The Candy House
I’ve thought a lot about Jennifer Egan’s The Candy House in light of news stories that have popped up this year. If you know Egan’s brilliant A Visit From the Goon Squad, you’ll catch on quickly with The Candy House and its thinly interwoven storylines and exploration of technology, socialization, and human behavior/motivation. Whereas Goon Squad was very much about the music industry, The Candy House is more or less about the tech industry. Everything is subtle and clever and pretty much mind-blowing with her work, and what The Candy House spends a lot of time focusing on is authenticity and memory. (Just some ✨light topics.✨) How does one display “authenticity”? How do you even know if you ARE “authentic”? Oh, and by the way, are our memories “authentic”? Egan peppers the novel with all these questions in very sly and almost imperceptible ways — except for one small section where we meet Alfred, a young boy who reacts “allergically” to the fakeness of TV and then becomes an adult who so craves “authenticity” that he regularly screams in public because he’d rather “put up with negative attention in exchange for something that matters more.” (If you’ve read The Candy House, do you agree that this section — which includes a young Alfred’s experiment with donning a paper bag over his head during holiday meals — is somewhat relatable while also lol funny?)
But, right, “authenticity”: Not to get too “Wag the Dog” here (remember that movie?), but are our politicians “authentic”? Are the hot takes of current issues “authentic”? How do you ground yourself in reality when you see news items like the one here that use “fake reality” to sell a product designed to kill?
Is it all an artifice? It’s easy to think so…but let’s not. (My favorite follow for rational, grounded-in-reality, fact-based explanations and action-oriented steps is @sharonsaysso. She’s all about the IG stories, btw, although I’m guessing she’s taking a quick break because whenever there is something newsworthy, she is ON IT.)
“But knowing everything is too much like knowing nothing; without a story, it’s all just information.” – The Candy House
originally published on instagram