New Yorker Fiction Review #222: "Asleep at the Wheel" by T. Coraghessan Boyle

Review of a short story from the Feb. 11, 2019 issue of The New Yorker...

I usually love stories by T.C. (oops, I mean T. Coraghessan) Boyle, but this one took a long time to get into and felt a bit under-wrought. I've noticed that one of the "veins" Boyle likes to write in (and all I've ever read are his short stories in The New Yorker) is the plotting of the future course of societal dysfunction, given just a few more decades of technology. It's like limited-range "spec" fiction.

For example, in "Asleep at the Wheel," Boyle projects maybe 20 years out into a future in which almost all cars are self-driving and connected to our cell phones, home appliances, credit cards, etc. The operating systems in the cars can even tell us whether our kids are at home, what they're doing at any precise moment, and how we should be raising them. Robots scoot around here and there checking on people by asking "What is the situation here?" and reporting any funny-business to the police or what-have-you. A little far-fetched, but not that far-fetched.

Somewhat un-interesting details of the plot aside, Boyle creates one of those rotating-perspective stories centering around Cindy, a middle-aged women with a teenage son. Basically, the point of the story is that with all the technology, people have become so separated from reality that any actual, visceral experience, even a simple one like a walk on the grass barefoot at night, for example, is almost as thrilling and disorienting as using a computer probably once was for most people.

A story like this is kind of a throw-away, in my opinion. But it can, I suppose, ad "something" -- even if slight -- to the reader's perspective on life and modern society. By turning up the volume a few notches and projecting a world with slightly more outlandish technology, Boyle can hold a fun-house mirror up to our current society. Even if the things he writes about never come to pass as such, stories like this can help us take a moment to look at the way things are in our lives, right now.