Columnist Scott Dickensheets: Andersen skewers power brokers in 'Turn of the Century'

Most book reviews come preloaded with one of two subtexts: A.) Hey, Mr. Author, check out my shrewd appraisal/masterful critique of your work! Or, B.) Hey, I get paid to read books! Today, I'm leaning heavily on the latter. Partly because it was a pleasure to get paid for reading Kurt Andersen's buzzy first novel, "Turn of the Century" (Random House, $24.95), but, more to the point, the book is so smartly done, it's clear Mr. Author doesn't need my wee insights.

Aspiring to be a big (659 pages!), sprawling (New York! Los Angeles! Las Vegas! Seattle!) best seller in the Tom Wolfean mode (incisive social satire!), "Turn of the Century" is set next year in the intersecting worlds of power media, Wall Street and computer entrepreneurship. The main characters are George Mactier and Lizzie Zimbalest, a plugged-in New York couple -- he's a reality-TV producer, she runs her own software startup. They're rich, glib, ambitious, status-conscious, achingly ironic and smart enough to worry about being rich, glib, ambitious, status-conscious and achingly ironic. They have sufficiently precocious children whom they help the nanny raise and a lot of lifestyle tropes that frequently substitute for actual lives.

In a canny bit of character-definition early in the book, Andersen sends George and Lizzie on separate walks through New York City; their ruminations and encounters hip us to their personalities. George turns reflective as he wanders through what he calls the Infotainment Zone, that concentration in Manhattan of TV networks, publishing houses, magazine offices and newspaper companies.

"All practice their rarefied craft, sublime as well as ridiculous, on these jam-packed 500 island acres, a piece of land -- he can't get over this, not even after 20 years -- smaller than his grandparents' alfalfa farm."

Lizzie is so marinated in her smart-set viewpoint that when she sees a storefront TV broadcasting the phrase "19th CENTURY EUROPEAN LEADERS" on a cyan background, she automatically appreciates it as way-cool installation art. It's a "Jeopardy" category.

Because this is a satire, there are funny touches on nearly every page. As the plot spins George and Lizzie through various professional and personal disasters (each have major projects that go awry; their marriage cracks under the strain), Andersen extrapolates an incredibly detailed vision of tomorrow: There's war in Mexico; a popular sitcom is "Dharma Minus Greg"; the vice president is advertising his presidential bid by way of tiny "Gore 2000" stickers on produce; the latest Las Vegas theme resort is Barbie World.

Smoke from a bonfire of the vanities hangs over the proceedings. Andersen seems to have built his book from specs laid out by Tom Wolfe in his novels: lavish detailing, extensive reporting, merciless social satire, the story sprawling through the contemporary moment -- the book is so determinedly up-to-the-minute (some Vegas scenes are set in the Venetian) that you're tempted to look for freshness dating on the cover.

"Turn of the Century" is an inside job, for Andersen is a gold-card-carrying member of the chattering class he's lampooning. One of the founding editors of Spy magazine (when it was good), later the editor of New York magazine (the last time it was good), now a columnist for the New Yorker, he's as deeply imbedded in the Gotham media in-crowd as his characters.

Let this be said of the book: It's long. It needed an editor willing to challenge Andersen on some of the amusing but less relevant bits. And some of the characters never rise above being types -- the California Fruitcake, the Teenage Hacker -- although that's not uncommon in satire. Andersen's writing is more than adequate compensation for such occasional lapses. It's laser-sharp, superbly crafted, zeitgeisty as all get-out.

Critics have wondered how the book will fare between the coasts, where, presumably, heartland folks don't rightly cotton to no such sophistercated nonsense as this. They're too busy being, you know, earthy and other stuff involving cows. Andersen surely believes otherwise. Early in the book, he sets a scene in Minnesota, at the funeral of George's mother.

Tellingly, a young girl swaps computer lingo with Lizzie, while a yokel relative seeks George's involvement in a business venture combining malls and cemeteries (gravestones would be inset with video screens featuring the departed's highlight reel). I think Andersen is telling us here that livestock and rural distances aren't barriers to the mediaverse; folks get People magazine in the heartland, too. Irony seeps everywhere eventually. Hey, Mr. Author, am I right or am I right?

Reading ListModern Library's Top 100 Nonfiction Books List: Modern Library wants to have it both ways here. It wants the promo sexiness of a highly touted list -- these days, the surest way to "start a dialogue" on whatever you want to sell -- while maintaining its intellectual cred by stocking it with books no one would read except candidates for tenure.

Hendry Adams' "The Education of Henry Adams" tops the list, followed by "The Varieties of Religious Experience," by William James, "Up From Slavery," by Booker T. Washington, "A Room of One's Own," by Virginia Woolf and "Silent Spring," by Rachel Carson. Not bad so far, but almost immediately, the list clogs up with with a grad-school seminar's worth of books of philosophy and science. (The full list is available at modernlibrary.com.)

Compare this list with New York University's recent ranking of the Top 100 works of journalism. There are exactly four overlaps: "Silent Spring" (No. 5 on the Modern Library List, No. 2 on NYU's); "The Right Stuff," by Tom Wolfe (52 and 48); "A Bright Shining Lie," by Neil Sheehan (84 and 46); and "In Cold Blood," by Truman Capote (96 and 22). The ommissions are boggling. Where is John Hersey's masterpiece, "Hiroshima," which topped the NYU list? Norman Mailer's "Armies of the Night"? James Agee's classic "Now Let Us Praise Famous Men"? Or any of a dozen items from NYU's list?

Mod Lib's ranking smacks of intellectual preening, brainy one-upmanship: My reading list can whup your reading list. Come on; is "The Varieties of Religious Experience" really the second-best nonfiction book of the whole freaking century? Speaking strictly as a reader, gimme the NYU list any day. Why tangle with "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money" by John Maynard Keynes (No. 10), when the journalism list gives me books I might actually read?

Utne Reader, June 1999: This issue offers its own list, one just as easily argued with: "What's Worth Saving From the 20th Century?" Since willful ecclecticism is practically an editorial mandate at Utne, it's no surprise that the list is full of surprises. Some selections are inarguably worthy: antibiotics, human rights, Hollywood screwball comedies, and a particular favorite of the "Shelf Life" crew, paperback books. Not to mention an even more particular favorite of the "Shelf Life" crew, the shorter work week.

Others are forcibly cutesy (sticky notes), yeah-yeah political (Earth Day), crackpottedly spiritual (the goddess revival) or simply ho-hum (the crossword puzzle).

And others fall under the heading, "What the ...?" Such as Morphic Resonance Theory, the notion that all objects are surrounded by some sort of memory field that connects them to all other like objects throughout history. Jeez, good thing I was paid to read that.

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