Just Read: Zeitgeist, by Bruce Sterling 


In marked contrast with his latest effort, Zenith Angle, Zeitgeist actually was a book I could sink my eyes into. Ephemeral children who eat only things that are white; reality determined by someone's idea of their place in the "narrative"; Turkish, Greek, and Russian mafia; half-realized global pop stars; mass graves; ghostly grandparents and more.

I went into this with a little trepidation. I was sick of novels with Y2K as a central theme about 1997 or so. But despite the jacket blurb, this isn't really about the turn of the clock, but about reality and your place in it being determined by what other people think (or in some cases, what an individual believes about himself.)

Focusing on a half crazed band promoter and general scammer, the book follows what he thinks as being his narrative. He goes from a rich promoter to a Mexican-impersonating border crosser with no ID to responsible father working at a convenience store to fake shaman to trucking company executive to software promoter. Sterling even manages to weave this guy into the big Turkish scandal of 1997, itself a very strange event.

Well worth a read. 

 

Posted: Fri - October 22, 2004 at 12:00 AM          

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