Revue “ What A Time to Be Alive ”: Jade Chang satiates the well-being gurus

Is it cheesy to open this criticism with “what time to be alive, indeed”? Almost certainly, but Jade Chang kisses an clumsy cheese in his new novel on an influencer of the spirituality of Los Angeles named Lola Treasure Gold. And really, it’s a great moment for literary fiction, with blurred genres and archetypes and transforming tales: in “What a time to be alive”, the renowned rise of Lola is only a thread of the literary tapest of Chang; The novel is a love letter in equal parts to Los Angeles, narrative on being an American of first generation Asian origin, the exploration of sorrow and love and a family novel found with an adopted which does not put the meeting as an emotional peak.

We then enter that Lola arrives at the funeral of her best friend, early for the first time in her life. The young man died tragically in a skateboard accident, and everything was taken on video because he and his friend (what else) filmed sick tips for social media. In a moment of drunk sorrow, Lola says something messianic, that someone else cut in a perfect video for a mourning world, and suddenly, it is a viral sensation.

The novel then ends the year of Lola after that: its initial rejection of internet renown before chasing the internet weight despite the fact that this is what killed its best friend. There is a TED conference, a sexy nerd, rituals of the moon and another friend who becomes famous as a musician thanks to the same viral video. There are the summits of glory and the stockings to be harassed by Internet foreigners. And there is cruel reality that behind his picturesque sorrow, his soil is full of holes, her bank account is won and Lola has no idea what she wants, and even less how to get it.

The novel is propelled because Lola, like the moon she teaches, makes a cycle through the desperate impostor syndrome, moments of frustrating narcissism, and quietly asking the question that many of us make at a given moment: is this the year when I finally meet? It is psychologically complex, overlapping both beautiful sincerity and total vapidity.

Chang’s voice as a writer has become stronger since his first novel, “The Wangs vs. The World ”. Its prose is infectiously funny, and its ability to satiate the rich paying for silly quantities to be led to their soul has only sharpened. Here, it targets influencers marrying well-being for Likes, their subscribers and the whole industry of goods belief. People populate the world of Lola hosts insane podcasts, falling into marketing patterns on several levels and microdosage daily, erasing any feeling of fear in the process.

But the clearest satire of all can be Lola herself who – spoiler! – falls for his own shtick at the end. In her mourning and wisdom performance for her disciples, she forgets to cry. She becomes so wrapped in her own fame that she does not remember that there was a friend there that day, spinning the fatal accident, and he drowned in his sorrow and his guilt. She can “see” her participants in the moon ceremony, but she does not notice it, even if they sleep together, even if he tell She has trouble.

Like “The Wangs”, Chang’s new novel jumps over time, revealing more the past as history is advancing. However, unlike his beginnings, “What a Time to Be Alive” is all from Lola’s point of view – an interesting change considering Lola’s incapacity to see his friends clearly. She is so wrapped in her own future that many secondary characters – no doubt, too many secondary characters – are abandoned when they are no longer useful to Lola. Readers will never know what has become the sexy nerd of Ted, the friend who filmed the death of the skateboarder or the (sort of) adoptive mother who loves and rejects Lola. It would bother me if I did not trust Chang, did this intentionally in the context of his goal of telling stories of atypical immigrants.

There is a hole at the center of this story that Lola does not want to examine or no one noticed in the assembly: the biological mother of Lola was expelled when Lola was 9 years old and … nobody adopted it or put it in the reception system? A white family takes it, but apparently not legally, and more shady transactions are revealed throughout the novel but never resolved. What’s going on here? Why does Lola no longer ask questions?

Lola’s secondary intrigue trying to find his biological family is cut when her brother turns out to be mentally ill. Lola believes that he needs help and that she is about to offer it, but always fled when he begins to act “dangerous”. Despite her guru dreams, she does not question her own bias so that mental people are dangerous and writes it as if he triumphed by stealing (allegedly) her watch – a rolex that she had stolen in sexy nerd. This is what Chang seems to say, is Instagram illumination. How can we trust him, or one of them?

I don’t know. And yet, in a way, I like Lola. She reminds me of the famous crook (with the accent also put on “Scam” and “Artist”) Caroline Calloway. A large part of the personality of Calloway was based on his brilliant ideas tempered by a charming ineptie, his approach as a devil in his own fame. Like Calloway, the question with Lola becomes, what is the quantity of her work and how much does she believe? And how much did she have duned?

In the end, Lola reveals to her disciples that her messianic discourse of the initial viral video was part of a drunk game in the desert, a challenge to be punctuated on a subject for a minute without stopping. He had been given the word “scam” and started a spiritual movement with it.

Castellanos Clark, writer and historian in Los Angeles, is the author of “Undisciplined figures: twenty tales of rebels, breakers of rules and revolutionaries that you have probably never heard of. “”