When Chris, an unambitious young waiter, walks through the park on his way home from work, he stumbles onto the set of a Hollywood film — and is promptly mistaken for the missing lead actor. Corralled into filming a scene for The Lost Expert — director Bryant Reed’s last-ditch effort to restore his reputation — Chris assumes the identity of international action star Thomson Holmes, and disconnects from his real life. He falls deeply into his newfound identity as Holmes and as his character in the film, a struggling young man who has the ability to find lost people and things. Tensions mount as Chris gradually learns of the real Thomson Holmes’ scandals and accusations of sexual misconduct. Meanwhile, the real Thomson Holmes has disappeared and Chris has reason to fear he’ll be next. As he tries to figure out what happened to the actor, he grapples with his role as imposter and whether he can — or even should — extricate himself from reinvention.
The acclaimed author of The Peep Diaries and Hello, I'm Special returns to fiction, and delivers a mind-altering collection of short stories that confront the hypocrisies, humiliations and hilarities of modern life. The foibles of the 21st-century ego are on full view in this romp through social conventions—imaginative, offbeat stories that confront society's intractable dilemmas and deftly capture the zeitgeist of our fractured times. *An undergraduate gets in way over his head when a class assignment to start a terrorist organization goes viral *A pregnant 10th-grader struggles with her fetus's insistence that she abort him before both their lives are ruined. *A man trying to come to terms with the death of a friend becomes obsessed with a funeral home's online braodcasts. *A mortgage broker gets lost between the Web and the real world in pursuit of a pornography-induced fantasy. Look Down, This is Where It Must Have Happened is a biting satire of nostalgia, a send-up of the way highschool-era friendships can permanently choke off the possibility of adulthood. "Witty and wise."—San Francisco Chronicle "An equally gifted fiction writer and social critic."—Tikkun "There's tons of talent here."—NOW Magazine "Hal Niedzviecki is a remarkable writer."—Margot Livesey, author of The House on Fortune Street
The future is big right now—for perhaps the first time, our society is more focused on what is going to happen in the future than what is happening right now. In Trees on Mars: Our Obsession with the Future, cultural critic and indie entrepreneur Hal Niedzviecki asks how and when we started believing we could and should “create the future.” What is it like to live in a society utterly focused on what is going to happen next? Through visits to colleges, corporations, tech conferences, factories and more, Niedzviecki traces the story of how owning the future has become irresistible to us. In deep conversation with both the beneficiaries and victims of our relentless obsession with the future, Niedzviecki asks crucial questions: Where are we actually heading? How will we get there? And whom may we be leaving behind?
Ditch is a subversive, compelling portrait of a young man's plunge into adulthood, set in Toronto, Buffalo and the suburbs of Maryland. Niedzviecki's prose quickly dumps you into the head of Ditch, awkward, aimless, endearing — still living with his mom, driving a delivery van to get by — and into the rather more complicated mind, diary, e-mail and website of a young runaway who moves into the upstairs apartment. Debs is beautiful, tortured and much projected upon, largely because of the kind of pictures of herself she puts up on her website. Both she and Ditch are searching for absent pasts and possible futures, and Debs is on the run from something particularly nasty. Ditch is a sudden stumble into an instantly recognizable, constantly shifting, unforgettable world where everything happens through the filters of memory and modems.
Charlotte the spider... Wilbur the pig... Fern and Avery... and Lurvy, the hired hand. They and all the other characters from the timeless children's classic that you remember so well are back, in author and small-press overlord Hal Niedzviecki's first novel, Lurvy: a farmer's almanac. A caveat: given the (ahem) rather significant changes in social morays since the first appearance of these jolly folk, happenings on the Arable farm are somewhat different than you might well remember them.
