As a reader, one of the most pleasing feelings in life is the moment you realize “I am going to cram this book into every conversation I can for the foreseeable future.” It is perhaps possible that this is not as pleasing for the people you encounter frequently in the foreseeable future. I’m open to the idea that my deep need to talk constantly about whatever book I’m into at the moment doesn’t align perfectly with my friends’ desires to hear about said book.
Nonetheless: I AM GOING TO TALK ABOUT THIS BOOK SO MUCH.
First, the title. A good title should pull the reader in while also alluding to the plot, and I challenge you to find one that does that more effectively than “I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom.” There’s a box! And it has doom inside! This doom is causing someone to worry!
What more could you need to at least pick it up and read the first few pages?
And before the first chapter you’re going to find a Charles Darwin quote for the ages, followed by a first sentence that is so perfectly constructed that creative writing teachers will weep. There’s pathos and parallelism and mystery!
(If you’re wondering when this review will get more stable, it won’t. I love this book and I am wildly enthusiastic about the things l love.)
What’s the Black Box of Doom? Well, it’s not what you think. Or it is. It’ll be a couple hundred pages before you know, and along the way, you’re going to be treated to Jason Pargin taking a scalpel to the zeitgeist. Or a baseball bat. Defibrillator?
You’re going to laugh. You’re going to empathize. You’re going to read a sentence, get halfway through the next sentence, register what you think you just read, go back to be sure, and realize you should mail the author a thank-you card.
I know this is an odd review in the sense that reviews usually talk about things like plot but I don’t want to ruin any of the book for you. There is a large tattooed ex-con. There is a crypto billionaire. There is a paranoid man living in a DIY Faraday cage.
There are fistfights and twitch streams, tweets and handguns. At various moments, both a horse and sriracha become tangential plot points.
And peppered throughout is dialogue that picks at the seams of a society inhabited by people who just won't get off the internet. No one is safe, and nothing is sacred. Pargin’s characters thoroughly skewer every cultural trope in sight in every direction, and the punctures left behind flirt dangerously with letting the light of reason land on actual truths we work very hard — consciously or subconsciously — to avoid.
I promise, you’ll find something in this book you love, and probably many sentences you also hate. But that hate is likely to be the sort you feel when you’re boxed in by an argument you don’t like but can’t dismiss.
If I still taught an English class, “I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom” would move immediately to my “teach this one every year list.”
I loved this book.
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