Why Can't Novelists Get the Internet Right?

Contemporary novelists must grapple with the fact that these days, many of our emotional encounters happen virtually. Whether it’s connecting via e-mail or social networking sites, our days are spent in front of the computer rather than talking in person. For writers of fiction, particularly those most interested in reflecting today’s social realities, it is impossible not to consider the impact this remote brand of socializing will have on both character and story.

During the past 10 years, fiction writers have begun to experiment with the potential role of technology in narrative. Take, for instance, the acrobatic fiction of the late David Foster Wallace. His footnote- and marginalia-studded style of writing captures what he described to his editor as “the information-flood and data-triage I expect’d be an even bigger part of US life 15 years hence.” More recently, the third section of Ed Park’s novel Personal Days features a digital aria of sorts in which a remorseful office worker types away a rambling e-mail from the darkened floor of a busted elevator; the message never reaches its intended recipient. Zadie Smith begins On Beauty with extended e-mails rather than formal letters (which open E.M. Forster’s Howard’s End, the 1910 novel to which Smith’s story pays homage).

Dan Chaon’s most ambitious novel to date, Await Your Reply, integrates technology even more fully. He uses multiple forms of computer communication—among them instant messages, e-mail, social networking, and search engines. As a result, his novel offers up a more realistic portrayal of our new patterns of socializing and how they figure so largely into our daily lives. His admirable aim is to explore how we invent and reinvent ourselves in a computer-driven world. But the book winds up showing how novelists haven’t quite cracked this code yet. Throughout the narrative, the computer screen ultimately gets in the way of writing convincingly about intimate human experience. The characters tend to come back to life only when they are actually interacting with each other.

I’ve admired Chaon’s writing ever since 2001, when his second story collection, Among the Missing (a nominee for the National Book Award) was published. These well-crafted stories are dense with grief, heartbreak, and wry humor. One of my favorites is “Safety Man,” about a widow who begins to rely on an inflatable life-size doll as she attempts to retain the former rhythm of her life as well as her sanity. After her husband’s unexpected death, Sandi returns to work as an IRS claims adjuster and cares for her two young daughters. Midway through the story, Chaon writes from Sandi’s perspective:

When she begins to feel a wave of grief or terror washing over her, she likes to visualize a line of cheerleaders in her mind’s eye. They jump and do splits and wave their pom-poms: "Push it back! Push it back! Push it wa-a-ay back!" they chant, and it seems to work. She thinks of how much Allen would like these mental cheerleaders. How he would laugh.

The surprise here is how effectively Chaon’s brings authentic emotion to Sandi’s relationship with a lifeless object. But this skill fails him when he writes about the virtual world.