“Think of being alone and frozen in the crypt…” (from Zero K by Don DeLillo)
“Think of being alone and frozen in the crypt, the capsule. Will new technologies allow the brain to function at the level of identity? This is what you may have to confront. The conscious mind. Solitude in extremis. Alone. Think of the word itself. Middle English. All one. You cast off the person. The person is that mask, the created character in the medley of dramas that constitute your life. The mask drops away and the person becomes you in its truest meaning. All one. The self. What is the self? Everything you are, without others, without friends or strangers or lovers or children or streets to walk or food to eat mirrors in which you see yourself. But are you anyone without others?”
I’m only about 75 pages in to Zero K but I’ve already been floored by countless passages. So far, the novel has been set entirely in a strange, utopian science compound and has been spinning around futuristic themes of cryogenics, identity and what it means to be alive in our disconnected, digital society.
- The Black Cathedral by Marcial Gala - March 15, 2020
- Indelicacy by Amina Cain - March 2, 2020
- Abigail by Magda Szabó - February 22, 2020
