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Summary
Chapter 13: Pure Language
It’s New York in the near-ish future, and Bennie has asked Alex—the man who went on the date with Sasha in Chapter 1—to help him spread the word about a concert. He plays him a recording of a new song by Scotty Haussmann and explains he’s popular with “the pointers”—more commonly known as babies. There’s been a baby boom, and many of these babies grow up with handsets specifically designed for them which allow them to choose music by tapping the screens (or “pointing”).
Alex is hesitant about the job, which involves social media marketing. That night, unable to sleep, he smokes a joint and worries about the day. The job for Scotty involves finding "parrots" to promote his concert; “parrots” are people who will unwittingly pass on data. Alex uses a handheld computer to evaluate which of his online friends would be most suitable.
Alex meets with Lulu, who’s working as Bennie’s assistant. She explains that the "viral model" of marketing has been replaced by one more closely tied to particle physics. She explains the physics issues in condescending younger-person speak. They discuss the ethics of bribing people to promote the concert. Lulu gets breathless as she isn’t used to speaking aloud, and she and Alex start to speak via a new style of abbreviated text messages.
Alex and his wife Rebecca take their baby daughter Cara-Ann with them for a walk. Alex plans to tell Rebecca about the job for Bennie but loses his nerve. He thinks about Rebecca’s growing academic stardom. She is starting to look older and more tired, but her latest book on word casings is being highly praised. As he looks at his wife, he abruptly remembers Sasha’s name, which he’d been struggling to recall; she was his initial connection to Bennie. Lulu texts Alex that Bennie needs help with the concert. Alex flashes back to when he first heard Rebecca mention the concert herself. She had no idea that Alex was involved in promoting it. She suggested they go, and so on the day of the show the couple take Cara-Ann and walk to the Footprint, which is the site of the concert and Ground Zero of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Alex walks away from his wife and child and heads to Scotty’s trailer. Scotty is a thin, pale imitation of the large man on the posters Alex first saw. Scotty protests and says he can’t play, and Bennie reminds him that time is “a goon” he cannot allow to beat him. He also reminds him of their disastrous reunion in “X’s and O’s.” Scotty struggles but eventually gives in, performing the show of a generation. Bennie tells him this, and then Alex abruptly mentions Sasha. Bennie says she was an amazing assistant, but that he had to fire her because she was a thief. The men go to her old building, but she doesn’t come down when they ring the buzzer, and Alex closes his eyes to listen to the night noises of New York. He thinks of a small poem about the night in text abbreviations, and then whirls around when he hears a sound. It’s not Sasha, but a different young girl fiddling with her keys. The novel ends.
Analysis
The chapter’s near-future setting is a departure from the timelines we’ve seen in the rest of the novel. Instead of being part of the same loop, it’s a speculative exploration of a future world. This approach provides a backdrop that calls attention to the impact of time passing on every character. The use of technology in this section, particularly through the characters’ constant interactions with their handsets, also explores the boundaries of identity. The recurrent presence of technology blurs the lines between personal and public selves, as seen in the marketing strategies targeting babies, or “pointers,” who can download or stream music by pointing at devices designed for them. Technology has transformed human interactions so much at this point that many younger people aren’t used to speaking aloud. When Alex and Lulu first meet, she has to take a break from talking to catch her breath, eventually switching to her handset and typing to him in the new abbreviated text-speak everyone uses. This is so intuitive and easy to do that the two begin texting all the time. Alex is interested in Lulu but wary about the volume of texts pinging between them. He’s concerned about his wife’s opinion, but also worries about how the handset is changing his own brain.
Given this, the theme of mortality is central to this chapter. The near-future setting, with its unseasonably warm weather and blooming trees in January, is a reminder of the long-term consequences of humanity’s effect on the planet, and the limited amount of time we have left. Alex and Bennie are both introduced in earlier stories as younger, more lively men. In this chapter, they’re older and struggling to accept the changes that time has wrought. Bennie was once a major player in the music industry. However, now that the “pointers” have turned music into a pursuit that’s only profitable when written for children, he struggles with his relevance in a field that has moved away from his values. He reminisces with Lulu and Alex about his past successes and failures, including being fired from his own label for criticizing the quality of music it produced. Bennie’s shift to producing analog (non-digital) music—which ultimately did not sell well at all—shows that his extreme resistance to change has only got more intense as he ages. When Scotty’s concert is a historically fantastic, truly significant event, Bennie is so delighted that he’s almost angry. He knows there will never be another show like that in his lifetime.
Bennie’s reflection on his career and his encouragement of Scotty Hausman to perform despite his fears are a direct confrontation with mortality. When Bennie tells Scotty that “time is a goon,” what he’s really saying is that Scotty must push through his fear in order to have a chance at creating a legacy for himself. If he doesn’t, he’s capitulating to aging and becoming decrepit. In his state of panic, Scotty’s feeling that the goon has won reveals how hard he’s struggling against the inevitable decline that comes with aging. When he came to visit Bennie in his office, Scotty was already showing some signs of mental decline, as he was delusionally fantasizing about digital communication and a universal system of information. It seems, at this stage, that his decline has accelerated rapidly. This moment also illustrates the constant battle Scotty and Bennie fight to leave a lasting impact. If Scotty doesn’t go out and play music, there’s no way he can leave a legacy, and this failure would mean the “goon” has won. Even though time will eventually erode all their accomplishments, as Bennie implies, it’s vital to push against that inevitability for as long as possible.
