You know, I don't even really like Hari Kunzru. But his story in this week's New Yorker is kind of brilliant. Let me qualify that: It isn't "luminous" and it isn't "prescient," and it doesn't even have a satisfying ending, but reading it definitely made me queasy (ala this classic column from Underminer Mike Albo*). Anyway, a quick taste of "Raj, Bohemian":
I was a ghost, floating through a world of moving signage, people carrying shopping bags, immigrants handing out flyers for bars and language schools. I went into a department store, dazzled by chrome and glass and brushed steel. It was a palace of mirrors, zombie heaven. Girls at the makeup counter, dressed like slutty pharmacists. Rich men with ski tans fingering cashmere sweaters. In the housewares department was a display cabinet of knives, gleaming with surgical allure. I bought the largest and headed back up the escalator to the teeming street.
*Mike Albo also once observed that "adulthood basically involves complex and enervating tasks like Internet dating, shopping for jeans, trying to remember your 15 various log-on codes and passwords, and deciphering your Verizon bill." This is something I contemplate nearly every time I misremember a log-on code or password.
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