Same Same
A Novel
(Sprache: Englisch)
In the shifting sands of the desert, near an unnamed metropolis, there is an institute where various fellows come to undertake projects of great significance. But when our sort-of hero, Percy Frobisher, arrives, surrounded by the simulated environment of...
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In the shifting sands of the desert, near an unnamed metropolis, there is an institute where various fellows come to undertake projects of great significance. But when our sort-of hero, Percy Frobisher, arrives, surrounded by the simulated environment of the glass-enclosed dome of the Institute, his mind goes completely blank. When he spills something on his uniform a major faux pas he learns about a mysterious shop where you can take something, utter the command same same, and receive a replica even better than the original. Imagining a world in which simulacra have as much value as the real so much so that any distinction between the two vanishes, and even language seeks to reproduce meaning through ever more degraded copies of itself Peter Mendelsund has crafted a deeply unsettling novel about what it means to exist and to create . . . and a future that may not be far off.
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1I was unaware, at first, that I had entered the Institute.
Sure, the dome appeared, briefly, far off in the desert. A bright semicircle, a second sun, perched upon the wavy horizon. I thought it was a business park or the reflective apron of one of the Freehold s honeycombed luxury developments. A stadium? One of those steroidal mega-mosques one reads about in the literature, perhaps. Something. It drifted along for a spell, during that endless drive out, along the rightmost edge of my vision, no matter how many times the car merged onto new roads. I could see it even through the double tint of my sunglasses and the vehicle s windows. The dome, known only as a flare. Other than that, there were the dunes of course dune by dune stuccoed to the sky behind. And these gray superhighways, colonized by sand along their shoulders, giving them lightly ragged edges like monumental pencil marks.
But nothing else, really.
Besides that distant dome. Which was there. Until it wasn t.
It vanished. Could it have been a mirage a trick of the light? Idk.
But: no. No, I can see it again.
Oh, I see the dome, all right. Only I see it, now, from the inside; from underneath, I mean. I didn t notice a security checkpoint, so it will have been unmanned. There were no barriers to raise or lower; no fanfare, no ceremony. I was in the desert, outside of the Institute, and now I am within it. And the Institute is all about me. This uncanny oasis in the middle of a scorch-plain. And atop it all, the great upturned bowl of its metastructure.
The desert and with it, my old life now gone.
Poof.
And so the car hums along, through this entirely new, artificial ecosystem, past the tall palms which line both sides of the straight, clean avenue, casting their tarantula shadows. Off to the sides, parklands, lawns, copses, nature trails, etc. (How many gardeners must be employed here? No sign of them, though; nor of any of the Institute fellows.) The stubble of a few
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communications spars; small electrical substations; glints from far-off solar panels amid the greenery; what looks like a desalination unit; and now an enormous, brightly blue, artificial lake. Farther off, the buildings themselves. The campus.
The car scrunches onto an access road, and I can see that I am approaching an immense set of concrete-and-glass slabs one of the first Western-style constructions in the Freehold, and the work of an influential architectural collective. The car slows, then stops in the building s shadow, and I debark. Mine is the only vehicle in the lot, and I have that persistent, unsettling feeling of being marooned in a city of one. The quiet air of a town after a massacre. I wonder where all the other Institute fellows are, but remember the time of day, and recall that at this hour they all must be hard at work on their projects, at their workstations, and in their studios, their laboratories, so on. Exhilarating to imagine to imagine that I might belong to their number. Also exhilarating to discover that it is wonderfully cool out, under the dome. The work of the metastructure s air circulators. I stretch limbs, breathe in deeply, which reaps the strangest, almost autumnally crisp air. Air with a unique but unlocatable aftertaste something citric, and rubbing alcohol. A chemical terroir.
Exhale.
Craning, I still can t see a soul.
