A hugely funny satire that effortlessly captures the confusion of privileged and educated twentysomethings in the Noughts.
Dwight Wilmerding is a 28-year-old tech support operator who’s equally uncertain about his career, his love life and his purpose — any purpose, that is, other than lying awake at night in his cubicle-like bedroom, reading philosophy and getting high with his roommates. Then he receives an invitation to visit a onetime prep-school crush in Ecuador and, simultaneously, the opportunity to try an experimental drug designed to cure people of indecisiveness. Kunkel, editor of the literary magazine n+1, writes in a patois of metaphysical theory and slangy dude-isms that captures the precise confusion of privileged and educated twentysomethings in the Noughts. Dwight’s journey from a disaffected but happy layabout into a more sincere, politically engaged and emotionally satisfied person is at once hilariously farcical and oddly convincing. In audiobook form, Patrick Frederic’s reading glides over Kunkel’s tangly, witty prose with perfect comic timing.