First Quarter 2021 Round up

Blogging continues, though it isn’t clear if anyone is even looking at what I post.

Hits are wa-a-y down.  Where is everybody?

Obviously, the posts are better than ever ( : – ) ), so what’s going on?

Is this pandemic related?  Is this something to do with global politics, e.g., blocking in China or EU? Or maybe changes in WordPress reporting.  I dunno.

Band Names

As always, I noted some Dave Barry tribute band names, taken from real scientific and technical publictions.

Stochastic Parrots
Neanderthal ears
The Laschamps Excursion (Pronounced Las Champs, or in SoCal, LA’s Champs)
The Chicxulub Impactors  (Or just Impactor)

Books Reviewed

Fiction

Smoke by Joe Ide
Milk Fed by Melissa Broder
A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes
Fake Accounts by Lauren Oyler
Trio by William Boyd
Outlawed by Anna North
Liar’s Dictionary by Eley Williams
Tropic of Stupid by Tim Dorsey
The Sun Collective by Charles Baxter
Aphasia by Mauro Javier Cárdenas
The Arrest by Jonathan Lethem
Deadly Education by Naomi Novik
Bring Me the Head of Quentin Tarantino by Julián Herbert

Non-fiction

The Light Ages by Seb Falk
Kindred by Rebecca Wragg Sykes
The Last Million by David Nasaw
New Money by Lana Swartz
Extraterrestrial by Avi Loeb

Book Review: “Fake Accounts” by Lauren Oyler

Fake Accounts by Lauren Oyler

Basically one thing happens.  The rest is nattering about dating, digital life, and digital dating.  I confess that however interesting some of the adventures were, it was definitely a slog to read page upon page of not very clearly explained digital and dating life.

Roughly half the book takes place in Berlin—where the protagonist does not speak German.  The author lives in Berlin, so I assume that some of this is at least loosely autobiographical.  Knowing even less about Berlin than NYC, the setting and events there were obscure and inscrutable to me.

So, OK, I don’t really identify with this character, and surely don’t understand her or most of the people and situations she deals with.  Is there some deeper point here?

Much of the point seems to be meditations on “fakery”, especially in digital media and dating.  The protagonist is not only a serial liar, she actually wants to fake her own life.  Each date gets a new, made up version of her.  At one point, she has an astrology theme series of dates, creating a fake biography for each.

Of course, there is a lot of fakery, deliberate and otherwise, by her dates and other people.  But the reader can’t help notice that she pointlessly and recklessly deceives the innocent as well as the guilty.

Of course, the “one thing” that happens is a big piece of fakery, but I won’t spoil it or dignify it with a comment.

Sigh.

This is one of those stories that makes me once again say, “thank god I’m not in the dating pool anymore”.  I don’t know if this story is autobiographical or ethnographical, but if this is what life in the city is like, count me out.

As far as the “deeper theme”—whatever.  I don’t really understand her point.  All this fakery is surely not making people happy, or even rich.  So why do it?

If she’s trying to warn us away from the Internet, we don’t really need the warning.  We already know.  It’s not that much fun reading about it.

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1. Lauren Oyler, Fake Accounts, New York, Catapult, 2021.

 

Sunday Book Reviews