The Unbinding [Paperback]

Walter Kirn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 30, 2007

Before AidSat I had no self, no soul. I was a billing address. A credit score. I had a TV, a computer, a phone, a car, an apartment, some furniture, and a health-club locker. Then AidSat hired me and gave me a life. And not just one life. Hundreds of them, thousands.

Kent Selkirk is an operator at AidSat, an omni-present subscriber service ready to answer, solve, and assist with the client’s every problem. Through the AidSat network Kent has a wealth of information at his fingertips–information he can use to monitor subscribers’ vital signs, information he can use to track their locations, information he can use to insinuate himself into their very lives.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Kirn (Thumbsucker) serialized this neat surveillance culture satire on Slate.com in 2006. The web version makes a mostly smooth transition to print, except for items in bold that Kirn encourages readers to type into the book's accompanying web site. The book centers around Kent Selkirk, who makes his living at a company called AidSat, a kind of invasively cyber Dear Abby-like organization designed to coach desperate people on everything from alternatives to suicide to negotiating the purchase of a home. (Caller heart rates are monitored through bracelets and ear jacks.) When smug Selkirk starts to develop a crush on bland neighbor Sabrina, he uses AidSat to his advantage, but is unaware that others are working against him. Adding an element of mystique is Sabrina's eccentric friend Colonel Geoff, who talks incessantly and mysteriously of "The Unbinding." The familiar morals-that people are not who they appear to be, that they can easily lose track of themselves in the cybercacophony, and that exhibitionism is replacing real contact-are done with a light enough touch and enough novel content to make the thin conceit and epistolary format work swimmingly. The Crying of Lot 49 this isn't, but it's a quick and funny George Saunders-esque slice-and-dice of creeping corporate information hegemony.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

"Kirn's The Unbinding merits our close attention, not only for itself--the man is a talented writer--but for what might be portended for the art of fiction."—The Boston Globe

"Kirn depicts technology as a looming Orwellian force, spying on the citizenry, turning our insides outward. . . . The loss of privacy makes for comedy, at first, and then for a sense of foreboding as trampled boundaries refuse to reappear." —Los Angeles Times

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 165 pages
• Publisher: Anchor (January 30, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307277410
• ISBN-13: 978-0307277411
• Product Dimensions: 5.3 x 0.5 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,479,134 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

WALTER KIRN is a contributing editor to Time magazine, where he was nominated for a National Magazine Award in his first year, and a regular reviewer for the New York Times Book Review. His work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the New York Times Book Review, GQ, Vogue, New York and Esquire. He is the author of four previous works of fiction: My Hard Bargain: Stories, She Needed Me, Thumbsucker, and Up in the Air. He lives in Livingston, Montana.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "The machinery for answering prayers is now in place and I am seated at its mighty center.", February 8, 2007

By 

Luan Gaines "luansos" (Dana Point, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Unbinding (Paperback)

Walter Kirn has a unique view of a world bedeviled by advancing technology and rampant paranoia in a country obsessed by the all-seeing eye of Big brother. A twenty-four hour subscription service, SatAid provides its customers with on the spot help with any number of situations, from personal danger to answering life questions, "Active Angels" like Kent Selkirk providing "seamless life-assistance interfaces" when called upon by subscribers. Basically inept at social conventions, Kent finds this job satisfying on many levels, maintaining a modicum of intimacy that requires little commitment other than his soothing voice on the line. Content to exist in this netherworld, Kent enjoys his general anonymity, pleased to be of assistance, aware that he can execute direct surveillance should events require it for the good of the customer.

When Kent's interest is piqued by a neighbor at his complex, Sabrina Grant, he requests all the available data on her activities and social background, in service of making a personal connection. Although his request is patently against company rules, Kent feels that he is an exception in this matter. Then he meets "Rob" at a health club, a man who is interested in instant friendship; Kent is naturally wary, being of a suspicious bent himself. Then there is the ageing, mentally-addled Colonel Geoff, who takes Kent under his wing, revealing government secrets from a past of networking deeply within the system. As assorted other characters surface via Kent's email, the picture shifts subtly, suggesting that the watcher might well be the watched. A cat-and-mouse game of one-upmanship reveals a more complex battle for top dog in the information industry, Kent and Rob at loggerheads, each outwitting the other in a series of clever ploys.

Kirn turns the age of information on its head, revealing a complex maze of investigative agencies whose only purpose is to gather bits of information on citizens. Combined with the government's insatiable need to know, the agencies are pitted against the superior imagination of a character that is hardly what he seems, the elusive Kent a man of many faces, giving spectacular chase, sliding through layers of ambiguity in his latest incarnation. Cleverly written, the author's tongue-in-cheek humor and good-natured protagonists' repartee drives a caustic plot that is all too believable. A challenging exercise in a technology-driven universe, there is much to explore in this satiric expose of human electronic interface. Luan Gaines/ 2007.