"The Gray Goose"

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Sci-Fi Issue: "My Internet"

By Jonathan Lethem
~1400 words

A man reveals the existence of an elite Internet within the Internet—and then an even more selective one nested inside of that.

Tired of the Web as you know it? Well, you should be, since you’re stuck with the run-of-the-mill version that split off from its more elite twin long ago. This other Internet has evolved differently, and it is richer than our own—not in money (in fact, both money and animals are forbidden), but in texture and feel and speed.

And yet there’s trouble afoot. The leader who created this alternate Web-existence has a strict code of conduct. There have been defectors. And replacements. Others may be watching. Or not. Paranoia is on the rise, which has led our narrator to create yet another Internet within the secret Internet—so private that its use is restricted to one.

Lethem’s brief tale reads like a faintly comical fable about current communication, replete with all the contradictory notions that accompany it: the Internet is the death of culture, it is the life of culture; it’s what separates us, it’s what binds us; it’s purely commercial, it’s purely free. Even the elite version in “My Internet” turns out to embody many of these contradictions, which is why our feckless and technologically challenged narrator creates his personal Internet (from which he nevertheless communicates to our own). Like a purloined letter, this secret Internet is concealed in the open, “hidden like a grain of sand on the shore of the larger Internet”—which is to say that it’s just like our Internet, the vulgar one where all of us little people exist, our privacy protected by the simple fact that no one is looking, and no one cares.

Tongue-in-cheek and mildly dystopian, “My Internet” could do with a bit more of an edge (especially regarding human communication). There doesn’t appear to be much at stake in this story, but it gets good points for cleverness. (I find myself saying that a lot these days.)

Satisfactory.

Reader poll: I found "My Internet" to be ___.

Also from the sci-fi issue: "Monstro," "Black Box," "The Republic of Empathy."

"The Porn Critic"

By Jonathan Lethem
~3800 words

The brainy manager of an adult gift shop in Manhattan is misunderstood by his friends as a sex expert.

The third-person limited perspective cleaves to the main character, Kromer, whose reputation among his friends comes partly from his association with the worldly Greta, "a raven-haired, baggy-eyed heiress." The narrative follows Kromer's secret longings for a graduate student in history named Renee, whom he succeeds in inviting back to his apartment, along with her friend Luna, by triangulating his desire through Greta. After a joint is passed around, discussion turns to Kromer's vast porn collection, which he reviews for his job. Disgusted by several of the VHS titles (the story takes place in the 90s) and by Kromer's matter-of-fact commentary, Renee vomits and rushes out of the apartment. Left to themselves, Greta, Luna (who, it turns out, is secretly in love with Renee), and Kromer engage in an awkward and desultory series of sexual encounters.

I love the concept behind the main character of this story: a sex-shop manager who is something of a sexual innocent. Unfortunately, neither he nor any of the secondary characters turns out to be very compelling, and the relationship among all of them is underdeveloped, resulting in little more than a formulaic love triangle: X and Y both love Z. The distance of the narrative voice does not help matters but rather prevents adequate sympathy from emerging for the characters. A subtle but important example of this flaw is the narrator's consistent reference to the main character by what is presumably his last name (Kromer). A more glaring example is found in passages such as the following, which ironize the characters in an unproductive way (and also depend too heavily on telling rather than showing):

From Greta's many aspiring transsexual acquaintances Kromer remained terrified of accepting even a blow job. None of them could have guessed what aura they'd transferred to Kromer. The process was mysterious. A book nerd, a clerk, Kromer sat failing even to drink very much among young blacks in stuffed brassieres who the following day would be late for beauty school or, in some cases, Intro Soc or Psych at Queens College. Their special language—"shemale," "pre-op"—made them a nerd species, too, Kromer understood.

"The Porn Critic" is an intriguing but ultimately unsuccessful story. The characters are underdeveloped, the plot a bit overwrought, and Lethem's language, though generally fresh and bold, occasionally crosses the line into verbosity.

Weak.