‘Gods Without Men,’ by Hari Kunzru

Reviewed by DOUGLAS COUPLAND - New York Times - Published: March 8, 2012los

eOne thing that struck me about the 9/11 footage shown during last year’s anniversary was that in 2001, the people on New York City’s sidewalks had no smartphones with which to record the events of the day. History may well look back on 9/11 as the world’s last underdocumented mega-event. But aside from the absence of phone cameras, the people and streets of September 2001 looked pretty much identical to those of September 2011: the clothes, the hair, the cars. I mention this because it has been only in the past decade that we appear to have entered an aura-free universe in which all eras coexist at once — a state of possibly permanent atemporality given to us courtesy of the Internet. No particular era now dominates. We live in a post-era era without forms of its own powerful enough to brand the times. The zeitgeist of 2012 is that we have a lot of zeit but not much geist. I can’t believe I just wrote that last sentence, but it’s true; there is something psychically sparse about the present era, and artists of all stripes are responding with fresh strategies.

GODS WITHOUT MEN

By Hari Kunzru 

369 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $26.95.

Left - Hari Kunzru - Michael Lionstar

This new reality seems to have manifested in the literary world in what must undeniably be called a new literary genre. For lack of a better word, let’s call it Translit. Translit novels cross history without being historical; they span geography without changing psychic place. Translit collapses time and space as it seeks to generate narrative traction in the reader’s mind. It inserts the contemporary reader into other locations and times, while leaving no doubt that its viewpoint is relentlessly modern and speaks entirely of our extreme present. Imagine traveling back to Victorian England — only with vaccinations, a wad of cash and a clean set of ruling-class garb. With Translit we get our very delicious cake, and we get to eat it, too, as we visit multiple pasts safe in the knowledge we’ll get off the ride intact, in our bold new perpetual every-era/no-era. Translit’s precursors are, say, “Winesburg, Ohio” and “Orlando,” and the genre’s 21st-­century tent poles are Michael Cunningham’s novel “The Hours” and David Mitchell’s “Cloud Atlas.” To these books we can add Hari Kunzru’s gorgeous and wise “Gods Without Men.”  

Full review at The New York Times.