Turn of the Century [Paperback]

Everyone will compare Kurt Andersen's scathingly funny first novel to Tom Wolfe's fictional debut, The Bonfire of the Vanities. Like Wolfe, Andersen is a merry terrorist, a status-attuned assassin with liquid nitrogen in his veins, a prose style with the cool purr of an Uzi, and the entire society in his crosshairs. And like the Man in White's protagonist, Sherman McCoy, Andersen's George Mactier is a master of the contemporary universe--not just Manhattan, but decadent post fin-de-siècle Hollywood, the globe-gobbling, infotainment-tainted news media, and cyberspace from Seattle to Silicon Valley to Silicon Alley.

Turn of the Century opens in February 2000, in a bizarre world with just a tangy twist of futuristic extrapolation. George has parlayed a Newsweek writing job into a PBS documentary into a $16,575-a-week job as a producer at the sinister MBC network. His series, NARCS, is a veritable Cuisinart of fact and fiction in which the actors get to participate in real drug busts and get all the best lines, since they're working from scripts. In the most notorious episode, the dealer they arrest turns out to be an Actors Equity member (thanks to Rent), so he gets union scale and a recurring role.

As George stumbles into a Wolfesque calamity spiral, his wife, Lizzie Zimbalist, ascends to power. Lizzie is a brilliant software entrepreneur: her "force-feedback technology" alternative-history game can sense players' fear. "If you travel to 1792 Paris, for instance, you are designated a besotted peasant or a frightened aristocrat or an angry sansculotte according to your heart rate, blood pressure, and skin conductance; too many twitches, the wrong sort of palpitation, and you're a marquess (or marchioness) headed for the guillotine". Needless to say, her insights into the year 2000 earn her bigtime interest from George's boss and Microsoft. Lizzie is a character at least as vivid as George, and their hectic family life is uncloying and acutely observed.

Andersen's plot (involving Bill Gates's potential death) has more hairy turns than the Alps--read carefully or you'll go off the road. But you're guaranteed a wild ride with amazing characters: an irreverent investor inspired by James Cramer, a hilarious MBC toady, Timothy Featherstone--who's as marvellous a creation as Tony Curtis in The Sweet Smell of Success--and worlds' worth of social caricatures. Kurt Andersen has an uncanny ear for the way we talk now and Turn of the Century is sharp, knowing and subversive. Let's all pray that it isn't prescient as well. --Tim Appelo --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

