As New York enters the third decade of the twenty-first century, it is in imminent danger of becoming something it has never been before: unremarkable. It is approaching a state where it is no longer a significant cultural entity but the world’s largest gated community, with a few cupcake shops here and there. For the first time in its history, New York is, well, boring.
This is not some new phenomenon but a cancer that’s been metastasizing on the city for decades now. And what’s happening to New York now—what’s already happened to most of Manhattan, its core—is happening in every affluent American city. San Francisco is overrun by tech conjurers who are rapidly annihilating its remarkable diversity; they swarm in and out of the metropolis in specially chartered buses to work in Silicon Valley, using the city itself as a gigantic bed-and-breakfast. Boston, which used to be a city of a thousand nooks and crannies, back-alley restaurants and shops, dive bars and ice cream parlors hidden under its elevated, is now one long, monotonous wall of modern skyscraper. In Washington, an army of cranes has transformed the city in recent years, smoothing out all that was real and organic into a town of mausoleums for the Trump crowd to revel in.
By trying to improve our cities, we have only succeeded in making them empty simulacra of what was. To bring this about we have signed on to political scams and mindless development schemes that are so exclusive they are more destructive than all they were supposed to improve. The urban crisis of affluence exemplifies our wider crisis: we now live in an America where we believe that we no longer have any ability to control the systems we live under.
No one was certain which pizza cartel armed its drones first, or who fired the inaugural shot. Pizza disputes typically occurred at the borders, where rival drones would intuit certain addresses in questionable coordinates. The public was kept largely ignorant of the war between the companies by competing PR narratives that responded algorithmically to the other side with ever more absurd, but always vaguely plausible, storylines, which were then propagated with breathtaking speed by networks of AI influencers on social media.
Over time, the unregulated airspace over cities intensified — corporations jamming rival aircraft, hacking the opposition’s drones for data, and eventually aerial dogfights. Drone engagements happened at such high altitudes over disputed borders that most people remained unaware of the state of perpetual privateering above their heads. They felt the escalating delays, and occasionally heard rumors about drones crashing to city streets. But the pizzas always arrived, if a little later than expected, which mitigated civilian concern.
We might be rich or poor, young or old, fast or slow — but we each have a voice. To what end do we use it? The possibilities are haunting, and so is Crace's message, around which he has invented an entire world: We are only as meaningful as the help we give to others.
This novel derives its power from its limited focus and direct language. There are no adipose, word-glutted sentences. Reed is mostly content to give us strong silk thread, absent pearls.