exhaustedI first heard about this novel from a Booktuber back in February 2018 Mark Nash. In Nash's video he mentioned he had read a novel by Kobek titled 'I Hate the Internet'. I have not read 'I Hate the Internet' but do know that characters in this novel reappear in 'The Future Won't Be Long'. From what I have read on the internet about this novel 'The Future Won't Be Long' was written before Kobek wrote 'I Hate The Internet'. It seems when Kobek's novel 'I Hate the Internet' became popular he decided to publish 'The Future Won't Be Long' cash in while the money is good. One sees writers publishing earlier material after one of their books gets popular.
What I want to focus on is how Kobek paints the world in his novel 'The Future Won't Be Long'. The novel was first described to me as setting forth the New York City Club scene in the 1980's. I have an interest in the history of New York City, that is one of the reasons I decided to read the novel.
As I got into this novel I noticed right away it was focused on gay sex, drugs, and night life in clubs/where anything goes/totally decadent life style. At first in reading this novel I thought the writer Kobek was just describing the decadent life of pimps, whores, drag queens, homosexuals, homeless people, drug addicts just to show his readers his approval of this world. But the more I got into this novel I became to see Kobek was seeking to show us the readers that the world has become totally rotten. I think Kobek sees himself as a nihilist/there is a line in the novel on page 210 that I see as a key that opens the meaning of/purpose of this novel "As if there'd been a unspoken group decision that the future could be confronted only through a descent into the banality of petite nihilism. I was far more comfortable with grandiose nihilism. After all, I knew Micharl Alig" pg. 210
The basic meaning of Nihilism is "general rejection of usual beliefs in morality, religion etc. . .
In the novel 'The Future Won't Be Long' Kobek sets forth a world/lives where nihilism is embrace. That is why the characters in this novel live inside computers/flee any kind of normal relationships/take drugs become drug addicts/live in the cesspool of life/there is nothing to live for but the moment. And it is better live each moment stoned out of your mind or just fleeing one person for another person/lover/machine or fleeing from one place to another place/no place is home/in Kobek's world all families are dysfunctional. The novel opens with this sentence "I moved to New York not long after my mother killed my father, or was it my father who murdered my mother? Anyhoo, in a red haze of blood and broken bone, one did in the other" pg. 1
The novel has many scenes of decadence (moral or culture deterioration/decadent behavior; a state of decadence). I could read from the novel many scenes of utter decadence but I will chose just one description that to me sets forth Kobek's view of America/Reality as a nihilist pages 246-248
Today I read some more of the novel 'The Future Won't Be Long' and came across this sentence " Most reviewers situated Trapped within a trend of new literary works encompassing the outward aesthetics of genre fiction. Comparisons included Robert Coover, Thomas Pynchon, and Don DeLillo. A sizable minority rejected this review, believing it closer to the nihilit of Bret Easton Ellis. . ." pg. 263
My impression in reading 'The Future Won't Be Long' is that the writer is just shoving our face into filth and laughing all the way to the bank. I think Kobek sees his novel to be a display of pure nihilism/these are the last pages I read today from this novel page 272-274