We have entered the age of "peep culture": a tell-all, show-all, know-all digital phenomenon that is dramatically altering notions of privacy, individuality, security and even humanity. Peep culture is reality TV, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, over-the-counter spy gear, blogs, chat rooms, amateur porn, surveillance technology, Dr. Phil, Borat, cell phone photos of your drunk friend making out with her ex-boyfriend, and more. In the age of peep, core values and rights we once took for granted are rapidly being renegotiated, often without our even noticing. With hilarious, exasperated acuity, social critic Hal Niedzviecki dives into peep, starting his own video blog, joining every social network that will have him, monitoring the movements of his toddler, selling his secrets on Craigslist, hiring a private detective to investigate him, spying on his neighbors, trying out for reality TV shows and stripping for the pleasure of a web audience he isn’t even sure exists. Part travelogue, part diary, part meditation and social history, The Peep Diaries explores a rapidly emerging digital phenomenon that is radically changing not just the entertainment landscape, but also the firmaments of our culture and society. The Peep Diaries introduces the arrival of the age of peep culture and explores its implications for entertainment, society, sex, politics and everyday life. Mixing first-rate reporting with sociological observations culled from the latest research, this book captures the shift from pop to peep and the way technology is turning gossip into documentary and Peeping Toms into entertainment journalists. Packed with stranger-than-fiction true-life characters and scenarios, The Peep Diaries reflects the aspirations and confusions of the growing number of people willing to trade the details of their private lives for catharsis, attention and notoriety. Hal Niedzviecki is the founder of Broken Pencil magazine and has published numerous works of social commentary and fiction, including Hello I’m Special: How Individuality Became the New Conformity and Look Down, This Is Where It Must Have Happened, which is also published by City Lights Publishers.
Modern media tools make it possible for anyone to publish in print, video or on the Web. This book is an inspirational how-to-do-it with history, do-in-a-day projects, interviews with young creators, all designed to empower young artists.
The future is big right now—for perhaps the first time, our society is more focused on what is going to happen in the future than what is happening right now. In Trees on Mars: Our Obsession with the Future, cultural critic and indie entrepreneur Hal Niedzviecki asks how and when we started believing we could and should “create the future.” What is it like to live in a society utterly focused on what is going to happen next? Through visits to colleges, corporations, tech conferences, factories and more, Niedzviecki traces the story of how owning the future has become irresistible to us. In deep conversation with both the beneficiaries and victims of our relentless obsession with the future, Niedzviecki asks crucial questions: Where are we actually heading? How will we get there? And whom may we be leaving behind?
The Program is a unique work of stark humour and pathos that seduces its readers into the world of advertising guru Maury Stern. Through chain restaurants, forest reserves, Zionist summer camps, abandoned amusement parks and eastern European shtetls, the novel chases a mystery: what happened to Maury’s son, Danny, the night he was left alone with his uncle. Funny, fallible and lost, Maury blows up his life attempting to find the answer. His monster brother, the bogeyman of Danny’s childhood, has gone missing: is Maury still his brother’s keeper? His mum, Bubby Stern, is plugging her brain with the contents of American soap operas to avoid the secret she has carried since her girlhood: why can’t Maury be a good son and make her happy? When a simple camping trip with Danny turns into another horror show, Maury takes one look at the reproach in his wife’s eyes and runs away. Staggering under the weight of everyone’s desire for him to please be normal again, the wounded Danny can’t tackle the mystery of himself directly. Instead he disappears into the computer lab where he writes The Program — as a way to an alternative reality where the conflicting agendas of past, present and future may be resolved.
We have entered the age of "peep culture": a tell-all, show-all, know-all digital phenomenon that is dramatically altering notions of privacy, individuality, security and even humanity. Peep culture is reality TV, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, over-the-counter spy gear, blogs, chat rooms, amateur porn, surveillance technology, Dr. Phil, Borat, cell phone photos of your drunk friend making out with her ex-boyfriend, and more. In the age of peep, core values and rights we once took for granted are rapidly being renegotiated, often without our even noticing. With hilarious, exasperated acuity, social critic Hal Niedzviecki dives into peep, starting his own video blog, joining every social network that will have him, monitoring the movements of his toddler, selling his secrets on Craigslist, hiring a private detective to investigate him, spying on his neighbors, trying out for reality TV shows and stripping for the pleasure of a web audience he isn’t even sure exists. Part travelogue, part diary, part meditation and social history, The Peep Diaries explores a rapidly emerging digital phenomenon that is radically changing not just the entertainment landscape, but also the firmaments of our culture and society. The Peep Diaries introduces the arrival of the age of peep culture and explores its implications for entertainment, society, sex, politics and everyday life. Mixing first-rate reporting with sociological observations culled from the latest research, this book captures the shift from pop to peep and the way technology is turning gossip into documentary and Peeping Toms into entertainment journalists. Packed with stranger-than-fiction true-life characters and scenarios, The Peep Diaries reflects the aspirations and confusions of the growing number of people willing to trade the details of their private lives for catharsis, attention and notoriety. Hal Niedzviecki is the founder of Broken Pencil magazine and has published numerous works of social commentary and fiction, including Hello I’m Special: How Individuality Became the New Conformity and Look Down, This Is Where It Must Have Happened, which is also published by City Lights Publishers.
