About Station Eleven and Manipulation (The Novel)

Post 1878:

You ever feel like you’re being manipulated? I feel it all the time. Recently a woman told me I looked like I was in my twenties. Being thirty-one, this felt nice. But you know what? She just wanted to butter me up so I’d put a good word in for a friend. Foiled again!

This didn’t happen. I'm actually thirty-two.

Let’s get serious, though. The whole world is trying to manipulate your butt. Ads, bots, advice, friends, enemies, podcasts, presidents—they’re all messing with your brain.

This could be good or bad. But it’s not essentially honest.

And that’s what I like about fiction. Things that never happened are where we can find a lot of truth. Give me a story and I’ll read it—there's something honest about that. Pure to the core, to the heart of who we are. Yeah, I’m romanticizing a bit. What do you expect from an assiduous producer of make-believe?

I recently read the successful and lauded novel Station Eleven. I think it’s good, but why? Well, the writing is adept and it’s not very long. It’s post-apocalyptic while being more character than plot. Oh, and there are intersecting storylines and flashbacks that reveal… revelations…

It’s professional work, no doubt. But I didn’t like anybody in the story. I wasn’t rooting for anyone. I get that all these characters are linked by a moments before the end of the world, but so what? It’s good character work because it makes me feel like should feel something.

This looks like a novel that ticked all the boxes and got all the women writers in the writer’s group excited. After all, it’s an artist’s view of the apocalypse. Like most artists, this novel lacks heart, focusing on how to present and not on what’s being presented.

Give me a crappy book with soul, any day. But then, what do I know? I was the only guy in the writer’s group. Cheers and see you after.