. Rachel becomes conscripted to write a piece on internet humour at the end of the world, and is provided access to a facility which contains the last component parts of the old network. What she discovers is perhaps almost satirical in its implications but at the same time disturbingly close to home. “People are making apocalypse joke like there is no tomorrow,” “countless iterations of Pepe,” “20 minutes into Netflix and chill and he gives you this look [GIF: flaming skull].” Etc. Rachel also gains a peek into what was going on more generally during the final hours. “Somehow there were people who seemed to be blaming the end of the world on the women from Gamergate, and in some places it seemed the most deadpan troll, but in others the posters seemed so upset, so sad, so furious, that they had to be for real, they really did blame them.” There is much speculation, wildly multifarious in nature, regarding the implications of the date 1/28. Certain images began to curiously circulate: Canuplin, the magician who became the Filipino Charlie Chaplin; Christa McAuliffe, the school teacher who died in the 1986 Challenger disaster; Jon Postel, one of the founders of ARPANET. What do these images have to do with the provisional end of the world? Was the end of the world precipitated by somebody’s efforts towards “some really dark lulz”? Then there is Birdcrash and the Aviary, seemingly influence by the 2015 (fictional) novel THE SUBVERSIVE by one Sebastian de Rosales, a novel some believe cryptically predicted 1/28 and the end of civilization. THE SUBVERSIVE was a novel that sold very few copies and was ultimately remaindered. It almost completely escaped notice until a real hacker organization appeared on the scene, very clearly inspired by the book. Rachel once interviewed Sebastian de Rosales, back before it all came tumbling down, and he spoke of his origin in the Philippines, how the country’s founding father was a revolutionary writer, and how ILOVEYOU, the first major global computer worm, was written there. There is also the role Manila played in the first telegraphic communications of the 19th century. There is also, of course, Canuplin. What gives? Will will meet Birdcrash and the novel will splinter again, taking on yet another form. Birdcrash presents us with a long monologue, both tormented and fragmented, in the plural, the voice of “we.” He dreams of an internet of birds, an imposition of only very faint order on the rule of chaos. There will be a complementary section in the voice of Donald Trump, his ridiculous vainglory, situating us one again above the earth on 1/28. Doten completely nails that voice, that emperor with no clothes and bile in his heart. A voice capturing all the grotesque infantile bluster of our age, catacombed in its self-willed ignorance. It is worth noting that Birdcrash has taken his name from a compilation cassette put out by the legendary Olympia, Washington "International Pop Underground" label K Records in 1988. It does not escape me that Mark Doten is a man only a year older than myself. We would appear to have grown up on much of the same culture. He and I both belong to the odd duck cohort or inter-generation often called Xennial, stuck in the middle between Generation X and the Millennials. It is natural for me to feel a certain kinship with Xennial writers. I have also very much enjoyed reading Ottessa Moshfegh, Elif Batuman, and Joshua Cohen these past couple years. I associate a certain spirit of sardonic malice, almost good-natured sardonic malice, in people more or less my age. Doten seems especially impressive to me on account of the scope of his vision, his alacrity, his impressive learning, his versatility as a stylist, and the prudence he deploys in keeping his malice from curdling. What is ultimately most discomfiting about TRUMP SKY ALPHA is not Trump himself, or even the call to imagine our ruin, but rather the convincing argument that our inevitable ruin has been foreordained for quite some time, we have simply failed to apprehend the signs adequately. I used to romanticize the counterculture of the 60s and 70s. But we all know what happened to the Baby Boomers. It’s impossibly fucking grim. The drop-out dreamers who brought us the WHOLE EARTH CATALOGUE and breathed the breath of life into the fledgling internet, ultimately invented the key tool of gluttonous neoliberal expansion. In A THOUSAND PLATEAUS, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari asserted that capitalism “makes the earth increasingly uninhabitable the more thoroughly it encompasses it.” The Frenchmen were not adequately situated historically to see how the internet would play into this. Doten is basically operating from the same thesis, only with forty additional years of history, internet-informed history, the show how it pans out. We think of the dreamers, those hippie kids who built the operating components of the cyber realm, often as not in suburban garages. It’s a benign image. Where did it lead? Flash forward. In Doten’s words: “Microsoft with open standards, embrace, extend, destroy.”
April 7, 2019
This was the worst book I’ve read in 2019 by a long shot. It was recommended to me by my brother-in-law because he has a connection to the author, so he definitely got some angry texts about it 😂
While the author nails Trump’s voice, it’s interesting at first then gets dull as dirt towards the end of the book- it all sounds the same and drags on for far too long.
The first 1/3 of the book had me intrigued. A post apocalyptic world and a need to rebuild? Fascinating!