I reach for my device again, whisper it awake, and it produces a sigh, and begins to faintly pulse. Pull up a map, pinch outward, fix Miss Fairfax s position inside. And so I follow an animated arrow guiding me toward the building s main doors, which obligingly swish open, and then I enter, meander through a maze of empty hallways, branching like bronchioles in a lung, past the empty lounge areas, the empty galleries, until I arrive in a bright atriu
The car scrunches onto an access road, and I can see that I am approaching an immense set of concrete-and-glass slabs one of the first Western-style constructions in the Freehold, and the work of an influential architectural collective. The car slows, then stops in the building s shadow, and I debark. Mine is the only vehicle in the lot, and I have that persistent, unsettling feeling of being marooned in a city of one. The quiet air of a town after a massacre. I wonder where all the other Institute fellows are, but remember the time of day, and recall that at this hour they all must be hard at work on their projects, at their workstations, and in their studios, their laboratories, so on. Exhilarating to imagine to imagine that I might belong to their number. Also exhilarating to discover that it is wonderfully cool out, under the dome. The work of the metastructure s air circulators. I stretch limbs, breathe in deeply, which reaps the strangest, almost autumnally crisp air. Air with a unique but unlocatable aftertaste something citric, and rubbing alcohol. A chemical terroir.
Exhale.
Craning, I still can t see a soul.
I reach for my device again, whisper it awake, and it produces a sigh, and begins to faintly pulse. Pull up a map, pinch outward, fix Miss Fairfax s position inside. And so I follow an animated arrow guiding me toward the building s main doors, which obligingly swish open, and then I enter, meander through a maze of empty hallways, branching like bronchioles in a lung, past the empty lounge areas, the empty galleries, until I arrive in a bright atriu
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Autoren-Porträt von Peter Mendelsund
Peter Mendelsund is a designer and writer. He lives in Manhattan with his wife and two daughters.
Bibliographische Angaben
- Autor: Peter Mendelsund
- 2019, 496 Seiten, Masse: 13,6 x 20,3 cm, Kartoniert (TB), Englisch
- Verlag: VINTAGE
- ISBN-10: 0525435883
- ISBN-13: 9780525435884
- Erscheinungsdatum: 22.01.2019
Sprache:
Englisch
Pressezitat
Same Same reaches literary heights. . . . Mendelsund s first novel manages to be breezy and profound in equal measure. That balance is as the programmers say a feature and not a bug. . . . In using nonsensical jargon to expose the hollow core of the global Big Ideas industry, Mendelsund has produced or perhaps reproduced something entirely satisfying. Same Same is a substantial book about emptiness. It reminds us that there s no here here unless we create it ourselves. . . . [And it includes] one of the most perfectly tuned passages of fiction I ve read in a very long time. Andrew Ervin, The New York Times Book ReviewA deeply inventive and wonderfully strange novel that takes dead aim at the question: does it matter if something's real? Jenny Offill, author of Dept. of Speculation
[Mendelsund] has a grand time serving up what would seem to be an extended metaphor for creativity . . . that would do Brian Eno proud. Mendelsund's novel of ideas makes a neat bookend to Richard Powers's Galatea 2.2 as a study of creation in the age of the smart machine. Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Most books aspire to imitate life; this one succeeds in imitating literature. A fractal abyss of copies copying copies, this brilliant and hilarious full-size replica of a novel exposes the limits of conventional narratives by miraculously transmuting repetition into difference and, ultimately, something unique. Hernán Diaz, author of In the Distance
Rewarding. . . . Absurdist, uncanny metafiction about the nature of identity, individuality, and authorship in an era of rapid technological advancement. . . . Comically disturbing. Publishers Weekly
Like an ever-shifting Rubik s Cube, Mendelsund s narrative blends influences and genres at will: it begins as an sf dystopia, unfurls like a mystery, and includes some deeply insular sections reminiscent of the late David Markson. . . . Mendelsund has created a dense, complex, and rewarding novel that
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explores the ever-hazier distinctions between copying and creating, between ourselves and our ubiquitous devices, and between what is real and what is simulated. Booklist
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