Latest news with #TonyTulathimutte
The Age
01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
Tech bros, incels, dating apps: is this the literary equivalent of doomscrolling?
SHORT STORIES Rejection Tony Tulathimutte Fourth Estate, $36.99 At some point during her reclusive life, Emily Dickinson began a poem on a scrap of notepaper: 'I'm nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody, too?' The poet herself would remain a literary nobody until years after her death. Perhaps now, as the internet teems with anonymous accounts and inconsequential text, her words will be recognised for what they are: the credo of our over-engaged and under-loved age, the inner song of YouTube comments and unopened Snapchats. Otherwise, if the world still isn't ready, the American writer Tony Tulathimutte is here to take on that mantel on behalf of all the lonely souls online. His new book, Rejection, is set mostly on the internet – on message boards, dating apps, timelines, where the author realises his characters with such artful and painful exactness that his reader will want to trade their iPhone for a Nokia brick. The first story, The Feminist, which went viral when it was published in literary magazine n+1 in 2019, chronicles the decline and fall of a man who imbibes all the tenets of 2010s online progressivism, only to find that, while he has done 'the intellectual labor to empathise with the broadest spectrum of female perspectives', he is still left '[d]ragging his virginity like a body bag into his mid-twenties'. With a cool irony, Tulathimutte shows a man's mind shift from gender positivity and resentment of the patriarchy to the warped victimisation of men's rights accounts and incel forums, like a miniature dramatisation of the transformation of Twitter into X. Other scenarios in the collection revolve around similar young men whose lives do not extend far from their screens. Our Dope Future is narrated by a tech bro whose startups include a 'sexual consent on the blockchain' app and a 'meal-replacement shake called Döpesauce'. The story takes the form of an extended blog post written by this Elon Musk-ite, in which he describes wooing a woman with his 'algorizzim' and subsequently imprisoning and surveilling her to help her achieve her 'life goals'. In another story, a man comes out as gay but is unable to reconcile the openness and liberality of contemporary society – including queer and kink-friendly dating apps – with his own sadistic fetishes. Another is simply a series of metaphors for the humiliating state of being a rejected man: 'Passing your neighbor's house, you catch a glimpse of someone through his living room window, lit up by the television he's watching alone in the dark, and think, What a loser ... on your way home to do the exact same thing.'
Sydney Morning Herald
01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Tech bros, incels, dating apps: is this the literary equivalent of doomscrolling?
SHORT STORIES Rejection Tony Tulathimutte Fourth Estate, $36.99 At some point during her reclusive life, Emily Dickinson began a poem on a scrap of notepaper: 'I'm nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody, too?' The poet herself would remain a literary nobody until years after her death. Perhaps now, as the internet teems with anonymous accounts and inconsequential text, her words will be recognised for what they are: the credo of our over-engaged and under-loved age, the inner song of YouTube comments and unopened Snapchats. Otherwise, if the world still isn't ready, the American writer Tony Tulathimutte is here to take on that mantel on behalf of all the lonely souls online. His new book, Rejection, is set mostly on the internet – on message boards, dating apps, timelines, where the author realises his characters with such artful and painful exactness that his reader will want to trade their iPhone for a Nokia brick. The first story, The Feminist, which went viral when it was published in literary magazine n+1 in 2019, chronicles the decline and fall of a man who imbibes all the tenets of 2010s online progressivism, only to find that, while he has done 'the intellectual labor to empathise with the broadest spectrum of female perspectives', he is still left '[d]ragging his virginity like a body bag into his mid-twenties'. With a cool irony, Tulathimutte shows a man's mind shift from gender positivity and resentment of the patriarchy to the warped victimisation of men's rights accounts and incel forums, like a miniature dramatisation of the transformation of Twitter into X. Other scenarios in the collection revolve around similar young men whose lives do not extend far from their screens. Our Dope Future is narrated by a tech bro whose startups include a 'sexual consent on the blockchain' app and a 'meal-replacement shake called Döpesauce'. The story takes the form of an extended blog post written by this Elon Musk-ite, in which he describes wooing a woman with his 'algorizzim' and subsequently imprisoning and surveilling her to help her achieve her 'life goals'. In another story, a man comes out as gay but is unable to reconcile the openness and liberality of contemporary society – including queer and kink-friendly dating apps – with his own sadistic fetishes. Another is simply a series of metaphors for the humiliating state of being a rejected man: 'Passing your neighbor's house, you catch a glimpse of someone through his living room window, lit up by the television he's watching alone in the dark, and think, What a loser ... on your way home to do the exact same thing.'
New York Times
25-06-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
V.E. Schwab's Desert Island Book Is ‘The Count of Monte Cristo'
In an email interview, the author of the triple-timeline lesbian vampire novel our critic called 'sumptuous' challenged the notion that 'storytelling is a zero-sum game.' SCOTT HELLER How have your reading tastes changed over time? I've gotten both harder to please, and much more evangelical about anything that delights and surprises me. I've also reached the point where I'm far more interested in a story that takes swings and misses than one that doesn't try. Give me weird. Give me ambitious. Give me original. What's the last great book you read? You can't possibly expect me to pick one. 'James,' by Percival Everett. 'Jade City,' by Fonda Lee. 'Rejection,' by Tony Tulathimutte. What's your go-to classic? 'The Count of Monte Cristo,' by Dumas. It's my desert island book, not only because it's a tome, but because no matter how many times I revisit it, I find new lines to appreciate, new narrative corners to explore. Did attending an all-girls high school shape your sensibility as a writer? It might not have shaped my storytelling, but it shaped my belief that I could only be limited by my own ambition. Not that anything would be easy, but that no external voice would ever be as loud as my internal one. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