Then we roll into the Birdcrash compound and are treated to 80 pages of a sociopath drilling holes in a woman’s skull and pouring acid inside to rewire her brain and I wanted to throw the book at a damn wall.
I hoped the book would somehow tie it all together in the end, but there was nothing to redeem the gruesome madness we endured as readers. The book is purposeless. Big swing and a miss, Mark Doten.
While the author nails Trump’s voice, it’s interesting at first then gets dull as dirt towards the end of the book- it all sounds the same and drags on for far too long.
The first 1/3 of the book had me intrigued. A post apocalyptic world and a need to rebuild? Fascinating!
Then we roll into the Birdcrash compound and are treated to 80 pages of a sociopath drilling holes in a woman’s skull and pouring acid inside to rewire her brain and I wanted to throw the book at a damn wall.
I hoped the book would somehow tie it all together in the end, but there was nothing to redeem the gruesome madness we endured as readers. The book is purposeless. Big swing and a miss, Mark Doten.
July 22, 2019
Despite my unfavorable opinion of Doten’s first novel, The Infernal, a montage of mostly well-crafted set pieces in alternating waves—surreal horror, black comedy, convincing pathos, gonzo pastiche—that collapsed into the inert singularity of an ill-conceived gimmick, I strongly recommend Trump Sky Alpha. The two books have much in common, except this one worked for me, in large part because its depiction of how the end of civilization plays out on social media is the truest, most uncannily pitch-perfect thing I’ve read in a very, very long time. Treat yourself.
March 7, 2019
Masterful observations on Trump and the internet but the book falls off the rails 2/3 in. There is also not a single woman in the book. Yes, his narrator is a woman but you wouldn’t know that except for her name; she thinks, talks, and interacts with the world like a man.
August 23, 2019
Weird, disturbing, and, hopefully not prophetic. Full tilt, double dark satire of the racist moron in the White House which also tackles the botnets and computer hackers we have allowed to astigmatize our society into either believing bullshit and underestimating the power of weaponized stupidity, fear, and hatred at the polls.
Some very disturbing metaphors thrown into America’s Cuisinart here. I’m not sure that this would be more than a 4 star review if it were read after the trump years (assuming we aren’t all dead by then) but completely awful in a perfect way in 2019.
Some very disturbing metaphors thrown into America’s Cuisinart here. I’m not sure that this would be more than a 4 star review if it were read after the trump years (assuming we aren’t all dead by then) but completely awful in a perfect way in 2019.
July 6, 2019
Sono un po’ indietro con le recensioni. Per quanto riguarda Trump Sky Alpha ho persino una data di riferimento: ho iniziato a leggerlo il 21 giugno, poche ore prima di apprendere dall’arancionissimo presidente USA che un attacco all’Iran era stato interrotto dieci minuti prima dello sgancio della prima bomba.
Considera che le prime trenta pagine di Trump Sky Alpha – probabilmente le migliori di tutto il romanzo – raccontano la fine del mondo: da uno dei suoi dirigibili esclusivi (cinquantamila dollari per viaggiarci e gustarsi un astice con la scritta Trump sulla chela mentre il Presidente parla alla nazione, che lo Studio Ovale è ormai superato), il leader del mondo libero provoca lo scoppio del terzo conflitto mondiale, naturalmente atomico. Altrettanto naturalmente, è Twitter il canale con cui tenere informati i cittadini statunitensi (“I generali stanno facendo un ottimo lavoro! Felici che ci sono io e non Hillary! Non ascoltate quei bugiardi dei media. Siamo noi a tenere l’America AL SICURO!!!“), almeno fino a quando non è la stessa Rete a collassare completamente.
Un anno dopo, con la popolazione mondiale ridotta del 90% e in uno scenario politico dominato da militari e da quel che resta dei Servizi Segreti, la giornalista Rachel viene ricontattata dal suo vecchio capo per un articolo per il New York Times Magazine, in procinto di riprendere le pubblicazioni. Un pezzo di inchiesta sulle ultime ore di Internet, l’aggancio perfetto per concedere all’autore la possibilità di raccontare – in chiave apocalitticamente umoristica – quanto Internet sia penetrata profondamente nelle nostre vite, con un linguaggio e una struttura narrativa che ricorda alcuni dei migliori lavori di Genna (da me letti appassionatamente negli anni).
Trump Sky Alpha è un po’ distopia, un po’ thriller, un po’ saggio voltato con proprietà narrativa in romanzo. Certamente dividerà: un romanzo così lo ami o lo odi, di certo non lascia indifferenti.
http://capitolo23.com/2019/07/06/rece...
