‘Century’ Baffling, But Still Captivating

“Turn of the Century” by Kurt Andersen (Random House, 659 pages, $24.95)

Any novel than can inspire an entire George Will attack column must have something going for it.

Will called it “the unthinking person’s guide to slothful snobbery,” and then grandly intoned that it is “symptomatic” of the Clinton era in its shallowness and amorality.

Kurt Andersen’s “Turn of the Century,” which follows a young urban professional couple through the eventful year 2000, has inspired much talk this summer, most of it far more admiring than Will’s diatribe. The New York Times said it “jacks you into the nerve center of media society and pins your eyelids open until you go nearly blind with overload.”

This scathing satirical novel is neither that good (that is good, right?) nor that bad. Andersen, former editor of Spy and New York magazines, is an expert at observing America’s odd and frantic media society. The book frequently outdoes Tom Wolfe in the sharpness and scope of its social satire.

Yet the book also has one of the weaknesses of a first novel: It rambles in various fascinating directions, yet willfully avoids committing itself to a plot. This can be especially frustrating in a book of this length.

Yet I found Andersen’s book to be surprisingly compelling reading, even during those long passages in which the plot seems to be an afterthought. That’s because the world that Andersen creates, of America in the year 2000, is both painfully familiar and unspeakably bizarre.

Andersen has the satirist’s gift of showing us the bizarre within the familiar. Listen, for instance, to this passage in which Lizzie Zimbalist, software company president, is listening to a waiter in a Seattle restaurant:

“`… using heirloom grains, and we truck in our own batch every week, fresh, from our brewstillery over in Spokane.’

“She looks up at the greeter, and realizes that for at least half a minute he’s been reciting the names and provenances of obscure alcoholic beverages.

“`May I tell you about our specialty martinis and premium tequilas?’ he asks.

“`I’ll just have a club soda, thanks.’ She turns away to look at the bay.

“`I’ll bring you the Captain Bridger’s privatelabel brand. It’s really not half bad.”’

He then goes on to discuss the specials of the day, including “ragout of free-range north Oregon weasel.”

Sure, it’s exaggerated but not that much.

Andersen has been compared to Tom Wolfe, but the differences are important. Wolfe tries to capture every level of American society, from country club to prison, while Andersen’s book is obsessed with the affluent and educated New York-L.A.-Seattle media-and-money classes. Within those narrow confines, though, Andersen manages to cover huge tracts of territory, from the computer software world to the (surprisingly) fascinating world of a Wall Street hedge-fund manager, based loosely on writer and hedge-fund manager James Cramer.

Another difference is that Andersen’s satire is more savage and somehow colder than Wolfe’s.

Andersen’s view of American society is cynical bordering on the bitter. He takes every trend in 1999 America and he stretches it out to its logical and frightening extreme. For instance, he sees a world in which a man can sit at his computer and stalk his own (possibly) unfaithful wife, using those video-cam web pages that air 24-hour-a-day video of street corners and lobbies.

This cutting brand of satire makes many passages laugh-out-loud funny, such as the segment about a new Las Vegas hotel-casino with a Barbie doll theme. Other passages are so bleakly satirical they are not funny at all, only chilling.

The biggest difference between Wolfe and Andersen - and this is my most serious criticism of the book - is that Andersen appears cold toward even his main characters. Wolfe seems to truly empathize with his characters, even as he puts them into horrible situations. Andersen seems to be angrier with his characters, never allowing us to feel much sympathy for them.

Both George, the TV-journalist-turned-hack-producer, and his wife Lizzie, are stuck in their shallow, affluent lives. While Andersen does allow them to change into people who are marginally less shallow, the change is not convincing. I got the distinct impression that Andersen, to the end, believed that George and Lizzie are as shallow as the culture they wallow in.

This is what makes Will’s criticism so laughable. Will thinks that Andersen is celebrating these characters. In fact, Anderson seems to despise them, which may be worse.