…plugged in, navigating their vast library of original experiences and user – generated contact, his company could now map the reactions, decisions
…plugged in, navigating their vast library of original experiences and user – generated contact, his company could now map the reactions, decisions, even lingering, emotional responses of anyone who stuck around long enough to let their imagination build on the pre-existing foundation of an original experience – from what made a user crush to what made them cry out in pain, and reject the virtual experience altogether. It was a deep well. More than what made people tick, they were beginning to understand what those text amounted to. The way person would call might act. Even why.
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…she had a weirdness about her that bordered on hostility.
A maven of the imagined, but largely a stranger to the real world, Miles works in virtual reality (VR). He stands in here for the tech companies that accept intellectual product from their users (you know who you are), while claiming the financial benefits for themselves, and then blaming users when things go wrong. (Not that users are never at fault) It is pretty clear that Miles is indifferent to any moral issues regarding blame-shifting. Neither does he lose a lot of sleep when he screws his partner, Lily, out of her fair share of recognition. He is also a pretty bright guy who comes up with three great ideas over the course of the book.
[image] Colin Winnette - image from The LA Review of Books
When the users of his company’s primary game platform fail to generate enough content of interest to other users, and thus ramp up on-line time, the company adds “Original Experiences” into the mix, pre-packaged prompts for the dreamverse the users may be unable to create on their own. Called Ghost Lover, Miles’s brainstorm OE brings into play a former lover. The company does boffo business with this until some people find ways to do dodgy things in the virtual world, and it becomes a potential crisis when the company tries to pare that back. So, time for Miles to come up with something else, which he does. But one must constantly feed the beast, so Miles comes up, eventually, with an ultimate, immersive experience, joining software and hardware. (no, not the holodeck) It is called The Egg.
So, what happens when people share their most intimate memories, experiences, and reactions with a software company? What if your dreams could be made (VR) reality? What if your experiences were accessible by others? Complications ensue. While hardly one of the suits who rule tech companies, Miles is one of the people who define the tech experience for vast portions of the planet. Really? This guy? Maybe that is the point. Maybe the people who create our experiences of the world (of the tech sort, anyway) are people we might prefer taking on other careers.
There are two streams to consider in Users, the sci-fi, if-this-goes-on, critique of the software industry, and the personal challenges faced by Miles.
His home life is not exactly wonderful. It seems pretty clear from the git-go that his marriage should end ASAP. Miles is too wrapped up in his work life. His wife has alternate interests, and their interactions tilt far too heavily, with a few exceptions, on the side of that deadliest of marital interaction descriptives, scorn. He does not relate particularly well with his two daughters. The older one, Maya, ten for most of the book, should be checked out for sociopathy. Mia, the younger, has some issues as well. But Miles is mostly MIA as a parent.
He is so wrapped up in his own head that he fails to read the signals the real world is throwing at him. It takes some effort, too. Both on the family front and on the work front. He fends off benign advice that he should probably take. Instead of the Me Generation, Miles may be representative of the ME-ME-ME-ME Generation. He is not a bad guy, per se, not overtly hostile. But his reckless disregard for the people using his product, and his unwillingness to do the right thing by his partner, makes his moral crimes ones of passivity. If there were a doll made of Miles it would have to be called an in-action figure.
Oh, and then there are the death threats, on fancy stationery. These appear in his mail, sometimes even inside his home, offering cryptic portents. Generates a wee bit of stress, as one might presume. “Soon”. Then “Your Heart Will Stop.” They continue, keeping Miles in a state of chronic existential crisis.
But it is actually more compelling to wonder who is sending these things and why than it is to empathize with Miles. As Miles does not really feel much for others, it can be tough for the reader to feel much for Miles, beyond some eye-rolling at some of his decisions, and a desire to grab him by the shoulders and shake him. “Dude! Pay attention. How can you not be dealing with what is going on in right in front of your eyes?“ Again, maybe that is the point. But it makes for an unsatisfying read. We do not have to match our lead character in gender, age, career, nationality, religion, politics, education, or any of the many other descriptives applicable to humans, but we NEED TO FEEL SOME CONNECTION. And Users did not provide that.
I applaud Winnette for an interesting, dark take on tech. There is much to admire there. But the downside of a main character one never really cares about, or much relates to, combined with secondary characters who were mostly of the cardboard sort, made this an unsatisfactory read.
…he’d made an awful thing. An awful place where you could never be alone. Where other people could climb in, touch everything. Turned you against yourself. Turn what you loved into something reprehensible. You could turn it back, but what happened to you once you’d seen it? once someone else had seen you see it?
Profile Here is the beginning of Winnette’s Linked In profile:
I’m a Narrative Designer with a literary career. In addition to years of experience as a writer and designer for interactive games, I'm an experienced screenwriter and the author of seven books, published internationally and translated into multiple languages. My writing has also appeared in numerous publications, including Playboy Magazine, Los Angeles Review of Books, and McSweeney's, and it has been praised in numerous high profile venues, including the NY Times, New Yorker Magazine, LA Times, the Washington Post, Rolling Stone (France), Le Monde, and others. I'm a prolific writer and a confident collaborator with experience working across departments.
They had been traveling for days, first by plane, and then by train and ferry, and now again by train, for their destination was a place at the edg
They had been traveling for days, first by plane, and then by train and ferry, and now again by train, for their destination was a place at the edge of the world, in the far north of a northern country, and not easily gained.
What you have is an unhappy couple who go on a journey of self-discovery to a far off place and come away with greater self-awareness…or don’t. The stuff in between is sometimes entertaining, and often very confusing. The man and the woman, as they are always referred to, (they are never named) arrive at an ends-of-the-earth town after a lengthy and arduous trip. They are there to adopt a baby, and this place has the only orphanage that will accept their application. The woman is dying of cancer and wants the man to have a child to raise, a child she was never able to give him, having suffered several miscarriages, so he will be able to go on after she passes. [He wants a child, but can’t he pursue another relationship after his wife passes? It was not entirely clear to me why, if he is so desperate to have a child, it must be an adoptee if it cannot be hers.] They even pass through the equivalent of a tunnel getting there, usually a symbol for entering a place of change.
For a long time she had been staring absently out the window, mesmerized, it seemed, by the endless expanse of tundra, but she suddenly recoiled when the train entered the dark woods as if the trees brushing the sides of the carriage might reach in and scratch her.
Scary change, at that. Well, there is certainly a big change coming if the woman is dying, and another if they are to adopt an orphan. So, ok, change is coming. Get the baby, head home, have a few months together as a family before the woman dies. That is the plan, however strange. But nothing is ever simple, right?
[image] Peter Cameron - image from his FB pages
There was so much he wished he could do for her, so much he wished he could give to her, but nothing he tried to do, or give, ever seemed to reach her. It was as if she wore a shield that deflected all of his love, an armor that protected her from anything he gave.
That shield gets much more literal, as she cringes at his touch, yet does not recoil from the touch of others. Ouch! It is pretty clear that this is a relationship in serious trouble, whether her cancer had caused her increased distancing from the man, or whether it was there before her diagnosis.
The train. He turned to see it slowly moving, so slowly that for a moment he thought it must be the darkness moving behind it, but then he knew it was the train, for he could see his wife leaning forward, looking out of the still-opened door, her white face silently surprised, and for a second it felt like death to him, like how one must let one’s beloved depart this world, gliding silently slack-faced into the snow-dark.
Is it her demise he fears or her emotional departure he senses? She baits him from time to time, and then attacks him for his responses. (Boy, that conjures up some memories!)
The man and woman are tossed (by their choice, but still tossed) into a very other-worldly environment, not just the remote, freezing, almost always dark town, but The Borgarfjaroasysla Grand Imperial Hotel. Go right ahead and think of Wes Anderson’s Grand Budapest Hotel, the corpse of a lost empire, mostly unoccupied, but with a 24/7 bar. This is, well, was, an elegant place, and so vast that as the man and woman cross the lobby they cannot quite make out the walls in the distance. The staff is definitely of the quirky sort, and account for some of the odd humor in the book. A concierge, who seems barely animate, warns them that their room will be cold. I can imagine comments in Trip Advisor warning potential hotel visitors that they might have to chip ice out of the tub before settling in. NO STARS!
The bartender was a young man, tall and dark, vaguely Asiatic, and remarkably stiff, as if he had been born with fewer joints than normal.
Even the drinks are weird. Lárus, the above noted barkeep, serves the man a local schnapps that is tinged with the silvery blue glow that the snow reflects at twilight. (Sounds like a drink that would be served in Night Vale) The man finds it tastes of bleach and watercress and spearmint and rice. (Maybe it will cure Covid?) How is it that the lobby and dining room are so grand and the rooms so Motel 6? So, does the hotel act as merely a background for the couple’s adventure, does it reflect their interior conflicts? or does it intercede, or interfere? Who knows?
They soon learn that the orphanage is not the only attraction in town. Among the things to do while in Borgarfjaroasysla, and luckily for the woman, is to visit a local (and world-renowned) healer, Brother Emmanuel. (who was instantly Sasha Baron Cohen in my tiny mind). While they had had no prior notion of his propitious presence, the woman figures what’s to lose, given her stage-four cancer. But then, if something can be done for her expected longevity, where does that leave the adoption plan? Complications.
In the hotel they come across a handful of eccentric characters, usually while wandering about on their own, the other usually asleep or somewhere else. Livia Pinheiro-Rima is prime among these, a former actress, former circus performer, now the hotel’s lounge singer. Of uncertain but considerable age, she helps each of them out in diverse ways, but is not above some dishonesty. She gets the best lines in the book. Is Livia a fairy godmother to one or both of them? A busybody? A mischievous sprite? Who knows? But she is always a treat whenever she crosses the pages.