Considera che le prime trenta pagine di Trump Sky Alpha – probabilmente le migliori di tutto il romanzo – raccontano la fine del mondo: da uno dei suoi dirigibili esclusivi (cinquantamila dollari per viaggiarci e gustarsi un astice con la scritta Trump sulla chela mentre il Presidente parla alla nazione, che lo Studio Ovale è ormai superato), il leader del mondo libero provoca lo scoppio del terzo conflitto mondiale, naturalmente atomico. Altrettanto naturalmente, è Twitter il canale con cui tenere informati i cittadini statunitensi (“I generali stanno facendo un ottimo lavoro! Felici che ci sono io e non Hillary! Non ascoltate quei bugiardi dei media. Siamo noi a tenere l’America AL SICURO!!!“), almeno fino a quando non è la stessa Rete a collassare completamente.
Un anno dopo, con la popolazione mondiale ridotta del 90% e in uno scenario politico dominato da militari e da quel che resta dei Servizi Segreti, la giornalista Rachel viene ricontattata dal suo vecchio capo per un articolo per il New York Times Magazine, in procinto di riprendere le pubblicazioni. Un pezzo di inchiesta sulle ultime ore di Internet, l’aggancio perfetto per concedere all’autore la possibilità di raccontare – in chiave apocalitticamente umoristica – quanto Internet sia penetrata profondamente nelle nostre vite, con un linguaggio e una struttura narrativa che ricorda alcuni dei migliori lavori di Genna (da me letti appassionatamente negli anni).
Trump Sky Alpha è un po’ distopia, un po’ thriller, un po’ saggio voltato con proprietà narrativa in romanzo. Certamente dividerà: un romanzo così lo ami o lo odi, di certo non lascia indifferenti.
http://capitolo23.com/2019/07/06/rece...
August 30, 2019
The reaction to this book on here is pretty wild! But I get it. It's a book about the internet and Trump (much more about the internet than it actually is about Trump, and titling it Trump Sky Alpha is a bit thirsty), and it uses the language of the meme internet, which will most likely age like an avocado left behind during a vacation. I went into the novel extremely skeptical, thinking it would so easily miss the miniscule target that writing this kind of novel calls for. But, to my surprise, the way that Doten conjures the last tweets before the end of the world actually strikes me as quite sorrowful and touching. What else can we do when we are being vaporized by nuclear bombs but say 'TFW the apocalypse hits'? The notion of a fantasia of dead memes parading through our digital dreamscape as the president elected by the internet kills us all feels right in its own pathetic, horrid way. I cared a bit less for the way the novel ends in its last two sections, but I don't necessarily agree that it does a disservice to the protagonist to have her go through the rather long torture sequence-- in fact, more media would benefit from not treating its heroes as invulnerable to danger at that degree.
November 26, 2020
How to describe Trump Sky Alpha?
Think a weird Jeff Vandermeer novel, but he has fully and completely devolved into the seedy underbelly of Trump Derangement Syndrome and came out with some off-the-wall satire that's equal parts artful, painful, and incomprehensible.
I'm both not the target audience at all and entirely the person to read this all at the same time. A book that largely flew under my radar but really needs to be read to be believed, no matter your political persuasion.
Think a weird Jeff Vandermeer novel, but he has fully and completely devolved into the seedy underbelly of Trump Derangement Syndrome and came out with some off-the-wall satire that's equal parts artful, painful, and incomprehensible.
I'm both not the target audience at all and entirely the person to read this all at the same time. A book that largely flew under my radar but really needs to be read to be believed, no matter your political persuasion.
April 10, 2022
"The initial plans had been to replicate the flight path of Trump Sky Alpha at a 1:1 scale, and in the same compass bearings, though ultimately Trump had been convinced that the zeppelins could be oriented in various directions depending on local need, but since the local need was in many cases nil, it still resulted in zeppelin landing stations in the middle of the desert, or way out in some Hebei province backwater where there were mountains and big ancient pagodas and other obstructions, so at last a further compromise was made..."
March 17, 2019
I wasn't sure I wanted to read a dystopian story featuring Trump. But the story is extremely well told.
April 20, 2020
Well it was definitely a trip to read this book in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. But there were sections of this book that felt like essential early 21st century writing. Doten gets the language of Twitter and memes and the chapter imagining what happened on the Internet as the world was ending was just masterful. I thought the Trump satire worked really well too. 45 gives a Trump Sky Alpha style speech every day about COVID so it was actually helpful to have some unabashed fictional satire to turn to. I loved the queerness of all the characters, the emotional core of Rachel’s story, and the commentary about colonization and the Internet. Not every section worked as well and readers need to be prepared for a non-traditional structure, but overall it really worked for me and was the perfectly prescient thing to read at this time.
