This book may win this year’s (2021) Booker Prize and…No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood https://thebookerprizes.com/the-final-six-novels Nine out of 10

 This book may win this year’s (2021) Booker Prize and…No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood

https://thebookerprizes.com/the-final-six-novels

Nine out of 10

 

 

Facebook seems to be ‘hiding’ behind the name portal, used by Patricia Lockwood to indicate the ‘place’ where her main character (and so many others) spends time, shares information (and as we find out more- disinformation), where humans ‘socialize’ in this age, where encounters are mostly, or exclusively virtual…

 

The Social Network (which has a memorable film based on the first chapter of its now world dominating story http://realini.blogspot.com/2017/07/note-on-social-network-written-by-aaron.html ) may be in more trouble now that a whistleblower has come forward and talked about its evil essence.

They have done research inside the company (sorry, mega complex) which shows how toxic it can be for teenagers, while they have been concocting a plan to launch a new platform for…kids, and they know that many girls have their issues made worse on the ‘Portal’…at the same time, democracy suffers…

 

Trump is referred to as ‘the Dictator’ in No One Is Talking About This and there are a few amusing segments (in one, the author says that the problem is the dictator is very funny) though some are made hilarious by the idiocy of the man himself, such as when he looked straight into the eclipse, and the commentary has him proving something, albeit I forgot what, perhaps that in this age, the dictator is beyond suffering the effects…

The portal is in part responsible for the election of the Dictator, seeing as the Russians (and there is a hint at least at the cold war and Russians, as indeed, No One is Talking About This takes the challenge and Talks About This and Almost Everything Else) have bought ads on Facebook and interfered in the American elections…

 

The former executive of the Portal (let us alternate between the real name of Evil and the one given by the author, who is so perplexed, intimate, affected, involved with this platform) that has testified in congress speaks about the pernicious effects, the fact that negative and often false posts attract anger, and that is more engaging than positive, serene remarks and the Social Network is making money from disaster

Maybe over one billion people (sorry again, surely a few billion) get fake news from the Portal and then engage in murder (making the innocent looking, but so pernicious Zuckerberg such a Machiavellian, malicious figure) and we have seen the calamity of January 6, which was made possible by social networks, the sharing of conspiracy theories, Qanon, the Big lie and the absurd belief that the Very Stable Genius has won an election lost by five million votes (or was it a few more) and he is still ‘The President’

 

One other disturbing, immense calamity (though a personal one) is the pain and destruction caused by the Proteus Syndrome that affects the baby of the main character’s sister (and it seems from acknowledgements that this based on real experiences and the life of the author, who thanks her sister and brother in law, medical personnel and nurses for the inspiration and permission to put into the book the drama that we can read about)

Many of the images are disturbing (so in jest, let us include the familiar ‘warning, some of the descriptions you are about to consume can be damaging to your health…in jocular tone, because it is ‘a truth universally acknowledged’ that you are not here…if you have read one or a few lines, then you stopped after that…if you did not, take part in our survey and write the a message with the code ‘can a dog be twins’)

 

Incidentally, the last is the strange post that gains popularity for the main character, who writes it on…The Portal, where else…The Social Network being the arena where weirdoes and bizarre ‘shared moods, photos, dictions, wishes are exposed’…’Chihuahua perched on a man's erection…Hating capitalism…Girl oil herself up, get into the pot and pretend cannibals were going to eat her…Sexually’ OMG

The woman has a cat called…Dr. Butthole and she has what used to seem like outré, strange behavior, only at this stage, what is awkward and what mainstream – this reminds me a film I have seen recently, Mia Misses Her Revenge http://realini.blogspot.com/2021/10/13-or-maybe-18-out-of-20-for-mia-isi.html wherein they talk just about like the famous Mr. Pink, Mr. Orange and the other fellows in Reservoir Dogs, with fuck, shit, cocksucker and pussy dropping on the audience in abundance…well, there is a dose of hyperbole used by yours truly, but still it feels such an avalanche for old fashioned folks

 

Actually, to say one is old fashioned is admission of severe guilt and reason for banishment and ‘surghiun’ in an époque where to have standards that are different from those of the Cancel and Woke generation means you are a chauvinist pig *and maybe I am – ‘centuries of divergence entered her in the form of a human tongue…Nonbinary students…Evidence that it was the portal that had allowed the dictator to rise to power...like Napoleon was exclusively operating on the advice of a Parrot named Brian’

A few quotes have been inserted, without respecting their order, but this is just one of the main points here, for the book is written as a series of mini essays, or would they be flash essays, like flash poems, and most are amusing, while at the same time ridiculous (some), disturbing (three droplets are jizz in the portal apparently and I did not know) the reference to the famous Milgram experiment http://realini.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-damned-written-by-nicola-badalucco.html

Here are some notes made by the undersigned, while reading, to end with ‘Ambassador to Finland appointed by the dictator has chess figures from Dante, plus Hitler and Reagan…

Protesters at Nazi rally and woman killed…

California always on fire now…

Future grandchild...so you were all calling each other bitch and it was funny and the all calling each other binch and it was even funnier...how can you explain that

Old sense of humor vs new...the funniest thing now was an ad for a product that could not exist...how to laugh when the thought of a product that could not exist made us so unhappy

Sperm it up my hole

Got high and Gatsby dead in the pool

68 in attic - incest commercial

Merry Christmas like a challenge do you accept Herr Santa as the all-powerful leader of the new white ethnostate

Nineties the heyday of plaid and heroin

2000s heyday of thongs and cocaine...everything got Chihuahua

We saw the whole world's waxed pussy getting out of a car Britney

Paris Hilton sex tape

Argument with husband over seducing the dictator to bring him down’