Un-Gritty Book Is Food For Thought

Reader Contribution by S.M.R. Saia
Published on August 13, 2010
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This week I read a new novel which is about as un-Gritty as a novel can get.

And yet…

It has given me much food for thought. It’s a satire of our modern world by Gary Shteyngart called Super Sad True Love Story. I heard Mr. Shteyngart in an interview on NPR last week, and I was so intrigued by some of the things that he had to say – about the world as we know it; about life in all its present technological aspects – that I was compelled to buy the book.

It’s satirical pages describe the absurdity of people struggling to understand and to digest complex ideas (e.g., reading books, rather than the minimal effort required to “scan text”); the frantic helplessness of being unplugged; the horror of a world so ruled by technology that all privacy (and much decency) has been abandoned; the peril in store for anyone who is utterly dependent on both technology and the economy.

There were a lot of things about this book which I did not like. But perhaps that’s because there are things in the world which I do not like, and this novel forced me to look long at them, and to consider not only their implications, but the extent to which I might be complicit in them.

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