July 31, 2019
(pub date Feb 19, 2019). Hmm...okay, we're gonna number list this one:
1. I know Mark Doten in that tangential way a lot of people in the NYC lit/pub world know one another, i.e. he used to have the same job at the agency where I worked, he taught at the program where I got my MFA, I sent him a lot of emails at SoHo on behalf of my boss, and we interacted in person once at my thesis anthology launch.
2. As a writer, I can't imagine writing this book. Like sitting down at my desk every day to work on a long form project about Trump? No, absolutely not. Barf. Thinking about writing something extended in Trump's voice is just nauseating.
3. The beginning of this book is really wonderful, as are a lot of the masterfully lyrical ending passages involving Birdcrash. As for the rest...eh? More commentary than narrative with no real characters. The main woman is basically an idea mouthpiece. And that brings us to THE INTERNET.
4. Long story short: dude artists are, like, super afraid of the internet (Joshua Cohen, Charlie Brooker, etc). So the rest of us have to listen to them complaining about rampant anti-intellectualism and how the internet is making their work irrelevant, while the rest of us never really assumed we'd be relevant in the first place. I mean, boo-hoo, you have to produce something actually interesting for once, because otherwise your audience will just tab over to Twitter? Give me a break. Anywho...
5. All of this is ultimately to say that perhaps artists shouldn't assume the hegemony of their medium of choice. I always used to fall into that "the book's better" trap. But sorry, Mark: Mr. Robot's been doing this--and doing it better--since 2015. Bonsoir, Elliot!
1. I know Mark Doten in that tangential way a lot of people in the NYC lit/pub world know one another, i.e. he used to have the same job at the agency where I worked, he taught at the program where I got my MFA, I sent him a lot of emails at SoHo on behalf of my boss, and we interacted in person once at my thesis anthology launch.
2. As a writer, I can't imagine writing this book. Like sitting down at my desk every day to work on a long form project about Trump? No, absolutely not. Barf. Thinking about writing something extended in Trump's voice is just nauseating.
3. The beginning of this book is really wonderful, as are a lot of the masterfully lyrical ending passages involving Birdcrash. As for the rest...eh? More commentary than narrative with no real characters. The main woman is basically an idea mouthpiece. And that brings us to THE INTERNET.
4. Long story short: dude artists are, like, super afraid of the internet (Joshua Cohen, Charlie Brooker, etc). So the rest of us have to listen to them complaining about rampant anti-intellectualism and how the internet is making their work irrelevant, while the rest of us never really assumed we'd be relevant in the first place. I mean, boo-hoo, you have to produce something actually interesting for once, because otherwise your audience will just tab over to Twitter? Give me a break. Anywho...
5. All of this is ultimately to say that perhaps artists shouldn't assume the hegemony of their medium of choice. I always used to fall into that "the book's better" trap. But sorry, Mark: Mr. Robot's been doing this--and doing it better--since 2015. Bonsoir, Elliot!
April 18, 2019
Doten should chop out the magnificently surreal first chapter and publish it as a bravura short story in itself. It's a bombastic portrait perfectly fitted to an insane president floating above us all in his crystal amphitheater of the unreal. Maybe check out this book solely for that first chapter. Unfortunately, everything starts slipping after that, from the blank slate lesbian protagonist yearning(ish) for her dead loved ones to the atrocious, distasteful and weirdly lame torture chapter narrated by a batshit villain in the heart of a Winchester house of horrors. The second to last chapter scores easy points by appropriating Trump's meandering chucklefuck twitter voice. Another chapter simply describes memes, and not very funny ones at that. And the last chapter wraps things up much too lickety split, though I was so glad to finally finish this. The tone of this ambitious postmodern metanarrative is too topical and contemporary to have much lasting power beyond the next two years. Unless that's the point?
May 18, 2019
After the initial setup, with the dead-on imitation of Trump's Simplistic and downright stupid Twitterspeak, the story becomes a mess that I just could not follow. I tried to stick with it for the potential insight into how social media and the internet have changed our world, but I had to give up, (thankfully before the long torture scene). I rarely DNF, but life is too short to hurt my brain with a confusing, violent mess.
November 19, 2023
I hate to say this but I really really really disliked this book. I had to force myself to finish it. I kept thinking it would start to improve and yet it got worse. I just didn’t get the point of the book. I feel bad giving this review because I can usually find something to like in any book but not this one. Sorry.
May 12, 2019
I'm going one star here because I think this is a love or hate book. Your mileage will vary depending on your political leanings; but beyond that I just found a rambling mess. The book is basically a s---post come to life.
July 5, 2019
The first part was eye popping, really big, humungous big, entertainment of the best kind.
The rest was a waste.
The rest was a waste.
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