In the lobby, the man encounters a businessman who claims to know him. There to conclude a deal of some sort, he seems much taken with the man and tries to drag him away from the hotel and his wife for outings with way too much determination. Does he represent some inner portion of the man’s psyche? Maybe a dark force in the universe? Who knows?
The weather is usually hostile, freezing, wind-blowing, snowing as often as not. An image of a malevolent world? A manifestation of a chill in the couple’s relationship? Their fraught state made real? How about the relentless darkness? The human condition? Personal ignorance? Got me.
Color comes in for some attention. The woman is drawn to vibrant flowers in a market very early, only to find that they are artificial. I guess color represents hope or life to her. The attraction would be obvious. Later, Brother Emmanuel’s place is alive with color. That she finds Emmanuel appealing may or may not have anything to do with the colors that are so dazzling in such a dead-tinted environment, but they are there. Can Emmanuel really heal anyone? Who knows?
There is strangeness at the orphanage. It seems that whenever the man and the woman plan to do something, they are waylaid by inexplicable interference. This has a very Kafka-esque feel, as if no matter what you do, however many hoops you jump through, it will never be quite enough and their trial will go on and on.
The man and the woman seem to fall asleep at the drop of a hat, and even if they start out in common unconsciousness it is never long before one or the other is up and out. What we’ve got here is failure to coordinate. Or maybe they are each heading their separate ways, and this is a way of showing that. Who knows?
You might check out a definition of absurdist fiction. There is a large one on Wikipedia. I am sure there are many others. Absurdism tends to deal in characters struggling to find some purpose in life, who engage in meaningless actions in events that prove futile. Ah, the joy! The book certainly sends the man and woman on quests that may or not prove meaningful. Will they get out, with a baby, or is there no exit for them? Will they get in to see the healer or will they remain always waiting for Emmanuel?
As an annual form of dark entertainment, my wife and I used to pore through the NY Times reviewers’ lists of the best films of the year. There would always be gushing praise for the most inaccessible, grim, nihilistic, unentertaining fare you could wish for. Among the films on the lists, there were always a few we had seen and enjoyed, but many, most, sometimes, would be films that neither of us had ever heard of, and there is no harm in that. Sometimes good work is underappreciated and poorly marketed, or maybe just not yet widely available in the USA. But far too often the top-pick films seemed intended for a more art film viewer. When some of these received Oscar nominations, we would risk sitting in a darkened theater for two hours to see what had appealed so much. Sometimes we were in for a happy surprise. More often than not, however, we would confirm our view that movie reviewers for the NY Times (whom we refer to, with some notable exceptions, as card-carrying members of the snoterati) were suffering from some form of alternate reality syndrome (maybe induced by having to sit through so many of the same, garden-variety sorts of movies, that anything, anything that landed outside those boxes made them go gaga?) that predisposed them to favor the unusual, the obscure, the outlier, the inexplicable, regardless of its entertainment value or watchability.
And so it is, in a way, with What Happens at Night. I have read a fair number of reviews for this book, something I almost never do before writing my own. The praise is of the gushing variety. But frankly, I expect that most of you would not really enjoy this book all that much. I am not saying that it is not a good book, or that the reviewers who have been praising it so highly are incorrect in their analyses. There is much to appreciate here, much to enjoy. But it is not a book that was written for you or me. It seems that it was written for MFA grads who will giddily pick apart the references to other works, themes, and literary legerdemain. Now, don’t get me wrong. This is a sport in which I happily indulge, as you might note above. But it seemed to me that the core of the human relationship in the book, that between the man and the woman, is overwhelmed by a bear-skin-coat of craft. The need for physical human contact, even from odd humans, is so important to our being. When this notion takes center stage, it is effective, relatable, and moving. But there is so much literary show-biz going on that the core of the man and woman’s relationship and that primal human need get overwhelmed, well, they did for me, anyway.
So, if you enjoy absurdist entertainment, this one may be a perfect fit for you. If you enjoy professional-level literary treasure hunting; if you have a special decoder ring to make sense of the absurdity; if you get off on a constant sense of unease, always wondering what impediment may arise next; if this look at a relationship in serious trouble wending its way toward resolution is your cuppa schnapps, this one may be for you. And if the entertainment value of the luminous Livia Pinheiro-Rima (you might almost want to ask Livia “Are you a good witch or a bad witch?”) is sufficient to carry you through, this one may be for me you. But, unless you fall into one of these groups, there is a considerable chance that it just may not. Who knows?
You’re lost, aren’t you? Yes, said the woman I am. The thing to remember is that we’re all lost, said Livia Pinheiro-Rima. We’re living in a dark time. No one can find their way.
Review posted – August 21, 2020
Publication date ----------hardcover - August 4, 2020 ----------trade paperback - October 19, 2021
I requested this book from Counterpoint/Catapult’s Influencer program, and the dear souls sent me a copy. Maybe, henceforth they will consider me a bad influencer. Who knows?
=============================EXTRA STUFF
Links to the author’s personal and FB pages – but his FB page has been inactive since 2013
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