 Microserfs (1994)
As a novel about a particular place and time, Microserfs is exceptional at getting the details, the feel, of what life was like in the computer industry from roughly the spring of 1993 through the summer of 1995. During that time, I myself was still shitting my nappies and suckling at my momma's teat (ah, grad school).
Meanwhile, other nerds in other places were laying the foundation of the computer revolution, so that today, most of my time would be taken up by downloading useless freeware, scanning electronics circulars for gadgets I can't afford, buying all furniture with the purpose of containing or accessorizing my technology, planning new upgrades to my three computers so I can get more fonts faster, recycling the thousands of sheets of printed paper I produce in a month, providing tech support on my bosses' three Macs that I don't understand (Apple IIe, where have ye gone?), and stripping my mother-in-law's junky Home Shopping Network PC for spare parts and cash.
So yes, I have a slight bit of resentment at those nerds who made my life a living COBOL pit. But I'm also totally fascinated by what it's like to be an über-nerd, ever since I had to crash the nerd party at Gillian Dworsky's house in 8th grade because I wasn't smart enough to merit an invite.
And the nerds in Microserfs are indeed uber-nerds, spouting an endless stream of pop philosophy, technospeak, and circa-1993 cultural jargon in page after retro-printed non-electronic page. At a certain point, the novelty, clarity, freshness and purpose of all the talking began to meld into pointlessness, repetition, and showing off on the part of the author.
The story follows a group of pasty-faced Microsoft employees who follow their wealthy stock-holding friend to Silicon Valley to create a new software program based on Legos. So technically, they're only "Microserfs" for about 2 chapters, at which point the novel would more appropriately be called Coders of Silicon Valley or Programmers of the New Horizon, but neither of those would really sell, so Microserfs it is. But it's a bait and switch tactic, tantalizing one with the promise of an insider's view of Microsoft and maybe a subplot about a sexy Chinese spy out to steal Bill Gates' secrets and his heart … but it delivers a fringe view of the company, and an insider's view of a somewhat underwhelming start-up.
The main character, Daniel Underwood, journals the events of the book. He's a boring character, with nothing to say or do other than report. Things just happen to him, and he writes about it. Maybe "that's the way it was" in 1993, but that's not very interesting, is it? Main characters should generally have to fight Orcs or learn to use the Force. Otherwise, what's the point? Where's the challenge in living normal life if there isn't a giant cave troll around the next corner? Or a two-headed podrace announcer going, "That's gotta hurt!" Well?
I suppose I could forgive the failings of the Daniel character, and the endless blah-blah-blah, if anything happened in the novel of any purpose, or if the other characters were so insanely interesting that Daniel was forgotten. But pretty much everyone wanders around talking about the metatextual value of Scooby-Doo while shopping at Costco and Fry's. Which sounds, yes, a frightening LOT like my own life, only my observations are a lot wittier and often conclude in a joke about pooping.
On second thought, all of those conversations really are so very 1993, when the general population was finally catching on that, though it was no longer cool or exciting to watch low-quality entertainment and admit it without total embarrassment, one could pass of one's interest in Hello Kitty by acting and talking as if there was some hidden meaning within them to be unlocked, or by taking a semi-comic ironic stance about them. So yeah, it's probably dead-on that folks in their mid-20s and early-30s at that time in history would call their new drink concoction a "Tina Yothers" and think it's fucking brilliant and hysterical. Personally, I was well past the phase of saying "What you talkin' bout, Willis" with any enthusiasm, and was busily writing angry film reviews of Die Hard With a Vengeance. Interestingly (for me at least), last year I could often be heard saying, "That's what I'm talkin' bout," though that's already old, and ten years from now I may very well complete the conversation with something like, "Thanks for the chat, Willis."
When Coupland does attempt to inject drama or action into the story, it's often stilted and clichéd. For instance, one of their group comes out, another gets cancer, and another deals with the aftermath of bulimia. These aren't "real people," to whom none of that stuff ever actually happens (I mean, emotions … please), but concoctions of the "after-school special for the gifted class" variety. One dude even falls in love with someone from a chat room, without knowing their age or gender. Microserfs often felt like a best-of tour through the era (complete with a climactic trip to the Consumer Electronics Show), as opposed to a book set in that era with fleshed-out characters. Clearly, Coupland did his research. We get it, Doug.
I mostly enjoyed Microserfs, mainly for its obsessive detailing of life, far less so for its attempts at poignancy and meaning and hipness. And yet, can one fault an author for attempting to gather some meaning from that particular time and place? It is, in retrospect, a fairly important locality, one that some day in the future may be seen as the literal beginnings of the new humanity when the cyborg slaves finally break their wireless shackles and drop the A-bomb on New Los Angeles.
Unfortunately, the book doesn't extract much real value from that culture, other than that people lived, killed themselves to put Tetris and Leisure Suit Larry on the shelves, and tried to make relationships with other people. So is the point of the book to say that, this somewhat extraordinary era was just as normal and human as all others? If so, did it really require that many Charlie's Angels references to get to the point?
So yeah, Microserfs has a certain value and appeal, but the whole time reading it, I kept thinking, I have way too many friends who could have done this better and a thousand times more entertaining.
Review by Crimedog |