Tomorrow And Tomorrow And Tomorrow Gabrielle Zevin

[Kerrie Gingrich]

Ican't remember the last time I read a book so good it made me wish I could erase it from my memory only to discover and devour it all over again. This is one of those books, and since I simply can't forget about it, I'll just be over here thinking about today...and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.

Unfortunately, the last third of the book took beyond charming. It gilded the lily, and ultimately, although I enjoyed the novel, it fell short. It felt like the work of a screenwriter and not a novelist, which must be a tension in the life of Zevin who is both.

The moments of the book that are most gorgeous are the joy of building something that you hope people will love. I am no expert on this, but I do know what it is like to build something, working silently for days on end, hoping that one day it will delight your audience. In my youth it was original songs on guitar, and now it tends to be books. It is a transcendent and joyous experience to try to make something that you hope will inform, challenge, or delight others, and the pleasure and bonds that comes from that creation are unsurpassed.

A movie with two 2024 Oscar nominations (streaming now on Kanopy, available through many libraries) that deals so beautifully (IMO) with what it means to love two people/how love can shift and grow is "Past Lives." Recommend.

Gabrielle Zevin\u2019s novel Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow has an enticing and novel premise. In the late 1990s, three college kids at Harvard and MIT start a video game company. They make it, and later in the book, one of them\u2014Sadie\u2014will admit that their timing was serendipitous. Had they been older, video games didn\u2019t exist, and, were they younger, the market was so competitive that no small entrant had a chance of success. You needed a team and high end graphics. They entered the industry the only moment they could.

The book itself\u2014 particularly the first 2/3rds\u2014 has all the charm of serendipity. It is fundamentally a novel about friendship\u2014 a Bildungsroman juxtaposed with the immersive creative art of video games. It elevates gaming to the realm of art; Alongside poetry and fiction and music and cooking (when done well).

In the fantasy world Maplewood, the team \u2014 Sam, Marx and Sadie\u2014 permit gay marriage before America had embraced it. I remember distinctly the rapidly changing attitudes from 2000-2012 on gay marriage. I came of age in this time, and watched even as young progressives moved from intolerant to embracing.

Yet, it struck me as forced to imagine that a man whose wife left him b/c she discovered she was a lesbian on Maplewood would blame the creator and come to their office with guns. Marx\u2019s death felt entirely forced, and, in a sense, convenient. It\u2019s easy to kill off a love interest\u2014 it is much harder to reconcile with what it means to love two people; how love can shift and grow\u2014 how you can be pulled in two directions.

The story that doesn\u2019t exist is what would happen if Sadie came to realize that she loved two men. Of course, other novelists have sought out this material\u2014 rich and challenging to course. Instead, however, Marx is gone and Sam becomes an asshole.

Sam, of course, is less and less lovable as time goes on\u2014 constantly alternating between bellyaching about his own timidity and his self-righteousness that he never made a move because creating art is so valuable (of course, this is not true). It hardly feels like Sadie faces a dilemma. The book wound up a love triangle, but ended with two parallel lines.

Dov, of course, is flat and cliche. His only charm is that he once made a gorgeous video game, but this is told to the reader, and we see no element of his charm. His use of BDSM seems trite, and Sadie\u2019s acceptance of it a heavy handed way to show her lack of self esteem. Why not make him a richer character? Why not show the reader why she fell for him (rather than merely tells us)?

The only line I flagged in the book is this, \u201CThere is a time for any fledgling artist where one's taste exceeds one's abilities. The only way to get through this period is to make things anyway.\u201D

Indeed. The charm of making art is to do it even when you aren\u2019t ready to. That was advice I gave someone with promise recently, and that's the promise of tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. It's a shame that the characters and plot didn't match up to the book\u2019s ambition ambition. Nevertheless, it was a fast and engaging read. Began with a bang, ended with a whimper.

3a8082e126