Hey there word nerds!
Today I am delighted to have Jarett Kobek on the show!
Jarett published his first novel, I Hate the Internet, last year with a small indie publisher and it immediately took on cult status and received rave reviews. His new book, The Future Won’t Be Long, centers on one of the characters (Adeline) featured in I Hate the Internet and is set in my favorite city, New York!
Listen in as we discuss Jarett’s latest novel and his techniques to keep a book based around technology relevant even when the tech in the story becomes obsolete.
In this episode Jarett and I discuss:
- The art of explaining everything, and why you should use the technique.
- His tips and tricks for keeping the technology in a book relevant for future generations.
- When to set a project aside and how to go back and edit it later.
- How to grow your characters through multiple books as well as in a single book.
- Why readers want to read multivolume stories.
Plus, Jarett’s #1 tip for writers.
About Jarett Kobek
Jarett Kobek is a Turkish-American writer living in California. He is the author of the novella Atta (2011) and the novel I Hate the Internet (2016), an international bestseller that has appeared, or is scheduled to appear, in seven languages. His latest novel The Future Won’t Be Long is available now.
The Future Won’t Be Long
The Future Won’t Be Long is a provocative, ecstatic story of friendship, sex, art, and ambition in the twilight days of New York City’s East Village (1986-1996).
The story centers on Adeline—featured years later in I Hate the Internet—a wealthy art student in New York City who chances upon a young man from the Midwest known only as Baby in a shady East Village squat. The two begin a fiery friendship which propels them through a decade of New York life punctuated by the deaths of Warhol, Basquiat, Wojnarowicz, by the Tompkins Square Park riots, and by the rise of club kid culture. Adeline is fiercely protective of Baby, but he soon takes over his own education. Once just a kid off the bus from Wisconsin, Baby soon finds himself at the center of the club kid social scene, cavorting with Michael Alig and James St. James at The Tunnel, Limelight, and Alig’s infamous “Outlaw Party” at a midtown McDonald’s. As Adeline and Baby both develop into the artists they never expected to become, Kobek pays tribute to the last gasps of the gritty, drug-fueled scene of the East Village as gentrifiers begin to trickle in.
Kobek, himself a graduate of NYU, writes with a native’s sensitivity to New York, especially about those who come here with hope and those who come to escape their pasts. Riotously funny and wise, The Future Won’t Be Long is a euphoric, propulsive novel coursing with a rare vitality, an elegy to New York and to the relationships that have the power to change—and save—our lives.
I Hate the Internet
What if you told the truth and the whole world heard you? What if you lived in a country swamped with Internet outrage? What if you were a woman in a society that hated women?
Set in the San Francisco of 2013, I Hate the Internet offers a hilarious and obscene portrayal of life amongst the victims of the digital boom. As billions of tweets fuel the city’s gentrification and the human wreckage piles up, a group of friends suffers the consequences of being useless in a new world that despises the pointless and unprofitable.
In this novel, Jarett Kobek tackles the pressing questions of our moment. Why do we applaud the enrichment of CEOs at the expense of the weak and the powerless? Why are we giving away our intellectual property? Why is activism in the 21st Century nothing more than a series of morality lectures typed into devices built by slaves? Here, at last, comes an explanation of the Internet in the crudest possible terms.
If you decide to check out The Future Won’t Be Long or its companion I Hate the Internet, we hope you’ll do so via these affiliate links, where if you choose to purchase DIY MFA makes a small commission at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!
Link to Episode 174
(Right-click to download.)
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Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!
