Cupertino - Matt Szymanowski

Generation now

From Bret Easton Ellis to Donna Tartt's Goldfinch, is there a movement in recent literature that is warning us of a new "lost generation"? Is this something we should be worried about, or is it something that has always been there, and part of the generational divide? From Salinger's Holden Caulfield - but probably even before then - the change to the modern world has undoubtedly caused emotional problems for lost youths looking for love and stability in their lives. If seen in that respect, Matt Szymanowski's Cupertino is probably nothing new, but there is a growing sense from this latest account that the modern lifestyle is indeed generating an increasingly dysfunctional society.

In Cupertino we are introduced to another young man who isn't exactly an orphan, but might as well be. Stevo and his friends are all about good times, enjoying life to the max - parties, girls, drink, drugs, porn and sometimes running into trouble with the authorities and rival youths. Something however just isn't right. Stevo is fully plugged into the world, but is unable to grasp hold of it or make sense of it all. The simplicity of childhood is gone and life still hasn't taken on a new meaning. Stevo seems to be unable to control his destiny or has perhaps abdicated any responsibility for it, but what's to control when every freedom is there for the taking?

Or perhaps Stevo's lifestyle is just taking its toll. The narrative and writing of Cupertino corresponds to this disintegration of any kind of semblance of form or passage of time. Like The Goldfinch, it captures the same sense of inability to find meaning in a modern society where relationships are not valued or are impossible to form in any meaningful sense. Stylistically however, it's about as far away from Donna Tartt as you can get, feeling more authentically of the generation the author is writing about. Instead of an old Dutch Master painting, there's a blank advertisement with the words 'YOU ARE HERE' that haunts Stevo's imagination, but where is here, and how did he get there?

There are a few clues scattered around in Stevo's relationship with his parents, a few stories about his missing brother Roman, but Stevo's psychiatrist isn't going to make anything of it and it's left open to the reader to determine their significance. As the story takes an increasingly sinister turn however - with some very graphic sex scenes and considerable drug consumption - all of it clearly points to a life going off the rails, or one that has perhaps already gone off them and is grasping around for something to hold onto to find a way back. The conclusion offers the possibility for some redemption in this respect, but if the final scene is a little more conventional than what comes before, not quite having the nihilistic edge of Bret Easton Ellis, it does feel authentic and still leaves options open.

The freeflowing style of the narrative and the matter-of-factness of Matt Szymanowski's writing elsewhere give Cupertino something of a surreal edge at times, showing us a world that comes close to or even surpass J.G. Ballard's premonitions of a terminally corrupt and morally uninhibited society where everyone can indulge their most perverse desires. Some references are made in passing to American society, to Bush politics and international perspectives, but it's background noise and there's nothing here that helps ground Stevo in the 'real world'. There's no moralising however in Szymanowski story, no premonitory outlook, no guarantee of redemption. This is how it is, this is now, YOU ARE HERE.