PLAYBOY: 'An astute and irreverent observer of modern culture...Andersen's narrative is a hyperkinetic reportage that leaves no detail unnoted. Andersen knows his stuff - corporate takeovers, computer hackers, the stock market, media ratings, unthinkable menu items at fusion restaurants...' BOOKLIST: 'The dilemmas, personal and professional, that George and Lizzie confront and cope with - and which threaten to overwhelm them - during the course of the year all reflect, in big, bold ways, how most of us lead our lives these days: at the mercy of too much technology, too much information, too much time spent on meaningless tasks... Andersen has certainly caught the dreambeat of our times' PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY: 'A blockbuster fiction debut...brilliantly conceived, keenly incisive...mischievoutsly tweaks current attitudes regarding marriage, friendship, the mass media, Wall Street and the computer industry, just to name a handful of his numerous targets. With ferocious energy he also captures the essence of New York, Las Vegas, LA and Seattle... The convoluted plot boldly defies summary but it ultimately achieves a mad convergence highlighted by an intricate, hilarious plan to virtually kill Bill Gates. Andersen employs a bitingly topical humour that is always exaggerated, yet seldom actually seems inconceivable...Andersen brilliantly sustains the comic page throughout the lengthy narrative' KIRKUS REVIEWS: 'If you're not computer-literate you may miss some of the jokes but will nevertheless enjoy this gargantuan Tom Wolfeian satire on millennial hucksterism...neither Al Gore and Bill Gates will approve. The rest of us will be, as they say, richly entertained' NEW YORK TIMES (Po Bronson) 'He's managed to write a book portraying our fragmented lives that is not in itself fragmented. In other words, he's shown that the novel is flexible enough to encompass the chattering of its electronic cousins, and, in the end, to hush them... The limitation of a Zeitgeist novel is that an accurate portrait of today can quickly feel dated...yet he's [Andersen] infused it with so much inventive imagination that it transcends all that. This book's vision of next year will last a good five to seven years... At one point I didn't want the novel ever to end...' TIME MAGAZINE 'In Andersen's take on Tomorrowland, nearly every page is alive with wit, observation and sparks of inspired nastiness... It's a joy to watch him work, richocheting off everything putrid and tinny in our culture... Whatever you call the thing after post-modern, TURN OF THE CENTURY is it...it sure is fun to read' WALL ST JOURNAL: Can a book destined for every beach blanket and nightstand in the Hamptons really be any good? Can a novel that refers to Prada, Ferragamo and Manolo Blahnik be admitted (without at least a period of quarantine) into the nation of literature? And can anyone really have the temerity to believe that American culture at the turn of the century isn't beyond parody? The answer to all these questions appears to be yes, judging by the evidence of Kurt Andersen's elegant and relentless ficitonal sendup of the way we live now. The plot defies easy synopsis (there's a reason this novel is 659 pages long) but revolves around a delicious conceit... It's a savagely subversive notion...Mere synopsis doesn't begin to convey the pleasures of this smart, funny and excrutiatingly deft portrait of our age. The overwhelming wackiness of public life in this country would seem to render satire gratuitous, yet a few novelists remain unintimidated. Tom Wolfe, Martin Amis and Scott Spencer, to name just three, have cut our media-besotted social fabric to ribbons in their fiction, and now Mr Andersen has stepped up to shred the whole mess into a find, powdery dust. (TURN OF THE CENTURY invites comparision to BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES but Mr Andersen writes with more finesse.) ...offers a throughly affecting portrait of a marriage... I would be hard-pressed to name a novel that doPLAYBOY: 'An astute and irreverent observer of modern culture...Andersen's narrative is a hyperkinetic reportage that leaves no detail unnoted. Andersen knows his stuff - corporate takeovers, computer hackers, the stock market, media ratings, unthinkable menu items at fusion restaurants...' BOOKLIST: 'The dilemmas, personal and professional, that George and Lizzie confront and cope with - and which threaten to overwhelm them - during the course of the year all reflect, in big, bold ways, how most of us lead our lives these days: at the mercy of too much technology, too much information, too much time spent on meaningless tasks... Andersen has certainly caught the dreambeat of our times' PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY: 'A blockbuster fiction debut...brilliantly conceived, keenly incisive...mischievoutsly tweaks current attitudes regarding marriage, friendship, the mass media, Wall Street and the computer industry, just to name a handful of his numerous targets. With ferocious energy he also captures the essence of New York, Las Vegas, LA and Seattle... The convoluted plot boldly defies summary but it ultimately achieves a mad convergence highlighted by an intricate, hilarious plan to virtually kill Bill Gates. Andersen employs a bitingly topical humour that is always exaggerated, yet seldom actually seems inconceivable...Andersen brilliantly sustains the comic page throughout the lengthy narrative' KIRKUS REVIEWS: 'If you're not computer-literate you may miss some of the jokes but will nevertheless enjoy this gargantuan Tom Wolfeian satire on millennial hucksterism...neither Al Gore and Bill Gates will approve. The rest of us will be, as they say, richly entertained' NEW YORK TIMES (Po Bronson) 'He's managed to write a book portraying our fragmented lives that is not in itself fragmented. In other words, he's shown that the novel is flexible enough to encompass the chattering of its electronic cousins, and, in the end, to hush them... The limitation of a Zeitgeist novel is that an accurate portrait of today can quickly feel dated...yet he's [Andersen] infused it with so much inventive imagination that it transcends all that. This book's vision of next year will last a good five to seven years... At one point I didn't want the novel ever to end...' TIME MAGAZINE 'In Andersen's take on Tomorrowland, nearly every page is alive with wit, observation and sparks of inspired nastiness... It's a joy to watch him work, richocheting off everything putrid and tinny in our culture... Whatever you call the thing after post-modern, TURN OF THE CENTURY is it...it sure is fun to read' WALL ST JOURNAL: Can a book destined for every beach blanket and nightstand in the Hamptons really be any good? 'An astute and irreverent observer of modern culture...Andersen's narrative is a hyperkinetic reportage that leaves no detail unnoted. Andersen knows his stuff - corporate takeovers, computer hackers, the stock market, media ratings, unthinkable menu items at fusion restaurants...' -- PLAYBOY 'The dilemmas, personal and professional, that George and Lizzie confront and cope with - and which threaten to overwhelm them - during the course of the year all reflect, in big, bold ways, how most of us lead our lives these days: at the mercy of too much technology, too much information, too much time spent on meaningless tasks... Andersen has certainly caught the dreambeat of our times' -- BOOKLIST 'A blockbuster fiction debut...brilliantly conceived, keenly incisive...mischievoutsly tweaks current attitudes regarding marriage, friendship, the mass media, Wall Street and the computer industry, just to name a handful of his numerous targets. With ferocious energy he also captures the essence of New York, Las Vegas, LA and Seattle... The convoluted plot boldly defies summary but it ultimately achieves a mad convergence highlighted by an intricate, hilarious plan to virtually kill Bill Gates. Andersen employs a bitingly topical humour that is always exaggerated, yet seldom actually seems inconceivable...Andersen brilliantly sustains the comic page throughout the lengthy narrative' -- PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY 'If you're not computer-literate you may miss some of the jokes but will nevertheless enjoy this gargantuan Tom Wolfeian satire on millennial hucksterism...neither Al Gore and Bill Gates will approve. The rest of us will be, as they say, richly entertained' -- KIRKUS REVIEWS 'He's managed to write a book portraying our fragmented lives that is not in itself fragmented. In other words, he's shown that the novel is flexible enough to encompass the chattering of its electronic cousins, and, in the end, to hush them... The limitation of a Zeitgeist novel is that an accurate portrait of today can quickly feel dated...yet he's [Andersen] infused it with so much inventive imagination that it transcends all that. This book's vision of next year will last a good five to seven years... At one point I didn't want the novel ever to end...' -- NEW YORK TIMES (Po Bronson) 'In Andersen's take on Tomorrowland, nearly every page is alive with wit, observation and sparks of inspired nastiness... It's a joy to watch him work, richocheting off everything putrid and tinny in our culture... Whatever you call the thing after post-modern, TURN OF THE CENTURY is it...it sure is fun to read' -- TIME MAGAZINE 'the verbal cleverness of this book will surely become a reference point for unborn historians of the fin de siecle' -- TELEGRAPH 'Extraordinary... Nicholson Baker on additives...an exceptional book' -- Justin Cartwright, Independent on Sunday 'The great millennial read' -- Saturday Telegraph