The Unbinding

Zusatztext "Kirn's The Unbinding merits our close attention! not only for itself--the man is a talented writer--but for what might be portended for the art of fiction."— The Boston Globe "Kirn depicts technology as a looming Orwellian force! spying on the citizenry! turning our insides outward. . . . The loss of privacy makes for comedy! at first! and then for a sense of foreboding as trampled boundaries refuse to reappear." — Los Angeles Times Informationen zum Autor WALTER KIRN is a contributing editor to Time magazine, where he was nominated for a National Magazine Award in his first year, and a regular reviewer for the New York Times Book Review . His work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine , the New York Times Book Review , GQ , Vogue , New York and Esquire . He is the author of four previous works of fiction: My Hard Bargain: Stories , She Needed Me , Thumbsucker , and Up in the Air. He lives in Livingston, Montana. Klappentext Before AidSat I had no self, no soul. I was a billing address. A credit score. I had a TV, a computer, a phone, a car, an apartment, some furniture, and a health-club locker. Then AidSat hired me and gave me a life. And not just one life. Hundreds of them, thousands. Kent Selkirk is an operator at AidSat, an omni-present subscriber service ready to answer, solve, and assist with the client's every problem. Through the AidSat network Kent has a wealth of information at his fingertips-information he can use to monitor subscribers' vital signs, information he can use to track their locations, information he can use to insinuate himself into their very lives.1. [MyStory.com] They call at all hours with a thousand problems, and our satellites fix their locations to the square foot while our operators try to help them or put them in touch with specialists who can. They call because they’ve fallen and can’t stand up, because they’re alone and choking on their food, because they’ve been abandoned by their mates, because they smell gas, because their babies won’t nurse, because they’ve forgotten how many pills they’ve swallowed, and sometimes because they’re afraid that we’re not here and crave reassurance in case they need us later. It’s a costly service—sixty dollars a month for the Palladium Global Access package, not including the optional Active Angel Plan, which remotely coaches users through more than six hundred common Life Challenges, from administering infant CPR to negotiating the purchase of a home—and clients deserve to know we’re at our stations even when the skies are fair and blue. “AidSat?” they ask us, and as we answer them we check our screens for their pulse rates and other vital signs, which are forwarded to us from sensors in their bracelets or, for Active Angel clients, in their ear jacks. If the numbers look bad we press a lighted red key that sends an ambulance from the nearest hospital. If the stats appear normal we stroke another key that records and stores the information, shielding the firm from legal liability should it turn out that the sensors have malfunctioned and the caller is, in fact, dying on the line. Last Thursday around lunchtime this call came. Peculiar, but not as peculiar as they come. The only reason to write it down is that I decided this month to write it all down, everything, my mornings and my nights, and to file it for perpetual safekeeping in the great electronic library of lives. I’m an interesting person, I’ve come to see. We all are. We don’t deserve to disappear. “I’m in my car. It’s rainy—really foggy. I think I see a coastline on my right.” “How can I help you?” I asked. “I’m lost, I guess.” “Humboldt County, ma’am, city of Eureka, heading south on Wabash Avenue. On your right you should see a Pentecostal church.” “Which state i...

Product details

• Authors: Walter Kirn
• Publisher: Anchor Books USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 30.01.2007
• EAN: 9780307277411
• ISBN: 978-0-307-27741-1
• No. of pages: 176
• Dimensions: 133 mm x 203 mm x 12 mm
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature