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theMystery.doc - Hardcover

McIntosh, Matthew

 
9780802124913: theMystery.doc
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0802124917 ISBN 13: 9780802124913
Verlag: Grove Press, 2017

Inhaltsangabe

With praise from Alan Moore and Rachel Kushner, a groundbreaking novel told in an exciting new form, mixing fiction, memoir, prose poetry, and textual art, exploring birth, death, the Internet, and the writing life as they play out in contemporary America and telling the story of a man who wakes up one morning not knowing who he is

Funny, highly inventive, and deeply moving, theMystery.doc is a vast, shapeshifting literary novel that reads like a page-turner. It’s a comedy, a tragedy, a big book about America. It’s unlike anything you’ve read before.

Rooted in the western United States in the decade post-9/11, the book follows a young writer and his wife as he attempts to write the follow-up to his first novel, searching for a form that will express the world as it has become, even as it continually shifts all around him. Pop-up ads, search results, web chats, snippets of conversation, lines of code, and film and television stills mix with alchemical manuscripts, classical works of literature―and the story of a man who wakes up one morning without any memory of who he is, his only clue a single blank document on his computer called themystery.doc. From text messages to The Divine Comedy, first love to artificial intelligence, the book explores what makes us human―the stories we tell, the memories we hold on to, the memories we lose―and the relationships that give our lives meaning.

Part love story, part memoir, part documentary, part existential whodunit, theMystery.doc is a modern epic about the quest to find something lasting in a world where everything―and everyone―is in danger of slipping away.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Matthew McIntosh is the author of the Los Angeles Times bestseller Well. He lives with his wife on the West Coast.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

It was one of those plots where you wake up and you don’t know who you are. You feel like you’ve been through the mill. Your head aches. Your ribs ache. Your arms ache. Your hands, your fingers. Everything aches. You know you did something―or somebody did something to you―but what that was now completely escapes you. You’re awake. And it’s like you’re still coming out of a dream. And you wait a little while for the facts of the matter to settle in your mind. Who, what, where, when, why… You know, like everyone knows, that coming out of a dream can be a confusing time. Sometimes it takes a while for the dream to split off and fade away. You’re in a familiar room but you don’t recognize anything. The bed seems like it’s your own but you think it’s someone else’s. Or you think you’re somewhere other than you are. That’s all perfectly normal. A transition from one state to another. Well, this dream splits, it breaks off, it fades, but nothing takes its place. Just the ache. And a girl at the closet stepping into a skirt, saying:

“I’m super late, so I’m gonna drive, OK?”

I couldn’t see her well. She was just a blur. I groped around the bedside table for a pair of glasses that weren’t there.

So I lay back, watching the blurry form as it dressed. Tall girl, short stylish hair, platinum blonde, a good figure―that’s about all I could tell. A small room. Modest. Curtains closed. A sound like an airplane going over.

She zipped up her skirt in the back.

“How are you feeling?” she said.

“Sore.”

“I bet. Too much time on that ladder.”

She left the room. The old hardwood creaked beneath her feet. I heard her voice from the other room.

“I had to change my number, remember? New one’s on the counter.” She came back in. “OK?”

“OK.”

She sat down on the bed. Dark blurry face. Her light hair like a corona.

“Why don’t you take a break from scraping. You’ve still got a month of summer. Take the day off. Why don’t you go back to your book? Do some writing. You get so grumpy when you’re not working on it.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Maybe tonight I can read some more.” She leaned forward and kissed me.

Pretty face. Almond-shaped eyes.

“Your glasses are in the bathroom. I borrowed them, sorry. There’s coffee in the kitchen. And a smoothie in the fridge.”

“OK.”

“You all right, babe? You look kind of dazed.”

“Yeah, fine.”

Instinctively a person knows that if he wakes up in a strange place with a strange woman calling him babe he should just go along with things and pretend he’s in control of the situation, that everything’s fine. Things go wrong quickly when you share information with strangers who say they’re your friends.

“Did you hear the cat this morning?” she asked.

“No.”

“It was howling something terrible. It sounded like it was in our back yard. Probably that fat orange one I always hiss at. I’m surprised you didn’t hear it. It was pretty horrible. Sounded like it was being eaten by wolves. I hope it was. Well, I wish I could stay,” she said, rising from the bed. “Remember when we first moved here we used to stay in bed all morning?” She sighed. “I miss those days.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

“I’m really sorry about last night. I think I must have been enchanted or something.”

“Yeah?”

“Give me another chance tonight? All right?”

“Sure.”

“Call me if you need anything. Don’t call the old number, though. Remember, call the new one.”

The door closed. I heard her run down some steps and another door slammed shut.

The car started up and backed down a long driveway.

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Verlag
Grove Press
Erscheinungsdatum
2017
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0802124917
ISBN 13 
9780802124913
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
1664
Kontakt zum Hersteller
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Verantwortliche Person
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