Review: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow (2022)
It is Christmas and I am sick, but not so sick that I couldn’t finish this book.
I don’t have the energy for anything like a full review but here's two things I really loved about Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow:
1. The novel is genuinely interested in video games as a medium, not simply as color or narrative window-dressing. In other words, the book actually thinks through what makes a video game’s narrative and storytelling structure different from, well, a novel’s. But it’s also exploring video games as a form of communication and exchange, like when Sadie gives Sam a copy of “Solution” as a way of rekindling their friendship or Sam’s decision to (spoiler here) create an entire game world as a way of reaching out to Sadie.
2. Gabrielle Zevin uses allusions and literary references that actually reward close reading. I don’t mean the Shakespeare and Homer, though those are no less interesting for being extremely blatant. I'm more interested in subtle things like the framing of Sam as an ironic modern version of the biblical Samson. Consider: Sam’s most extreme moment of emotional vulnerability is the scene in which Marx literally shaves his hair. It’s a perfect scene because Sam loses what he THINKS is his greatest strength – that is, his inability to open up to people he loves – but which is actually his greatest weakness. What’s fascinating to me is the way this works as an inversion of the Samson and Delilah story, where Samson’s downfall only happens because he opens up to someone he loves about his vulnerability.
(I suppose that would mean Marx is a Delilah-esque figure? I haven’t worked through the implications of that yet.)
Anyway I liked the book a lot. Sorry for the ramble. Thanks for reading.
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