White Noise? In keeping with the parallel I think 12 or 13?

I think it just came down to what I hate about “literary” and like about “genre” fiction, there was no fucking plot, or to the extent there was it was thematic rather than load-bearing.

Like I’m trying to remember what happened and there’s the Airborne Toxic Event and… the protagonist watches freshmen move in on their first day of college?

I remember a description of some luggage on the roof rack of a car at a gas station that was supposed to Mean Something About How We Live Today, I remember there being a lot of stuff like that and I remember thinking “this must be that ‘K-Mart Realism’ I’ve heard of”.

(in like a copy of The Nation I read at the library - I now don’t think that’s quite right)

I mean Infinite Jest’s plot threads never resolved and wandered into absurdism a few times and were mostly a scaffold for the writing and the insight, but at least they were there, you know?

Yeah, if I read it today I’d probably get more out of it as a fable of how the 70s became the 80s, maybe I should.