Charles Yu finally (back!) in Second Life🔫

Hosting winners of the (USA based) National Book Award is what we do here in the OG Metaverse, but of course! And on Saturday May 18th at 12pm no less .....

My obsession with “Infinite Jest” (David Foster Wallace,1996) is well known.

i joined next-gen VR world Sansar in 2017 just so I could read “Infinite Jest” while wearing a Oculus Rift headset …

I tell everyone that I want to LIVE in that novel and when the recipient of this message doesn’t run away fast enough or calls their shrink, I usually also share my thoughts on an alternative novel I’d like to step into: “How to live safely in a Science Fictional Universe” by Charles Yu.

can you spell “fantastic tableau”?

Now, why do I want to live in a world of wheelchair assassins, entertainment addiction and suicide by microwave (Wallace) or in a box supended in time with a non-existing dog and an operating system that has a crush on me/I on it, while marinating in regret and anxiety over missed opportunities to connect with my father (Yu)?

maybe i will produce a play in SL called “All Yu, all the time!”

Mmmhhhh … maybe someone should call a shrink!

Or y’all come to the Second Life Book Club tomorrow, May 18th, at 12pm SLT, where Charles will elaborate how on earth he comes up with his stories, his novels (“Interior Chinatown” won him the NBA) …

Shyla (yes, the Super Gecko, seen here in human disguise, yours truly and Charles, reading a scene from “Interior Chinatown

… and his scripts he apparently writes for hit television shows like “Westworld” (I wouldn’t know because - just like DF Wallace - I threw my TV set out the window in the early aughts.

(I know I know … streaming over the internet is possible now, subscription services up the wazoo, entertainment ala carte and 24/7 blablabla I know I know … kind of like Infinite … uhm Jest jawohl?)

I’m super psyched about Mr. Yu coming back to the virtual world (linked here 👈 our convo from October 2020) …

… especially because I just NOW read his first short-story collection from 2006, “Third Class Superhero” , and for crying out loud (I did shed a few - fairly silent - tears while reading I am not ashamed to admit) how was he able at age BARELY 30 to write with so much precision and humor about the madness of being stuck - for a LIFETIME - on this very (real?) planet …

Charles trying to teleport to somewhere else but o m g the lag ….

… while I at around that same age transcribed Zappa songs for my cover band and ate donuts somewhere around Sunset Junction at 3am?

not actual historic photo of the actual now defunct little shop my pal Tunc ak and I frequented in 1999ish

Help me!

See you in-world!