When Chris, an unambitious young waiter, walks through the park on his way home from work, he stumbles onto the set of a Hollywood film — and is promptly mistaken for the missing lead actor. Corralled into filming a scene for The Lost Expert — director Bryant Reed’s last-ditch effort to restore his reputation — Chris assumes the identity of international action star Thomson Holmes, and disconnects from his real life. He falls deeply into his newfound identity as Holmes and as his character in the film, a struggling young man who has the ability to find lost people and things. Tensions mount as Chris gradually learns of the real Thomson Holmes’ scandals and accusations of sexual misconduct. Meanwhile, the real Thomson Holmes has disappeared and Chris has reason to fear he’ll be next. As he tries to figure out what happened to the actor, he grapples with his role as imposter and whether he can — or even should — extricate himself from reinvention.
The acclaimed author of The Peep Diaries and Hello, I'm Special returns to fiction, and delivers a mind-altering collection of short stories that confront the hypocrisies, humiliations and hilarities of modern life. The foibles of the 21st-century ego are on full view in this romp through social conventions—imaginative, offbeat stories that confront society's intractable dilemmas and deftly capture the zeitgeist of our fractured times. *An undergraduate gets in way over his head when a class assignment to start a terrorist organization goes viral *A pregnant 10th-grader struggles with her fetus's insistence that she abort him before both their lives are ruined. *A man trying to come to terms with the death of a friend becomes obsessed with a funeral home's online braodcasts. *A mortgage broker gets lost between the Web and the real world in pursuit of a pornography-induced fantasy. Look Down, This is Where It Must Have Happened is a biting satire of nostalgia, a send-up of the way highschool-era friendships can permanently choke off the possibility of adulthood. "Witty and wise."—San Francisco Chronicle "An equally gifted fiction writer and social critic."—Tikkun "There's tons of talent here."—NOW Magazine "Hal Niedzviecki is a remarkable writer."—Margot Livesey, author of The House on Fortune Street
Charlotte the spider... Wilbur the pig... Fern and Avery... and Lurvy, the hired hand. They and all the other characters from the timeless children's classic that you remember so well are back, in author and small-press overlord Hal Niedzviecki's first novel, Lurvy: a farmer's almanac. A caveat: given the (ahem) rather significant changes in social morays since the first appearance of these jolly folk, happenings on the Arable farm are somewhat different than you might well remember them.
Ditch is a subversive, compelling portrait of a young man's plunge into adulthood, set in Toronto, Buffalo and the suburbs of Maryland. Niedzviecki's prose quickly dumps you into the head of Ditch, awkward, aimless, endearing — still living with his mom, driving a delivery van to get by — and into the rather more complicated mind, diary, e-mail and website of a young runaway who moves into the upstairs apartment. Debs is beautiful, tortured and much projected upon, largely because of the kind of pictures of herself she puts up on her website. Both she and Ditch are searching for absent pasts and possible futures, and Debs is on the run from something particularly nasty. Ditch is a sudden stumble into an instantly recognizable, constantly shifting, unforgettable world where everything happens through the filters of memory and modems.
Modern media tools make it possible for anyone to publish in print, video or on the Web. This book is an inspirational how-to-do-it with history, do-in-a-day projects, interviews with young creators, all designed to empower young artists.
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